20 Agents: 119 Picture Book Sales

Brenda Sturgis reports on the top literary agents for selling picture books in this recent post. Let’s talk about this report.
Top Literary Agents for Picture Books
Self Reported Statistics. The statistics for Sturgis’s report was compiled from reported sales on Publisher’s Marketplace. This is a big caution because

book trailer criteria

Memoir of a Successful Book Trailer in Six Words
by guest Lisa Gottfried of DigitalWeavers.com
NOTE: Lisa did the editing for my retreat video. She spoke at the San Rafael conference and I was interested enough to try her services, for which I paid. This is an invited guest post and she speaks here as a professional [...]

Manuscript Length

How Firm are Book Publisher’s Guidelines on Book Length?
I had a question come up last week: how hard and fast are the rules about the length of a picture book manuscript? Can you get by with 1900 words? 2000 words? 2500 words?
The length requirements for every genre, from picture books to easy [...]

Top 10 Picture Book Topics to Avoid

Stiff Competition for These Picture Book Topics
Dial editor, Liz Waniewski (ONE–es-key) spoke at the Arkansas SCBWI 2007 conference. For a couple months before the conference, she kept track of her slush pile picture book submissions by category. This resulted in my 2007 posting 12 Picture Book Topics to Avoid, one of the more popular [...]

Quoted at the Conference

This entry is part 5 of 6 in the series Why YOU Should Attend a National Conference
Many speakers used quotes in their presentations or made memorable statements. Here’s my collection of quotes from the conference:

About True Love: “It’s great when a publisher loves my work, but a contract is better; a contract is True [...]

Jennifer Greene, Clarion

This entry is part 3 of 6 in the series Why YOU Should Attend a National Conference
One main reason to attend a national conference is to meet editors, listen to how they describe their lists, and find out what they are looking for. Attendees are usually offered an opportunity to submit for a short period [...]

Michelle Nagler, Bloomsbury

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series Why YOU Should Attend a National Conference
One main reason to attend a national conference is to meet editors, listen to how they describe their lists, and find out what they are looking for. Attendees are usually offered an opportunity to submit for a short period [...]

Messages, Morals and Lessons in Picture Books

A reader asks, “I’m wondering if there is an objective way of measuring didacticism in an PB manuscript.”

12 Picture Book Topics to Avoid!

This entry is part 28 of 31 in the series 30 DAYS TO A STRONGER PICTURE BOOK
UPDATE: See the 2009 List of Picture Book Topics to Avoid
Dial editor, Liz Waniewski (ONE–es-key) spoke at the Arkansas SCBWI 2007 conference. For a couple months before the conference, she kept track of her slush pile pb submissions [...]

Career in Writing

What does a career in writing look like?
Take these examples:

Author A: Has served in a leadership role for a writing organization for many years and is an inspiration to many people. She has published three picture books with major publishers. But in the end, she hates the sales and marketing part of [...]