My mom has written a children’s book.
It’s a pretty cool book that’s about her and her dog, who is a therapy dog. She has gone to Wal-Mart and gotten it made into an actual book, but she would love to send it in and see if she can get it published more professionally, but doesn’t really know where to start.
Is there anyone who knows where she can send it in? Or at least where to start with this whole process?
These days, her best bet is to get an agent. Find the book Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market in the library or Amazon.com and go through it, looking for agents that handle children’s books. Then have her send a query letter – a short synopsis. If the agent asks for more, then send the entire book.
The Writer’s Market might also list publishers and what they’re looking for.
Do not pay the agent!. If any agent asks for money up front, they are scammers.
Same for a publisher. If you pay to get published, figure you’ll sell about 75 copies to your friends and nothing else.
Remember Yog’s Law: Money flows toward the writer.
Good luck.
RealityChuck has already said almost everything I was going to, so I’ll just add a “Good luck to your mom!” and say that sometimes you can get books of literary agents at a library, rather than buying them yourself, if money is an issue.
You can get books made at Wal-Mart?
I need to add this in all caps:
DO NOT SEND ANYONE A BOOK YOU MADE AT WAL-MART!
If you are talking to a professional agent, editor, or publisher, send them the manuscript in professional manuscript format. If there are illustrations, tell them but don’t send them. Virtually no publishers want amateur illustrations in their books. They will get the artist.
All this is to be found in any good book on how to get published, but it needs to be said here and now first.
Amazon sells a number of books with some variation on the title, how to write [or sell or publish] children’s books. Most libraries will have at least one. Read them first, very carefully.
It is an insanely competitive field if you want to compete with the professionals.
OTOH, if all your Mom wants is a nicer, self-published edition to pass out to her friends, then just Google small run presses or publishers. You can get 100 copies made up for very little money. They will work from pdf’s, not whatever Wal-Mart did. That’s not publishing, though, no matter what anyone says, so if you find a site that says anything different, avoid them.
There aren’t actually any illustrations, they are photos of the actual dog doing various things with her training and visits.
Any advice on how to try and work that in?
Ditto everything RealityChuck and Exapno Mapcase have said. Also…
Find a few recent books that are similar in tone, style, or theme to your mom’s book, and try to find out who represented each. (Don’t know how it works for kids’ books, but in adult books you can usually find out by looking in the acknowledgment page.) Try querying them - you know that they represent your type of book. You might even flatter them by mentioning how much you enjoyed the previous book they represented.
Don’t bother querying agencies that don’t represent kids’ books, or that do not submit unsolicited queries. 99.99999% of the time, your letter will go straight in the trash. May as well save the postage.
PROOFREAD YOUR COVER LETTER. You’d think this would go without saying, but for a lot of people apparently it doesn’t. If there’s even one obvious misspelling on your cover letter, 99.99999% of the time, it’ll go straight to the trash.
Not to be mean or discouraging, but go into this thinking it’ll be fun if the book gets published, but not really expecting much. It doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the quality of the book - publishing is just insanely competitive and kinda nepotistic (especially kids’ books). It’s also not very profitable right now (might be different for kids’ books - I don’t know), so publishers are extra wary of taking on first time authors.
Good luck!
If the photos are an essential part of the book, you’ll need to have signed releases from the photographer and anyone besides the author who is recognizable in the photos. This applies whether they are professionals, amateurs, friends or strangers. I would heartily recommend taking care of this before finding an interested publisher.
You should be able to find standard photo release forms by Googling. Look for boilerplate language that grants you all rights in perpetuity throughout the universe. It may seem excessive, but better safe than sorry.
Awesome responses from everybody! Thanks so much!
If anyone else has anything to add feel free, this is all so helpful.
You could also get a website and put the book online. OK you won’t make any money but if the idea catches on you can easily get to book number two.