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How do my pals and I get a book we wrote published?

I'm only 9 years old but me and my friends, we wrote a book so we wanted to know if a publisher could look at it and maybe type it up!


Dave's Answer:

That's a tough one, actually, because most publishers want to work through agents, people that represent your work and get paid a percentage of any money you make. If you sold your book to a publisher for $1000, for example, the agent would keep $100 of that money, or possibly even more.

You can find an agent who works with children's literature through a magazine called Writer's Digest, or you can go to the public library and ask one of the librarians to help you look through a book called the Writer's Marketplace to find agents.

While you're there, you can also look for publishers who work with books written by kids: there are definitely some! You can also go to the bookstore and see if you can figure out a half-dozen books written by kids (like the popular book Eragon). Figure out what companies published those books and then contact those publishers too.

When you contact a publisher, you want to talk with their acquisitions editor, the person who receives proposals for books and decides whether the company might be interested in actually publishing the book or not.

Be aware that most acquisitions editors want a 3-5 page proposal + one chapter, rather than the entire manuscript, so, again, you want to read through Writer's Digest or similar to learn how to write a basic proposal which details who the book is written for, books similar to your own, and so on.

Hope that helps you and your friends out. Good luck!!

Also, perhaps a few people who read this blog entry can add their own experiences trying to get their own books published, especially if you were under 18 at the time.



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Comments

You can try lulu.com and pushbuttonpress.com

Posted by: Brian Stephenson at November 14, 2006 9:21 PM

I am 11 and have written a few stories but have never plucked up the courage to send them off to a publisher, good luck.

Posted by: Amy at February 1, 2009 7:46 AM

Hi, there

My sister and I published some books written by ourselves by kidpub.com You might try the way.

Good Luck!

My sister' and my books links in amazon.com as follows


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Jessica%20Jingwei


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&sort=relevancerank&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Jeremy%20Emmanuel%20Jingwei

Posted by: Jeremy Jingwei at September 3, 2009 8:07 AM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











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