"I've written a book. Can you help me?" What to do if someone says this to you. Moira Butterfield

 I reckon that all professional authors will - at some point - get the question above, probably more than once. Someone you know contacts you to tell you they've written something and they want your advice - to judge it, edit it and/or pass it on to a publisher. It might even be about to happen a bit more regularly, as more people may have started writing during their Lockdown furlough time.  

It's hard not to feel irritated - for all sorts of emotional reasons you will be familiar with. You are spending your time putting your heart and soul into your own work, after all. Plus said heart will probably sink because, let's face it, the work could be dire. What are you going to do then? 

Here's what happened to me recently. It taught me the best path, by far, to take. 

An old friend sent me a novel out of the blue. This old friend lives far away in another continent and we don't communicate much. I had no idea he'd been writing a novel. I immediately sighed and worried. What if the book was rotten? How would I handle it? 

In fact, in another twist, my friend had already had a 'publishing offer', which had made him very excited. He wanted my advice on whether to say yes (but also would I read the book). He'd googled publishers who would take submissions and top of the list was an infamous company who calls itself a publisher, with marketing et al, but is really a 'hybrid publisher'. Its marketing and list-building was plainly perfunctory - nothing like a true publisher - and it asked my friend for upfront payment. It also took care to flatter him immensely on his wonderful work. It was a vanity publisher in disguise. 

With some help and wise words from the other authors on this forum I was able to convince him not to go down this route. I sent him quotes of other people's experiences and directed him to some damning online comments. 

Meanwhile I read the book. It wasn't bad. It made me laugh. But it was a first draft with lots of issues. I wasn't surprised. Anyone who writes for a living knows about first drafts not being the finished item - and I felt really angry that the vanity publisher had tried to suggest it was the finished book, so they could get a payment from my eager friend. 

What to do? Should I edit this draft? I could make suggestions and point out weaknesses, but it would be a lot of work and what would it do to our friendship? The answer was obvious...It was a big NO! I didn't think our friendship would survive the honesty I would need to employ, and though I am used to people pointing things out about my work, perhaps he wasn't. In fact I felt pretty certain that he wouldn't be too pleased by me telling him there was a lot still to do on the manuscript. 

The answer 

I directed my friend to a reputable editorial agency. Thank goodness they exist. I searched 'editorial agencies UK' and researched a few further. I found a number of my own author colleagues involved in them and felt confident in passing on a list of links. The cost was remarkably reasonable for top-notch editing and mentoring, including helping with the process of agent-finding. 

My friend took this route and so far he was been helped brilliantly, it seems to me - and is very content to be supported by the editor he was paired with. I did check in with him and she sounds great. 

So, to recap - I was supportive. I steered him away from the fake publisher. I did not 'pile into' his manuscript. Instead I helped him find a professional who knew how to handle the work far better than me. 

I'm so relieved I didn't criticise because I then discovered that my friend had a serious illness and that this writing probably mean a lot more emotionally to him than I had known. That's something really vital to take onboard - We don't know, when we receive these requests for help, what emotional freight the work is carrying. It's like being tossed an emotional grenade! 

So recommend a good professional editing agency to help instead of trying to do it yourself. Pass your friend onto someone who is objective and can help without smashing up a friendship. 

PS: If you provide editorial services for any genre - or have recommendations - perhaps you could add them to the comments below. 

Good luck! 

Moira Butterfield writes for children, including international success Welcome To Our World (Nosy Crow). This year saw three non-fiction books published - Dance Like a Flamingo (Welbeck), The Secret Life of Trees (Quarto) and A Trip to the Future (Templar). 

www.moirabutterfield.com

Twitter: @moiraworld 

Instagram: @moirabutterfieldathor 

Moan or be joyful about children's books here, by the Grinch and the Christmas Fairy

Humph. The Grinch here. Here are some grumpy thoughts I had this year. 

1) I’ve seen one or two really didactic preachy books out there. Save kids from humourless moralists.

2) There is no children’s art/music section in our local Waterstones (or it is so well hidden I couldn’t find it). Why? Nobody will buy things if they’re not there.

 3) Celebrities are now broadcasting 'buy my book' messages over the tannoy of my local supermarket, without warning, leaving me stricken and unable to function. 

4) Money. Don't even get me started. Publishers think we live off air and dreams. 

Oi! Grinch! Move over! Here is the Christmas Fairy, with much more positive thoughts, thank you very much.

1) Children’s books have, in the main, been really vibrant and exciting this year.

2) Fact-loving kids are getting a great choice at last.

3) We have a really articulate effective Laureate who is doing great work promoting libraries.  

4) We are still here, doing our best to make the best work we are capable of.

Happy Christmas and happy writing. Do you have a Grinch moan to get off your chest or a Christmas Fairy ray of light to impart? 

The Grinch and the Fairy visited the head of author Moira Butterfield, last seen curled in a ball moaning softly in her local Sainsbury's. 

Why do people think children's books should be less than the price of a pizza? Moira Butterfield

I recently asked a local book group about their book-buying habits. They were lively retirees who bought children’s books regularly, keen to encourage their young relatives to read. I felt inspired. Here was part of an army of grandparents and great-aunties trying to get their families interested in books.

But then I asked them where they bought books. The answers were very depressing for an author, and has led me to ask…Why do people think books should be so cheap, and is there anything we can do to change that attitude?

The book-buyers I questioned went to cheap book outlets to get bargains. These are the kind of outlets mostly stocked by children's book companies who specifically print bargain books. They keep origination costs negligible (low fees for authors and artists, no royalties for contributors), and they keep book prices very low, making their money (lots of it) on high-volume sales worldwide. There will also be publishers' unwanted stock in the shops. 

The people I asked also went to charity shops, not to save the planet by recycling, but because they really didn’t want to pay much for books. Sometimes they went into bookshops to look at book selections, but then left to get the books more cheaply on Amazon. That’s a particular shame as our local independent bookshop will do its best to match the Amazon price if you ring up and order.

I don’t blame people for being thrifty, but this isn’t thriftiness. It’s the perception that books should cost peanuts and this all-pervasive attitude prevents authors from making a sustainable living, as we know from this week's depressing ALCS survey statistics. The price of books has fallen to the point where being a full-time author is almost impossible.

So how can we challenge this idea that books should be really low-cost objects? How can we get this into the news? How can we alert these really well-meaning book-loving folk to the reality? Maybe the Children’s Laureate could speak about it? Perhaps famous authors might speak up about it (authors that might make news headlines)?  They could compare the lasting and valuable purchase of a well-crafted children’s books to, say, the price of a quickly-eaten Easter Egg or a takeaway pizza.

Why should people bother about creators when they perceive all authors and illustrators to be rolling in money and getting most of the purchase price. How can we put them right? 

We do somehow need to get this out there as a public talking point because if we want to get a range of people writing books  – anyone who doesn’t have the support of a well-heeled partner or a pension cushion - then the perceived value of books must somehow rise. 

Moira has written a number of children’s books for UK publishers. Recent books include Welcome To Our World (Nosy Crow) and Home Sweet Home (Red Shed – due out in June). 2020 will see publications from Walker, Nosy Crow and Templar. 

Moira Butterfield

www.moirabutterfield.com

Twitter: @moiraworld

Instagram: @moirabutterfieldauthor

What's the point? - by Lu Hersey

Some days, writing doesn’t go well. While gnashing my teeth and rending a few garments on a particularly gloomy, soul shredded morning, I wondered what on earth makes me want to keep trying. 

According to a recent Bookseller article, the average author income is estimated to be around £10K a year – and many children's writers actually earn even less. Much of our income will be from school visits, workshops and events, not book sales.

So why didn’t I become an accountant, doctor or lawyer – or even work in Tesco? Something SENSIBLE? On what I refer to as ‘Rightmove days’, I mostly look at islands for sale in remote places and wonder if I should buy them (if I had the money, obvs). Then I could stop writing, come off all social media, lose the angst and become a hermit.

But I don’t. I keep writing. And not just because of lack of island buying money. So why? What’s the point? 

A psychiatrist friend once told me he thought writers were simply trying to achieve immortality and cheat death. Writing books, even if they go out of print, proves we achieved something. We’ve left our mark.

People have been doing this for millennia. Realistically we haven’t evolved much in the last 40,000 years, since our Palaeolithic ancestors took the time to stencil their hands - which amazingly still wave at us from the dark past.

Archaeologists speculate that cave paintings, hand stencils and patterns could be ritualistic, tied in with hunting or spirit journeys. They may well be right. But what if those artists simply wanted to tell stories? To create something others could see beyond their lifetime? To leave something of themselves behind.

Is this a story told by a paleolithic writer?

Go to any historic monument and you’ll find graffiti. It might be seen as vandalism – but in time, even graffiti can become interesting. From crude phallus drawings (there are plenty in ancient Pompeii as well the garage walls around the corner) to the runes the Vikings carved inside Maeshowe burial mound and Banksy 'vandalising' walls in public places, sometimes making your mark really does last. And often the graffiti tells us a story, even if it's simply 'Thorni f*cked. Helgi carved.' (A Viking rune at Maeshowe which official guidebooks usually tone down)

Runes at Maeshowe

But we writers don’t carve our words into stone, and paper doesn't often stand the test of time. So are all those sleepless nights, weeks of self doubt, terrible angst and railing against the machine really worth the few odd moments when you meet a reader who tells you they loved your work?

Yes. I guess they must be or we wouldn’t do it. We may not achieve immortality through it, but we probably all secretly hope that at least a few children who read our stories will remember them long after we (and our books) have gone. Perhaps see something we've tried to express in our writing that strikes a chord, or makes them feel better about themselves. 

Anyway, realistically, I’m not much good at anything else.

Lu Hersey

luhersey.com

@LuWrites

Seven things you should know about the craft of writing (and editing) children’s non-fiction. Moira Butterfield

This month I’ve listed some practical aspects of non-fiction writing, and I hope it will be of use to editors, too, as a reminder of the craft. I’m doing this because, whilst there are any number of blogs and books about the craft of writing novels for children, there is precious little about non-fiction. So here goes. I hope this helps.

1) Know your non-fiction

There are two different kinds of non-fiction books for children these days. There are the kind that we might call poetic. They slip over into picture book territory, and the text provides a framework for imaginative flight-of-fancy illustration rather than, say, diagrams. They are for a young age-group, from pre-school up to around 6 or 7.  Then there are books that are more factual, and written for the next age-group up. There are more examples of these in the shops, but that doesn’t mean this kind of writing is easy. It takes a lot of thought and skill to get it right (and that’s why there’s a lot of bad non-fiction writing for children out there at the moment, both in print and online). 

2) Know what your non-fiction will look like

Most non-fiction text must be written to work with layouts (spread designs), which can be quite complicated and are difficult to get right in themselves, as the reading order of the text will be important. As a writer you must be roughly aware from the beginning what your book is going to look like visually, and thus how your text should be provided (how many lines? short captions? long captions? labels?).

I sometimes go the whole hog and sketch out a layout while writing, to help me focus on what I need to provide. I might send it to my editor to help them understand my thought processes (not always, if things aren't complicated). My editor and designer might ignore it in the end, and that doesn't matter.

3) Write your non-fiction at the right level

The words must be written at the correct language level. The sentences should flow, not get convoluted or awkwardly chopped up. The vocabulary must also be right for the age-group. This needs an awareness of child abilities, and it takes practice (and good editing). The first time I wrote a non-fiction spread I was working in-house at Usborne, where we were taught to write. My kindly, patient, immensely skilled Senior Editor got me to rewrite that spread 10 times before it was OK –not jerky to read, illogical or confusing for kids. Ten times. It’s not possible to just knock this stuff out without effort (and I say that because some publishing companies think exactly that, and it's obvious). 

4) Write your non-fiction with pace

The text needs pace. That means dropping in surprises – interesting sparks - at the right times. Like a good nature TV documentary, the text shouldn’t get bogged down and droning. You need to think about how your reader will read it and the effect it will have on them.

David Attenborough's nature documentary scripts have masterful pace.

5) Point out bad editing 

Inexperienced editors can take it upon themselves to rewrite - sometimes badly. They can make facts wrong and mangle your carefully chosen age-appropriate vocabulary. If this happens to you point out politely where you think things have gone wrong and why, and make sure it is corrected. 

6) Write for an international market

 Illustrated non-fiction is almost entirely reliant on international sales to make its money. That’s going to affect your writing. Have you taken account of the wider world when dealing with your subject? Have you been too parochial or culturally narrow-minded in some way? 

My book, Welcome To Our World, has been translated into many languages.
That's how illustrated non-fiction adds up economically. 

7) Do all you can to light a spark

Have you put your imagination into your work? OK, you might be describing something others have described many times, but have you done it in a way that’s entertaining and will light a spark of interest? That, in the end, is your purpose.

Moira Butterfield has written many internationally-published non-fiction books. Her book WELCOME TO OUR WORLD (Nosy Crow) is a bestseller around the world and her newest book, HOME SWEET HOME (Red Shed), is due out in June. 

www.moirabutterfield.com 

Twitter @moiraworld 

Instagram @moirabutterfieldauthor