If you want to see your writing published
in 2004—this is the book you need!

Children’s Writer® Guide to 2004—the working writer’s constant companion

Children’s Writer® Guide to 2004 conveys the cumulative wisdom of over 250 editors, publishers, and industry experts whose respected forecasts, opinions, and insights will help to shape the world of children’s writing in the year ahead.

 This year’s Guide is 100% new and updated.  We think it’s the best we’ve ever done, and last year’s edition sold out its entire print run.  Most of the Guide’s buyers purchase again the next year . . . year after year.  Clearly, the Guide has fulfilled a need among children’s writers.

 If writing for the market is your goal, our new 424-page Guide to 2004 will be your indispensable, constant companion for the coming year.  It is written specifically for working writers.  Among its 41 articles and sections are:

• In “The Beat Goes On,” 27 editors and industry experts review the year just ended and forecast the year ahead for children’s books.  They explain why and how young adult, middle-grade fiction, nonfiction, and fantasy are the best markets.

• With 21 editors contributing, the Guide explains how children’s magazines are coming back after a weak 2002 and early 2003, identifying the trends and detailing new magazine launches, closings, and more.

The bad guys wear black

• In “The Bad Guys Wear Black,” five editors and authors explain how a villain, not just an antagonist but a really evil villain—can be a huge boost to a story.  They provide 32 guidelines to help you create fresh, interesting, and believable villains. 

• Our staff comes up with the 110 most newsworthy events in children’s publishing in 2003—awards, launches and ventures, important people moves, mergers and acquisitions, anniversaries, and more.

Creative nonfiction is HOT

• Six editors and writers use seven solid examples to explain how the fiction writing techniques of narrative, dialogue, character development, and scene setting used in

nonfiction will help you generate articles that will sell.

• Editors from Henry Holt, Cavendish, Push/Scholastic, Knopf/Crown, and Cartwheel discuss creating suspense through the interplay between characters, conflict, villains, unpredictability, red herrings, and cliffhangers; and they provide a reading list.

• Today’s educational materials are interesting, colorful, exciting, and fast-paced—and therefore also fun to research and write.  An author of 125 books joins with 10 educational book editors to explain why you should not overlook the opportunities here.

Rights, contracts, and copyrights

• This primer explains rights, contracts, copyrights, letters of agreement, and confirming letters, and why you cannot depend on emails.  It includes five resources for researching writers’ contracts.

• Editors from Highlights, Boys’ Life, Cricket, Calliope and Dig, Hopscotch, Girls’ Life, Hullabaloo, and others explain why tween magazines are hungry for material.

Unsolicited submissions & submission policies

• Eight editors and two literary agents examine the range of publishers’ policies on unsolicited submissions: open, closed, query only, agented only, and reviewed by recognized manuscript evaluation services.

• Dialogue is critical to good fiction—to personalize characters, create and define relationships, convey information, build suspense, add humor, change pace, provide background, and more.  Editors from Clarion, Henry Holt, Dutton, and Little Brown provide their insights on creating effective dialogue.

• We guide you to places on the Web where you can find the primary research experts you need for your nonfiction, including online discussion groups. 

HOW TO CURE WRITER’S BLOCK

• How to break writer’s block through free-flow writing, free association, the “write what you know principle,” journaling, and reading.  Learn about the value of exercise, changing scenery, spending time with children, and writers’ or critique groups.
• Six successful authors explain how they generate ideas for their stories and articles and we add 14 exercises that will spur your creativity.
• We present thumbnail descriptions of 140 festivals and holidays from all over the world that can help you generate article and story ideas.
• In a discovery-filled article we explain a seven-step process for creating poems by pulling lines from five poems, then combining and developing them.  It works . . . as proven by examples.

• Stories about real people fascinate readers and attract editors, be they autobiography (rigorous), memoir (more freedom to emphasize and by-pass), or life-based fiction.  Nine editors and authors share their insights and provide an instructional reading list of 21 titles.

• Highlights’s history editor Carolyn Yoder taps 12 colleagues to survey the best approaches to researching and selecting photographs for your articles and books.  They specify 57 best sources for photographs.

Revision is not tweaking sentences . . .

• Revision is not tweaking sentences.  It is looking at the whole piece and deciding what works, what doesn’t, and what’s missing.  You weed out that which does not move the plot ahead, and add layers to characters and conflicts that will move the story forward.

• Eight editors and experts open up the murky realm of readability levels.  They review the five established formulas (with website references) and also the modern “common sense” approaches used by some leading children’s magazines.

• Ten editors and writers explain how a good how-to article is based on originality, a tight focus, an opening with a strong hook, an angle to motivate kids to do the project, the combination of fun and education, and the appropriate use of adult intervention.

• Plus . . .

. . . evaluating the life of a freelancer . . .
. . . how to set mood and setting . . .
. . . how to get organized and software that will really help you . . .
. . . researching to your targeted readers’ age level . . .
. . . observing children to pick up language, interests, attitudes, and more . . .
. . . knowing when printed reference books are still the best resources . . .
. . . a report on the annual SCBWI conference . . .
. . . all the ways to self-educate on the craft of writing for children . . .
. . . 10 editors and publishers explain their writing contests, including those from Delacorte, Lee & Low, Hyperion, Milkweed, and more . . .
. . . resource listings of 113 contests and awards for children’s writers . . .
. . . and resource listings of 59 selected general, SCBWI, university, and regional writers’ conferences all across the country.

For a free, no-risk, no-obligation examination Children’s Writer Guide to 2004—the freelance writer’s indispensable tool kit—just click on Order now..