We had a call from Amanda Holden’s agent the other day. Apparently Amanda wants to write a children’s book and they were wondering what her next step should be. I pointed them in the direction of Puffin as they seemed the most obvious fit – plus, because I freelance there, I had all the necessary contacts at my fingertips.

It got me thinking, though. What has Amanda Holden got that most of my authors haven’t? And the answer is, of course, pulling power. Big name authors sell and children’s publishers are signing up all sorts of celebrities from President Obama to David Walliams.

This is all very well but the fact is retailers’ demand for frontlist bestsellers is impacting on the traditional midlist titles. And the midlist is important – particularly to new writers. Within the midlist you can have the books that aspired to be bestsellers but didn’t quite make it, established authors with a good track record but not a bestseller in sight, and new authors who haven’t yet quite ‘broken through’.

Agent Caroline Sheldon comments that where publishers used to say they were looking for ‘a girl series’ or for ‘funny, junior fiction’, now they simply want bestsellers. “It can be in any of these categories but they want to be bowled over by it,” she says.

Stephanie Thwaites, an agent at Curtis Brown, adds that while publishers are still buying, they are being very cautious. “Authors have to reinvent themselves to have much more high-concept ideas that are instantly appealing, or literary, with prize-winning potential.”

Ingrid Selberg, publishing director at Simon & Schuster Children’s Books, says the changes are not necessarily to the benefit of the consumer. “It’s dismaying that quality books that would, in years past, have received support from retailers and the institutional market, and would have remained in print, are now not doing so. These books would have found a place in the market and been viewed as successful, but there are a lot less of them now and that has changed the nature of what we publish.”

However it’s not all bad news. The children’s book market isn’t in bad shape compared to some sectors of publishing, and backlist and midlist titles are still selling. It’s just that publishers have to work much harder to achieve those sales.

Gail Lynch, sales and marketing director at Frances Lincoln, cites Keren David’s ‘When I was Joe’ as an example. This was published by FL on its fledgling YA list and while the title has not been supported by the major chains, sales have still reached nearly 10,000 copies. Lynch attributes this to the unflagging efforts of the author, sales reps, indies and the number of regional book awards it has featured in.

From our point-of-view, at the Writers’ Advice Centre, we sometimes get frustrated at the focus on celebrity and big name authors. We see plenty of really bad books but we also see plenty of good fiction titles that are simply slipping through the publishing net. Which is why we are determined to move forward with the idea of launching our own mini-list in 2012.

(With thanks to the Bookseller 18/11/11)

I’ve just returned from a summer break in Turkey and once again, thanks to my wonderful eReader, I was underweight as far as luggage was concerned. Which was just as well because, according to the very nice check-in staff at Gatwick, Monarch have a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to anything over and above their 20 kilo limit. They even weighed our hand baggage!

And I’m not alone in my worship of electronic reading gadgets with news, this week, that a struggling writer has landed a book deal with a major publisher after putting her novel online and promoting it through social networking sites.

Louise Voss shot to the top of the Kindle charts after publishing the book in digital form herself after being rejected by literary agents. It attracted the attention of publishers HarperFiction, which offered her a six-figure, four-book deal. As a result her book ‘Catch Your Death’ will also be printed and stocked in bookshops in the traditional way.

Louise’s book is for adults but, by coincidence, I have just finished writing an article for October Writers’ Forum magazine featuring children’s author Karen Inglis who is publishing her novel ‘The Secret Lake’ through Amazon.

Karen ruled out the traditional self-publishing companies early on as being too expensive. Some sort of online print-on-demand option seemed the best solution and, after a great deal of research, she opted for Amazon’s CreateSpace (www.createspace.com). The best thing about this process is that it costs nothing – although Karen did opt for a few extras including paying money for a decent cover image.

CreateSpace offered the added bonus for Karen to be able to eventually put her book out there as a Kindle edition through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Although she will also publish it with Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) as she is keen to make her book available to as many different e-devices as possible.

Of course, like Louise Voss, Karen knows that, despite the hard work involved, publishing her book is, in fact, the easy bit. Marketing and actually selling her book is the next part in the process and is equally important. She has already created a buzz on Twitter – @kareninglis – by tweeting on her progress with the book and she has set up a Facebook page especially dedicated to The Secret Lake – facebook.com/thesecretlake. The next step is to get something up on the newly emerging GooglePlus – Google’s answer to Facebook. If you’re interested in learning more about ePublishing visit Karen’s blog at www.kareninglis.com

But for all my raving about eReaders I have discovered a disadvantage to my wonderful reading gadget. It’s not much good when it stops working for no reason whilst stuck on a small sailing boat several miles out to sea off the Turkish coast!

We seem to have had a glut of rhyming text submissions recently. Now normally I’d immediately advise that the author take the text out of rhyme and write the same story in prose. Organising foreign co-editions is an important part of publishing a picture book and, for obvious reasons, rhyming texts pose translation problems. However a few things have happened recently which have caused me to do a bit of a u-turn.

Firstly Julia Donaldson has been appointed the new Children’s Laureate. True she doesn’t write exclusively in rhyme but it is what she is known for. I should know. It’s always Donaldson’s name that is thrown in my face every time I reject a rhyming text. If got paid for every time I heard ‘but The Gruffalo is written in rhyme’ I’d be a rich woman indeed!

Secondly I organized for a number of Writers’ Advice Centre authors to give five minute pitches to Ben Cameron at the London Book Fair. Ben is publisher for Pavilion Children’s Books. A few weeks later I was at the Pavilion offices helping Ben go through his slush pile when he gave me the good news that, in his opinion, three of my authors showed promise. To my huge surprise one had pitched a rhyming text about a family taking its dog for a walk. When I queried this Ben admitted that, these days, he will consider rhyming texts. Not exclusively but he will, at least, give them the time of day. The fact is publishers are less fixated than they used to be on co-editions.

However although Donaldson has turned rhyming texts into a fashion statement it doesn’t necessarily mean that writing in rhyme is the right thing to do from a new writer’s perspective.

“Sometimes it isn’t the best way to tell the story,” says Donaldson. “In bad hands, rhyme can make a story interminable. But the reverse is that when it is done well you can write very concisely, you don’t have to describe everything.”

Writers’ Advice Centre editor, Rebecca Hill, agrees. “I’d say that authors shouldn’t write a text in rhyme as a gimmick, or to give it ‘fun factor’, or just because. Write in rhyme if the text demands it or will benefit from it (in terms of style, structure etc).”

Good advice. And Rebecca should know. Before she became an editor and successful writer in her own right, Rebecca worked for a packager churning out rhyming texts for picture books.

She continues, “Anyone who aspires to write in rhyme should make a hundred per cent certain they have their rhymes and scansion absolutely perfect. Kids have an uncanny natural ear for rhyme and scansion – half-rhymes and dodgy metre won’t fly.”

So all you poets out there, before you put pen to paper think long and hard and ask yourself if your text needs to be written in rhyme. If the answer is ‘yes’ then by all means send them in our direction for advice.

Isn’t it always the way? My website has worked perfectly well for years and then, just as I make my first appearance on a stand at the London Book Fair, it decides to go down. And not just for a few hours…it goes down for more-or-less a whole month! And all because some idiot called xxxx decides to swallow all the secret codes and then disappears to find himself in Peru…or was it Cambodia…or Chile? Who cares? He finally made contact and, hurrah, we’re back online. Oh, and before I forget – xxxx you’re fired!!

Trouble is London Book Fair seems like a long time ago now. All I can really remember is that I met lots of lovely authors and it was fun. So thank you to everyone who came to see us on our stand and everyone who partook of sandwiches/wine with us at lunchtimes.

I suppose, though, one event does stand out. On Day Two that naughty literary agent, Daisy Frost, put pen to paper for the Bookseller Daily.

“Outside the Rights Centre,” she wrote, “I spied some badly dressed people holding manuscripts and looking lost. I asked if they needed help. ‘Yes please – we are authors and we want to get agents. What do we do?’ Authors at a book fair? That’s like finding a herd of cows going on a daytrip to an abattoir. I suggested that they should just go into the IRC, break into any meeting they like, shove the person out of the way and sit down. ‘Start at the Andrew Wylie table,’ I suggested. ‘He is always so friendly and he’ll welcome your eagerness and determination.’ They scurried off, all fired up.”

It wasn’t long before several quivering (quite well dressed) people appeared at my stand clutching copies of Daisy Frost’s words. How dare she! Did they not have as much right as anyone else to be there? Who did publishers and agents think they were?

Well I suppose the simple answer would be ‘the people who have the power to make your dreams come true’. And @missdaisyfrost doesn’t describe herself as ‘general mischief maker around town’ on Twitter for nothing. The article was FUNNY and very much tongue- in-cheek. However in defense of authors, although London Book Fair is a trade fair it is also a fantastic place to conduct market research – something many writers feel is either unnecessary or beneath them. Read a current children’s book? Whatever next!

Plus one or two publishers actually realised that LBF might be a good place to scout for new talent. Ben Cameron, Associate Publisher at Pavilion Children’s Books, being a case in point as he offered five minute pitches to anyone who asked. Listening to idea after idea for hours on end is not for the feint hearted I can assure you!

So I’ve really only got one thing to say to Miss Daisy Frost – next time she sees a line of badly dressed people clutching manuscripts please point them in my direction.

See you at LBF next year.

I was at a friend’s house for supper last night with a whole group of people I’d never met before. When it came to what I did the usual tedious comments followed. They go along the lines of (in no particular order),

“Do you know so-and-so? She works for (names publisher I’ve never heard of).”

“A friend of mine (names author I’ve never heard of) writes children’s books. Do you know him?”

“I’ve got a great idea for a children’s book. It’s about blah blah blah blah…”

“What do you think of ebooks? It’ll mean the death of the book blah blah blah…”

When it came to the last original (not!) conversation starter I was relieved to be able to share the news of an unusual experiment by US short story collective Electric Literature. ‘Of all the big books that came out in 2010 which would be most likely to protect you in the event of a shooting?’ demanded EL spokesman, comedian Tom Shillue.

Various big books went up before Electric Literature’s firing squad including a Kindle. My ‘death of the book’ dinner companion was pleased to hear that Joshua Cohen’s 800 page Witz – and not the Kindle – was the least mangled, proving, beyond doubt, that ‘real’ books still have a place in the world!

The fact is, however, that this is the year in which going digital may just be the saviour of children’s books. Apple’s latest version of its iBooks app, which allows e-books to have a pictorial layout similar to printed books and supports full page illustrations, has been hailed by one publisher as being “the beginning of a phenomenally exciting phase in picture book publishing”.

The new version of the online store means all publishers signed up to Apple’s terms on the iBookstore, including HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin, Pan Macmillan, Canongate and Simon & Schuster, will be able to release fully illustrated e-books.

HarperCollins Publishing Director, Helen Mackenzie Smith, said: ””These e-books stay faithful to the reading experience of the physical books we know and love, whilst showcasing the exquisite illustrations in a way unique to new reading devices”.

Tell me about it! My husband – a middle-aged lawyer – spent most of this evening being completely enchanted by Nosy Crow’s picture book app ‘Three Little Pigs’.

However let’s not forget that e-devices remain relatively expensive and children still need access to traditional books. Which is why it is such a tragedy to see our libraries coming under fire due to government cuts. There is an item on our news page about the situation and Michael Rosen’s involvement. If anyone else out there is interested in fighting to save our libraries please join the Bookseller’s Fight for Libraries campaign on Facebook. Or follow the campaign on Twitter @fight4libraries. Many thanks.

I have just returned from a sightseeing trip to Brazil where we spent our last few days gazing at the awe-inspiring Iguazu Falls.

The Falls are – deservedly – finalists to be chosen as one of the new seven wonders of the world – that’s natural wonders rather than man-made, although there’s a new list of man-made wonders being drawn up as well. Voting is open to everyone (visit www.new7wonders.com) and the winners will be announced later this year – on 11/11/11.

Whilst I was considering these two new lists of seven wonders it occurred to me that the number ‘seven’ in itself is rather special. For example in Tibetan Budhism Seven Bowls of Water are found on all altars and are replenished twice a day. The seven bowls represent the Seven Examined Men, the first seven monks in Tibet. They also have Seven Regal Symbols and Seven Factors of Enlightenment. And then there’s The Magnificent Seven…

And, on recent workshops that I’ve been running, I’ve been offering seven tips for children’s writers. It could be any number but, for some reason, it always seemed to come back to a magic seven.

And here they are:-

1. Research the market. It’s no good just writing something in a vacuum and hoping that someone will publish it. You need to get out there, see what’s being published and then target your work at an existing slot. It’s not up to the new writer to find ‘gaps in the market’.

2. Create a strong opening. You only have a few seconds to grab the attention of a reader or editor so hit the ground running. It doesn’t matter if there’s a magic dancing pygmy goat on Page 2 of your story if Page 1 is all about what you ate for breakfast last Tuesday. No-one will ever find out about the magic goat because all your readers will have died of boredom before then!

3. Keep your writing sharp. No-one wants to wade through messy paragraphs littered with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes. One way of untangling messy writing is to read your story aloud. Clear writing needs active sentences, strong verbs and not too many adjectives.

4. Tell don’t show. Telling is vague and general. ‘I was angry’. Ok, so you’ve given us information but you haven’t given us any reason to care. Instead, ‘The anger burned and bubbled inside me like lava in a volcano. My jaws were clamped together and I could feel my lips tight across my teeth. I wanted to hit him. Really wanted to hit him.’ (Excerpt from The Knife that Killed Me by Anthony McGowan)

5. Be clear about viewpoint. Readers are always looking for a connection with a character. They want to see the world through the character’s eyes, know what he/she knows, feel what he/she feels. Bouncing around from character to character will end up bouncing your reader right out of the story. Try to stick with either first person viewpoint or third person viewpoint from just one character’s perspective.

6. Keep the plot simple. Don’t try and put all your ideas into one story. Consider your plot and identify the biggest, most important thing that happens. Once you’ve decided, make it your focus and be ruthless with the other stuff. The simpler your story the more powerful it will be.

7. Get your approach right. When sending out your manuscript to publishers and agents make your presentation as professional as you can. Your covering letter is particularly important as it is the first thing the editor or reader will look at. Make sure it is typed and is just one short page. Tell them what your story is called and what it is about – one sentence only please, two at most. Tell them the target age range and why it is suitable for that particular publisher. Tell them a little bit about yourself – two or three sentences. This might include anything else you have had published, what you do for a living, whether you have children, whether you are working on anything else etc.

And there you have it – seven wonderful tips for children’s writers. Any other significant sevens happily received.

A few weeks ago I caught the end of a programme on BBC Two about starting your own school. In Acton, the west London home of journalist and author Toby Young, the choice of secondary school is very limited. With the eldest of his four children nearing the end of primary school, his solution to this problem has been to gather a group of concerned local parents to set up their own free school – basically an independent school with state funding.

The programme was interesting enough and I admire Toby Young’s resolve. However I went right off him when the programme showed him visiting a local state secondary to see how they went about educating pupils there.

Admirably – in my opinion – this particular school set aside a daily school-wide reading slot. All the children in the group that the programme focussed on appeared to be engaged and entertained by the book they were reading. I don’t know which book it was but it was clearly a contemporary title.

Young, however, was dismayed by the book choice and asked why they weren’t reading classic books such as Swallows and Amazons and Alice in Wonderland.

“Because we aren’t interested in Alice in Wonderland,”replied the young man who had been showing Young around the school. “We want to learn about today and the wider world”.

Well said that man! What he is basically telling Young is that he – and his peers – want to read stories that reflect the world in which they live.

Young seems to be missing a number of points here. One is that classic titles only become “classic’ because they stand the test of time. There is no reason, therefore, why a current title can’t be just as valuable. The other is that just because a book is current that doesn’t mean it is not worth reading. The third is that there is no point in forcing young people to read material that they’re not interested in.

Too often authors come to me and say that everything published these days is rubbish and they want to write the sort of books they used to enjoy as children. Like Young they are forgetting that reading habits evolve along with the world in general. Which is why I have no time, either, for those who throw up their hands in horror at the rapidly evolving digital publishing revolution. They would do well to heed the words of children’s author Michael Morpurgo.

“When we talk about books,” says Morpurgo, “What we really mean is stories.’

And he’s right. Does it really matter what format the book takes so long as we are still getting stories out there that children actually enjoy reading?

Look down from the screen on which you are reading this, and wonder. QWERTY. This pattern of letters on a keyboard has stayed pretty much unchanged since it was standardised in the 1870s.

Stephen Fry, discussing the origins of Qwerty on Radio 4, argues that the Qwerty keyboard and its inventor (Christopher Sholes) could be accused of ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of language and to limit the speed of creativity and language input, endangering billions with repetitive strain injury’.

A bit harsh!

Continues Fry, “Imagine you’re on the maiden flight of that new ultra-modern aircraft, the Dreamliner. And you notice it’s being towed to the runway by donkeys. In exactly the same way, the Qwerty keyboard is an ancient system attached to our most modern devices.”

This discussion got me thinking. Not about the origins of Qwerty – interesting though they are – but about the different ways in which we, as writers, like to get our ideas down on paper. Personally I use a standard computer with separate keyboard and type straight from brain to screen. I can type almost faster than I can think. No, make that definitely faster than I can think!

However some writers find this impossible and would far rather write everything in longhand first and type it up at a later date. They claim – and probably with some justification – that their words flow better when written down on paper first. Certainly the temptation to constantly go back and revise what I have typed on screen is considerable and often delays getting to ‘the end’.

All I would say is that, as far as approaching publishers is concerned manuscripts must be typed. You would be amazed at how often hand-scrawled stories written on torn out pages of spiral notepads, turn up on my desk at Puffin. And I would go a step further than saying manuscripts must be typed. They must be typed in keeping with presentation standards considered the norm in 2010. So no manuscripts banged out on old-fashioned typewriters or word processors please. They look unprofessional and, more often than not, are impossible to decipher.

But how about dispensing with the keyboard altogether? Many authors already use dictaphone devices to come up with a first version of a story. So why not take it a step further? Advanced speech recognition systems can be found in smartphones and most modern computer operating systems. Could they replace Qwerty?

Not according to Dan Dixon, of the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England.

Says Dan, “Human computer interface research has shown recently that people actually like to think and type, not think and speak. When people are given the option to speak they have a much harder time organising their thoughts.”

So the real block turns out to be turning our thoughts into words in the first place!

When I hit fifty last year I seemed to develop my own personal version of Tourette’s Syndrome. Having previously been a fairly reserved person who, on the whole, let things pass her by unremarked upon, I suddenly found that I was speaking my mind on almost every subject, but particularly on subjects that annoyed me.

Only last week I sought out the manager in my local supermarket. I couldn’t understand why the shelves were crammed full of New Zealand lamb when our own English fields are overflowing with sheep of every description. Driving over Wandsworth Bridge yesterday I subsequently emailed my MP to demand why, when there are two perfectly good cycle lanes on the extra-wide pavements, cyclists still insist on using the road, causing me, in my car, to attempt involuntary suicide in order to avoid them. And this morning I found myself banging on my neighbour’s door having finally lost patience with their barking dog waking me up every morning well before I am ready.

When it comes to dealing with writers I try to keep my patience, I really do. Giving advice, after all, is my livelihood and, having recently launched a dedicated advice line, you would think that, on the other end of the line, I am the soul of patience and gentle wisdom. Most of the time I am (because most of the time my callers are genuine, lovely people who simply want a sensible answer to a sensible question), but sometimes, SOMETIMES, I just can’t help myself. Sometimes the sheer stupidity and tedium of the calls I receive drive the blood to my brain and a tetchy sigh to my lips. So here they are. Twenty reasons to be angry:-

Call 1: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’ve wrote this book’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 2: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’ve written this book. Do you want to publish it?’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 3: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, my book could be enjoyed by anyone from newborn babies to teenagers.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 4: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’ve come up with this really original concept about a squirrel called Cyril.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 5: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’ve written the next Harry Potter. It’s called ‘Harriet Totter & the Psychotherapist’s Pebble’.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 6: ‘Hello Ms Corner. That IS Helen Corner from Cornerstones isn’t it?’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 7: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, no I’m afraid I can’t tell you what my story is about. You might steal it!’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 8: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I thought your appraisal of my manuscript was rubbish. I think it’s brilliant.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 9: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I thought your appraisal of my manuscript was rubbish. My niece thinks it’s brilliant.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 10: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’ve been rejected by every publisher and agent in The Children’s Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook. Can you help me?’ Tetchy sigh – although I probably can.

Call 11: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, my manuscript has been with Top Literary Agency Inc. for three years. Do you think I’m still in with a chance?’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 12: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’m thinking Quentin Blake as my illustrator and Disney to make the film. You can guarantee that, right?’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 13: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, yes I want to write for children. No I never read children’s books. Why do you ask?’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 14: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, can you read and advise on my 600,000 word trilogy? What do you mean you charge a fee?’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 15: ‘Hello Ms Gordon…’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 16: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’m sending over my manuscript in a safe, accompanied by a non-disclosure agreement and David Cameron’s outriders.’ Tetchy sigh…although just very slightly impressed.

Call 17: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, how come you haven’t returned my calls? No I didn’t leave my number.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 18: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, it’s more than just a book I’m offering. My sister’s done the illustrations, my granny’s knitted the toys and my uncle has promised to stock it in his paper shop.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 19: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, my three year-old son, Sean, has written a poem and his teacher says it should be published.’ Tetchy sigh.

Call 20: ‘Hello Ms Jordan, I’m Sean’s teacher and I’ve wrote this book…’

Slam down the phone. Enough!

(With thanks to Sarah Davies who wrote the original, much funnier, version of this blog on her site www.greenhouseliterary.com. Although I should point out that all the above queries are ones that I’ve received personally – albeit with a bit of poetic licence thrown in!)