Yes, You Can - Writing Challenge Day 21

I didn't want to post again until I got some clarification of some points in Nancy's book so I am accurately portraying the ideas she promotes. In regards to writing for an income, I apparently didn't understand what that meant. If you want to write children's fiction picture books, that should be under the category of personal fulfillment -- not easily accessible income. This is the hardest market to crack as evidenced by my research of book publishers for this genre. As publishing these books is very expensive, most companies do not want to take the risk of buying a first time author. Of course they would happily take on a celebrity who had their first book ghostwritten as they would already have a name and a following. I'll need to work into that.

The way to break into the book writing for children is the non-fiction book. I have been looking in many publisher's catalogs and there are a ton more non-fiction titles that they publish than fiction. They also do a lot of books in series. This is a good way into that market, if the books in the series are written by different authors. This shows they are looking for different voices. One of those voices could be mine.

One of my focuses for the week will be to discover publishers who will consider queries from new writers for their non-fiction titles. This will entail reviewing their websites and catalogs to see where there might be a particular niche that I might be able to fill. I was at my favorite bookstore over the weekend reviewing the titles of children's books. I found one publisher who does a delightful series of books (though only one title was stocked in the store)that fit what I would love to write. Next I will have to review if the series is singularly written and then query about doing another title or two in the series. I still get tickled about books that I think are just a joy to read and that is how I reacted to this book. I hope they are still doing the series!

When I was looking at the books in stock, I was quite surprised to find a display of about 20 Halloween books. I know it's a very popular holiday, but I am surprised there are a number of fiction books on sale. I know families buy Christmas books, but do they really buy Halloween books as well? While I was at the store, I watched a couple of grandparents and their two sweet grandchildren. The adults told the kids that they could buy 2 books but none were picking up any of the Halloween books - one week away from the date.