Once Upon a Time, a Chipmunk and a Penguin Went to a Motel Room

I'm finishing an illustration-only book. It was intended for children, but it's suitable for all ages. 

Please refer to this post.

So would it be considered a children's picture book because it meets the page-count criteria, or could it be stretched to the novelty category and submitted to agents that don't accept children's fiction? It seems to me that novelty can be a tough sell, but aren't consumers more likely to purchase a novelty/gift book than, say, a fifteen-dollar picture book? I ask that realizing your answer most likely is that it depends on the pictures, but feel free to surprise me here.

It depends on the pictures---and the topic. 

There is a core audience for your book.  I'm guessing, from your question, that the topic or treatment is somewhat adult, and the only reason you think it might be a children's book is the format.  I don't suppose you've seen Baby, Mix Me a Drink?  Or Furverts?  Those are both board book formats, a format associated with infants and toddlers.  Does the format make them for that audience?  OH HELL NO.

Of course, there are some picture books published every year by children's imprints for which the audience is really adults.  The ones who skate that line in an acceptable way are usually light-hearted life advice, like: "if you love someone, set them free."  They are bought as graduation gifts (see Walk On or Oh The Places You'll Go).  The ones that don't are usually dreadful and sometimes psychotic life advice, like: "if you love someone, let them chop you down to a stump."

But graduation gifts is a difficult niche to publish into---more difficult than adult novelty books. 

Figure out who your audience is.  Good luck!

Quick Answers: Age Groups, Beginning Illustrators, Librarians

I'm about to start querying my novel (workshopped, re-written, etc.) to agents and feel I've put together a pretty good query. But, I stumble over how to define the novel. It's a 55K word urban fantasy with twins that turn 13 in the first chapter. It seems to me that the characters maturity (or lack thereof) plus a few nonsensical elements place it as a mid-grade, but I wonder if the age of the characters make it YA. Is there a sharp line delineating the catagories? Or, perhaps more likely, are there widely accepted defining points that apply to this situation? Should I send out x number of queries calling it a MG, and y number calling it YA and see which fare better?

There isn't a distinct border between the age groups-- or, that is to say, some people's distinct border is different from other people's distinct border, like neighbors who are always arguing about the property line. Take your best guess, and stop worrying about it--if we like what we read, we'll forgive it easily if you think it's MG and we think it's YA. That's a slight tweak in the terminology-- no big deal.

What we don't forgive as easily is if a person thinks their "fictional novel" is for preschoolers or something like that-- some designation that's so far off base that we have to worry about their relationship with reality, and what that will mean for the publishing process. People with low reality IQs are a huge pain in the ass.

I am a childrens book illustrator, however have not yet published my first book. To be completely honest - I don't quite know where to start.
So far my research has shown the first step (after completing your work of course) is sending out query letters. How should an Illustrators query letter look?
If you could offer any advice on how to get started, it would be really be a great help...I just know I have some wonderful illustrations to offer the world!

If what you're trying to sell is a book, then regardless of whether it's text and illustration or a wordless book, your query letter should look the same as any other author's.
If you're trying to get illustration work with samples from your portfolio, then you should be looking up publisher's art submission guidelines and following those. Possibly you can participate in a portfolio review, and you should definitely have a portfolio up online.

Between 1995 and 2000, I wrote four nonfiction series books for two different publishers. Both publishers seemed happy with my work and asked me to do more. However, just at that time, I started moving up in the ranks of my actual full-time paying job in a library. I made the decision to concentrate on my career and my family, with spare time devoted to reading, rather than writing. The writing I have done during the intervening ten years has been professional in nature: book reviews, journal articles, a book chapter, and a book.
Now I am ready to go back to writing children’s nonfiction. I have several projects I am researching for possible books.
My question: how much do I have to explain my hiatus in publishing when I query editors and agents? If I just say I wrote these four books in the late 90s, will they wonder what’s been going on? I don’t want to over-explain, but I also want them to know that the break was my decision, and not because I couldn’t get anything published.

Do explain very briefly that you've been concentrating on being a librarian in the meanwhile. Not only does that give a reason for your past titles being long out of date (and thus less useful to us as comparisons), it also tells us you're a librarian! We like librarians.

Creative Thinking and the American Publisher

I have had published an epic historical novel which has received rave reviews, enjoyed time on the best seller list and has just been nominated for New Zealand's children’s book awards (in the YA) section.
My wonderful NYC agent has been working very hard to generate interest in the US but, though it’s been out since late May 2009, there hasn’t been any takers. In a recent email he told me this:

"The reason it hasn’t hit to this point (and it’s rare that one issue comes up as often as this has, to the point that I can really look at it and say THIS is why), is because, unlike in NZ where Penguin (smartly) published it on the adult list but still pushed it to the Young Adult market, in the US the lists are very compartmentalized. If you recall, Disney (Hyperion) wouldn’t even LOOK at [it] because [main character] was over 17 when it began. And that’s the problem—it’s a YA book with characters older than the American YA market typically deals with. Now, mind you, they are behaving like teenagers, and this is a totally marvellous coming-of-age story. He just happens to be 21 instead of a teenager. And that shouldn’t matter, but it clearly does."

My question to you is this: wouldn’t an editor look very hard at a submission of a book (by an agent for an established author*) which has ALREADY been edited and polished with all the work done, is a best seller, has had and continues to have rave reviews and has been nominated for a national book award? My agent also made the comment that more submissions go to children’s editors than the adult section and that there are more submissions than editors which is why it takes a long time. I’d be interested in your thoughts about the ‘compartments’ comment.

Well, it's tricky. It sounds as though you've written a very good book. But you've also put your characters in an age demographic that buys very, very few novels-- they're mostly buying textbooks and using the college library.

Still, it sounds like a question of the correct marketing to me. Penguin NZ may have had the right idea-- something like this might be better aimed at adults with the hope that it will cross down to teens (perhaps with the help of the Alex Awards). So maybe it's about finding the right adult publisher who sees how to aim it at both markets. Or maybe it's about finding the right children's publisher that has some guts and wants to take a chance on this.

Either way, though, this book is going to call for some creative thinking at its publisher. Good luck!

Look, Jane, look! Look at my book!

I have written a caption picture book (no illustrations) and was curious if I should use the word "caption" in my queries to identify it as such. Also, should I mention the word length (under 500 words)?

As the term "caption book" is more common among educators than other people, I would only recommend using it only if you are submitting to an educational publisher. Otherwise, call it a 'leveled reader' or a 'beginning reader'.

There are very specific guidelines for vocabulary, line length, sentence length, etc. in leveled readers, so I hope you know what you're doing. I'm sure beginning readers of every kind look very easy to people unfamiliar with them, but creating an honestly entertaining text for children who are still sounding out words is HARD. Current favorite: The Cat On the Mat Is Flat

Yes, do include the word count.

Shorter, Longer, and Never

Say a person has a fun middle grade book, but decided to break it into many picture books instead. Both make the author happy. The author isn't sure which format would make agents and publishers happy. Should author mention it in any way in a query? Like..."This picture book is first in series of many episodes with this character..." in hopes that they could assume it could be changed into a chapter book? Probably not, right?

I can't quite get past your first sentence.
You broke your middle grade manuscript into many picture book manuscripts?

Point 1. Picture books are not just shorter.
They're for a younger audience. Which means the writing and pacing and voice are different. I got a picture book manuscript just last week that clearly had chapter book voice and pacing. The author wanted to do a series of picture books. I said no, and I wondered if the author knew how to write for either age group, since she doesn't seem to see a difference between them.

Point 2. Middle grade books are not just longer.
If your middle grade book was that easily chopped up into picture book-length stories, it must have been a hell of an episodic book-- a collection of short stories, in fact, rather than a cohesive narrative.

Obviously, I can't tell for sure about your work, since I haven't read it. But from this description, I would have strong doubts about it working as a picture book or as a middle grade novel. Take it from me, they are not equal possibilities for anyone's manuscript. One or the other age group is going to work better, and you will be a stronger writer when you figure out which one.

Consistency, Thy Name Is Not Editor

Q1: Would you please explain the difference between the YA and Teen categories, and itemize the grades that correspond?

Most people I know use YA and teen fairly interchangeably.

But you're really over-thinking this. The thing to remember when you're having a little obsessive freak-out about age range terminology is this: there's no secret dictionary that book professionals have agreed upon. When someone in the business says "chapter book", they might mean ages 6-9. Or 5-10. Or 3-7. Or they might be talking about any book with chapters.

So don't worry about this stuff too much, ok? If you want to be safe, you could just reference the ages that you think are applicable. And as long as you don't think your rhymed picture book about trucks is "middle grade" and you don't say you've written a "fictional novel", we have reasonably forgiving expectations of how closely your terminology matches ours.

Q2: Would a novel with a prevented-suicide subplot (grade 9 characters) be too dark for grades 7-8? Would it fall into YA or Teen section?

No. Yes.
That is to say, yes, it would get shelved in the YA/teen section. And no, it would not necessarily be too dark for 7th- and 8th-graders. They shop in the YA section all the time.

Pigeon, Meet Hole. (except no, not really)

A writer friend of mine commented to me once that after the sale of your first work, publishers will expect you to stay in that genre – if your first is a YA those that follow should be YA. I’m currently sending my YA novel to publishers and an agent or two. (Will be my first once sold.) Everything else I’ve written is MG. Is my friend right? Will I have a hard time selling my MGs if I sell a YA first?

Some of the best idea people work in more than one genre and age group, and publishers know this. M T Anderson, Adam Rex, Rosemary Wells, Ann Martin, Jaqueline Woodson, Dav Pilkey, Kevin Henkes, Brian Selznick, sheesh, the list goes on.

You may have sold your YA novel to a publisher imprint (or editor) who really only does YA. In which case you'll have to send your middle grades somewhere else. But real artists cannot paint themselves into a corner. For real artists, there are no corners.

Children Making Up Their Own Minds? Scandalous!

I'm wondering about drinking and drug use by adults in mid-grade novels. My WIP, set in 1970s, has a pot-smoking mother (daughter, main character, disapproves and pretends not to know.) Would that element place me in the YA category? (problematical since MC is only 13)

The only way this would end up in the middle-grade shelves is if it were abundantly clear that the author/book itself disapproved of that behavior. It's not enough for the main character to disapprove, unless it's written in 1st person. As long as the book clearly presents a bias against drug use, it might be tween. If you want to present both sides and let your reader choose, you're talking YA.

YA and Middle Grade, and Never the Tween Shall Meet

You made a comment on your blog about the content matter of one reader's middle-grade novel (sex, alcohol consumption, etc.). This got me to wondering, what would you define as appropriate topics for a tween novel? Where would you draw the line on edgy types of subjects, and do you have any good tween titles to recommend?

Pretty much any serious romance (even without any sex) puts a book in the YA section—see Twilight and A Great and Terrible Beauty.

The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants didn't have serious romance or sex, but it had a girl attempting to seduce her soccer camp counsellor. Which makes it YA.

Now, we all know that some junior high schoolers are having sex and doing drugs, (and some elementary schoolers are swearing a blue streak when there are no adults around) and the fact of this exposes the rest of them to those things. So putting sex, drugs, booze, eating disorders, suicide, profanity, etc etc firmly in the YA section doesn't say a thing about the readers of these books. It says something about their parents.

Which, yes, bothers me, but that's the world we live in. Parents are naturally inclined towards overprotectiveness and its constant companion, denial.

A tween book can have flirting but not seduction; doubt but not depression.
It can have the bomb, but not the fuse.

Because Just Getting Published Isn't Hard Enough

A new yet well-known teen author said she believes teen books should be 200 pages. I have written a teen book of one hundred pages.

Let's start here. How are you counting pages? Page count varies greatly depending on the type used, the size of the type, the size of the pages, and the width of the margins, all of which are decided upon by the publisher. This is why most people speak in terms of word count.

It is meant for early teens -- ages 10-14 -- but has all the teen themes, such as first sex, gossip, alcohol consumption, parties.

You're writing about sex, booze, and parties but at a middle school reading level? That's... gutsy.

Currently, I have a ten year old and thirteen year old reading my book, which I believe to be the "true test."

No, it's not. Whether they like it or hate it, it's not. People who use their own kids as guinea pigs (or other kids they happen to know) are forgetting that the small pool of children available to them are not amalgamations of the tastes, attitudes, and interests of the teen-book-buying public. Individuals are individual. This is a meaningless test.

I understand series type books, such as the Unfabulous series, are considered "teen."

By whom? Certainly not the publisher, who lists them as ages 9-12. Don't be fooled by these books being labelled "TEENick"—Nickelodeon knows exactly what it's doing when it packages inoffensive pap for non-teenagers as "teen": they're playing to the wannabe crowd.

Also, unless your manuscript is a derivative of a popular TV show, do not use other TV-inspired books as comparison. Those books are short and meaningless because entertainment companies don't want children to be so busy or absorbed that they forget to watch the next lobotomizing episode.

My question is: Can an early teen book like mine be considered seriously by editors / publishers / agents if it is 100 pages?

Ok, for the purposes of this discussion, let's assume you've somehow intuited the page count your book would have if a publisher decided to publish it. The answer is yes. But it's uncommon, so there ought to be something about the manuscript that really makes it shine. Like the writing, for instance.

The Humiliation of Petty Distinctions

What's your take on middle grade fiction these days? Some editors are saying it's underpublished right now. Does that mean it might be easier to sell a MG in the current market? And is MG still 8-12 year olds, or are things shifting up? My agent seems to feel that editors are more hungry for older MGs. But those good readers in 2nd-5th grade need novels to read too, don't they?

I'm a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to these designations. I just don't care what "chapter book," "middle grade," or "YA" are currently supposed to mean. Why don't we simply speak in terms of ages, or grades?

I'm also a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to "what's hot right now." (Ok, maybe I'm just generally a bit of a curmudgeon.) Your agent is right, more publishing is happening in the 10-and-up age groups, and chapter books for kids younger than 10 are a bit of an ugly stepchild to the rest of the list. But you're also right--there's no reason for this. It's dumb. All kids need books, and the more variety (of all sorts) we have, the better.

Moreover, I think most editors know this. We're looking for books of all lengths and all age groups because the most important thing is giving kids great literature that will get them excited about reading. Sometimes my boss will talk about balancing the spread of a list, and the reaction that I hide from her is: "Screw that!"

I do not care how many fricking chapter books vs picture books vs middle grades vs YAs are on our goddamned list as long as every single one of them is something awesome.

Alas, I'm not in charge...

... yet.