Writing a picture book? If you're planning to have adult characters, you'll need to avoid some common traps. This quick video provides some models for creating compelling and original grownup characters.

Interested in learning how to write a book and send it to children's book publishers? Come on over to The CBI Clubhouse for audios, videos, insider writing tips and much, much more!

The best literary agents are also talented editors. They can instruct and guide an author toward writing a better book. So when those agents talk about writing, it's wise to listen. Veteran agent Donald Maass gives advice for writers in his book The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great, and you can read an excerpt on character-building here. Maass mentions something children's writers often overlook: the impact of greatness, either by the protagonist, or on the protagonist by another character. Children are drawn to greatness and want to see heroes in their books. Infusing ordinary, flawed characters with moments of greatness makes them immortal. And immortality is what every writer dreams of.

Picture book author Lynne Marie has started My Word Playground, which she describes as a "children's writing & illustrating inspiration/promotion blog".  Each post features a writing prompt or tip from children's book authors, illustrators, or other book-related creative people. In addition to the prompt, the post highlights and promotes the creator's latest work.

She's looking for guest posts. The prompt/tip could be themed with your book topic. Or, instead of a prompt or tip you could share the story behind the story. You could touch upon plot, dialogue, scene, point of view, pacing, punctuation, characterization, genre, school visits, book trailers, promotion, jacket flaps, pitches, queries, theme – anything about which you feel you have something to offer.

In addition to the prompt or tip, Lynne needs a short accompanying blurb about you or your book, illustration or creative endeavor, as well as a .jpg of the cover/art to upload, an author photo .jpg and/or any website or blog links that you may have. You can email everything to: LynnePisano@aol.com
 
So visit My Word Playground to get inspired, then add your own contribution to the mix!

Hi, I'm Josh Jones; Jon & Laura  invited me to do a semi-regular column about the ebook world and how it pertains to children's book writers! Why me? A little over a year ago I founded ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com), a free online service for making, converting, publishing, and sharing ebooks for children. More recently I've also been working with Scribble Press, a real-world store in Santa Monica and New York City where children can make their own books. They're using ePub Bud software to make digital versions of the work kids make in their stores, and I'm basically their guy in charge of everything e. Before all this I founded DreamHost Web Hosting. I like programming and am sort of an "early-adopter" of nerdy gadgets. I had a US Robotics Palm Pilot back in 1997 and a Kindle whenever the first week was those came out. I had an HD DVD player when those came out. My dad had a Betamax.

In summary, I don't know why Jon picked me.

But here goes!

I started ePub Bud back in April 2010 because the advent of the iPad got me realizing we were at the cusp of a very interesting time in children's book publishing… the dawn of the mass-market, COLOR e-reader. The kindle had already paved the way for mass acceptance of ebooks, but it was a silly black-and-white affair with awkward little turn-the-page buttons and slow refresh rates. The iPad promised to be a larger, full-color, touchscreen device that EVERYBODY on the planet (and by planet I mean San Francisco) was going to own within two years. It practically screamed "children's ebooks!" to me.

To shut it up I started making ePub Bud, launching it April 12th, 10 days after the iPad. It's been tough being an early adapter in this arena, because the standards and devices are in constant flux. Early on I decided on the ePub file format to be the one I would use at ePub Bud. It wasn't just because of the catchy domain name it lent itself to either. Mostly because of the domain, yes. But it was a TEENSY bit because as far as I could tell, .epub was to books what .mp3 was to music. It was the open standard, it was the most flexible, and with the announcement that it was the only format the iPad's iBooks app would read, it was clearly to me the format of the future.

ePubs are funny, they're actually just a .zip file (renamed to .epub), with certain specific files inside. The files are just a table of contents along with the book content in the form of HTML web pages (plus any images, audio, and video files for those web pages)…. meaning a .epub is essentially just a zipped up website! And epub ebook readers are essentially zipped-up web page browsers! Read more

I've written in Children's Book Insider newsletter and on the CBI Clubhouse about the difference between middle grade and young adult books. One hallmark, in my mind, is that in YA fiction the protagonist is faced with an adult situation for the first time, and in living through it crosses a threshold into the adult world. At the end of the book the main character is forever changed–he/she can't go back to being a child or adolescent. The protagonist's eyes have been opened a bit to the larger world, and a certain innocence has been lost. In middle grade fiction, though the main character may emerge a somewhat wiser or more worldly than at the beginning of the book, that character is still fundamentally a child. That internal shift that signals a more adult way of moving through the world hasn't quite taken shape.

But writing isn't an exact science, so a second opinion is always welcome. Agent Michael Stearns' post Middle Grade? Teen? Where Do You Draw the Line? on the Upstart Crow Literary blog offers a slightly different way of measuring where your book fits, and comes with a nifty graph. Check it out.

"Anything cliché such as ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ will turn me off.  I hate when a narrator or author addresses the reader (e.g., 'Gentle reader')."
        - Jennie Dunham, Dunham Literary

"I don't like an opening line that's 'My name is…,' introducing the narrator to the reader so blatantly. I might be prompted to groan before reading on a bit further to see if the narration gets any less stale. There are far better ways in Chapter 1 to establish an instant connection between narrator and reader. I’m also usually not a fan of prologues, preferring to find myself in the midst of a moving plot on page 1 rather than being kept outside of it, or eased into it."
        – Michelle Andelman, Lynn C. Franklin Associates

"1. Squinting into the sunlight with a hangover in a crime novel. Good grief — been done a million times. 2. A sci-fi novel that spends the first two pages describing the strange landscape. 3. A trite statement ("Get with the program" or "Houston, we have a problem" or "You go girl" or "Earth to Michael" or "Are we all on the same page?"), said by a weenie sales guy, usually in the opening paragraph. 4. A rape scene in a Christian novel, especially in the first chapter. 5. 'Years later, Monica would look back and laugh…' 6. "The [adjective] [adjective] sun rose in the [adjective] [adjective] sky, shedding its [adjective] light across the [adjective] [adjective] [adjective] land."
       - Chip MacGregor, MacGregor Literary

"Here are things I can't stand: Cliché openings in Fantasy can include an opening scene set in a battle (and my peeve is that I don't know any of the characters yet so why should I care about this battle) or with a pastoral scene where the protagonist is gathering herbs (I didn't realize how common this is).  Opening chapters where a main protagonist is in the middle of a bodily function (jerking off, vomiting, peeing, or what have you) is usually a firm NO right from the get-go. Gross.  Long prologues that often don't have anything to do with the story. So common in Fantasy again.  Opening scenes that are all dialogue without any context. I could probably go on…"
       - Kristin Nelson, Nelson Literary

"I know this may sound obvious, but too much 'telling' vs. 'showing' in the first chapter is a definite warning sign for me – the first chapter should present a compelling scene, not a road map for the rest of the book. The goal is to make the reader curious about your characters, fill their heads with questions that must be answered, not fill them in on exactly where, when, who and how.  Don’t ever describe eye color either…"
        – Emily Sylvan Kim, Prospect Agency

"Characters that are moving around doing little things, but essentially nothing. Washing dishes & thinking, staring out the window & thinking, tying shoes, thinking … Authors often do this to transmit information, but the result is action in a literal sense but no real energy in a narrative sense. The best rule of thumb is always to start the story where the story starts."
        – Dan Lazar, Writers House

Do you believe that your job as a writer is to write a great book? If so, you’re half right. Do you believe that your job as a writer is to write a great book AND to market it to the best of your ability?

Congratulations! You’re on the right path.

Publishing has some dirty secrets. One of them is that nobody cares about you. A second is that nobody cares about your book.

Does this leave you depressed? It shouldn’t, because you can make people care. How?

At a recent writers’ conference, I was fortunate enough to meet Randy Ingermanson. Randy, a master of marketing and the author of Writing Fiction for Dummies, listed the false impressions or pipe dreams that sometimes keep writers from achieving their dreams:

False impression number one: My publisher will do it all.

• Publishers only market the winners.
• Your book won’t be a winner unless it gets marketed.
• That means you need to market your book yourself.
• Marketing your book means marketing YOU!
• To quote from the television show Monk, “It’s a jungle out there.”

False impression number two: My publicist will do it all.

• A publicist can only help you if you are publicizable. A publicist can help you become publicizable by asking:

1. How can you connect your novel to the news?
2. What’s your platform?
3. Who cares about what your novel is about? 

• Many authors face these questions only when it’s too late (after their book is published), so hiring a publicist turns out to be a waste of money.

False impression number three: Great writing will do it all.

• Best marketing is a great story.
• In some cases, that’s all it takes, but not always.
• Don’t depend on the brilliance of your prose to take care of your marketing needs.
• Be proactive.

False impression number four: Word of mouth will do it all.

• Word of mouth is best, but it doesn’t start on its own.
• You, the author, have to start a brush fire or a buzz.

False impression number five: My brand will do it all.

• Your brand is “what people think when they hear your name.
• Your brand is not your tagline or logo or picture.

Okay, we’ve talked about the pipe dreams or false impressions under which writers operate. What can we do to work in the real world?

My mother comes from Tennessee. Those from Tennessee don’t have ancestors, they have “people.” Upon meeting others, someone from Tennessee will ask, “Who are your people?”

So what does this have to do with writing?

Every writer needs people. Or a tribe. A tribe is a set of people who know who you are and who love your work. Your tribe is the people who know your brand and will work hard to spread the word about it.

Randy listed four channels of communication necessary if your tribe is to help you grow your brand:

• You must have a way to talk to your tribe.
• Your tribe must have a way to talk back to you.
• Your tribe wants to talk to other tribe members.
• Your tribe needs a way to talk to outsiders.

Tribe-based marketing is all about opening up these four channels of communication wider and wider. This does not happen all at once. It takes time and effort. Fortunately for today’s writers, technology makes it easier and quicker.

Now that we’ve discussed why having a tribe is so important, let’s talk about how to build a tribe.

• Post an article on your web site.
• Join an online community and post on the loop.
• Launch an e-zine.
• Create a podcast.
• Start a blog and post on other writers’ blogs.
• Build a set of lectures on the organization, craft, and marketing of writing.

Obviously you won’t be able to do all of these things at once. Start small, then build upon that beginning. Keep adding to your marketing efforts until you reach the level at which you feel comfortable and can keep up.

Jane McBride Choate is a Contributing Editor to Children's Book Insider, and an author. Her newest books include Bride Price and Eden's Garden from Avalon Romance.

Writers always complain that they need an agent to get a publisher to read their work, but agents won't look at them until they've got a book or two to their credit. Instead of wasting time griping about the unfairness of the industry, first-timer Colleen Houck took matters into her own hands. After getting a pile of rejections for her queries about her young adult fantasy series, Tiger's Curse, Colleen realized she needed to offer an agent more than a manuscript–she needed a platform. So she self-published the first book through Amazon, then turned it into a Kindle e-book. Her creative pricing helped the word spread and the book appeared on several must-read lists. One thing led rather quickly to another, and she was contacted by an agent.

"…He said he’d found me on Amazon and was impressed with my reviews. Two days later I had representation at one of the top if not the best agency in the country—Trident Media Group. My new agent, Alex Glass, went to work immediately. 

"Within a few weeks, I had a book deal. The self-published versions of my book were taken offline to prepare for the very aggressive marketing of my new publisher, Sterling, and in less than six months the new version of my debut novel, Tiger’s Curse, was headed to bookstores all over the country."

Sound too good to be true? It's not, and here's why. Before she wrote word one of her books, Colleen read and studied lots of other successful books in the same genre, and knew that, as a newbie, she'd have to write a book that was so good people couldn't help but talk about it. Her insistence at writing a quality book, plus her grassroots marketing strategies, led to her success.

There's nothing Colleen did that you can't do as well. Read her story here and get inspired