Hi Everyone! 
Lists can be extremely useful, especially when they are constantly being updated!
Here are two such.
The first, compiled by the enterprising and enthusiastic Brain Grove, is a list of US publishers who are currently accepting submissions for children’s books – http://j.mp/SVbnCk – he also, very helpfully, adds links toeach entry to take you straight to the site. I also recommend his ebook on query /submission letter writing.
The second, a veritable database, is continuously being updated by the very proactive authors, Delin Colon and Lisa Kalner Williams – http://bit.ly/writerinterviewopps …
If you haven’t joined www.jacketflap.com, I highly recommend it – an excellent networking site for all things related to children’s literature and books.
Get busy and good luck!
Bargain hunters were out in force this weekend as liquidation sales began at 200 Borders locations slated to close as part of the company’s bankruptcy filing.
The affected stores — about one-third of the bookseller’s locations — are expected to close by the end of April. Twenty-one underperforming stores in Southern California will be shut, including stores in Sherman Oaks, Century City, Long Beach and Orange.
Huge “store closing” and “everything must go” posters covered the windows at Borders in Pasadena and Glendale, which were bustling with customers Sunday. Many sections were already picked over, including from christian book publishers, with shelves left bare and items such as notebooks, journals and photo albums strewn about.
Most items were discounted 20% to 40%, with markdowns expected to increase in coming weeks.
“As long as there’s a deal, I’m going to take advantage of it,” said Jordan Francke, 27, who was checking out the games section at the Glendale store.
“It’s just the changing landscape of literature these days. It’s all electronic,” Francke, a children’s book publishers and television schedule coordinator, said of the chain’s bankruptcy. “I can only imagine it’s a struggle for a place like Borders to stay relevant.”
That’s a harsh reality for regular customers such as Kathleen O’Reilly, 52, who was at the Pasadena Borders carrying a shopping basket laden with discounted stationery and magazines.
The Pasadena resident said she was “old school” and enjoyed seeing and touching books before making a purchase. She said she would miss visiting the store with her teenage daughter.
“I spend several days a week here,” said O’Reilly, a self-publishing counselor at a high school. “I actually debated whether I even wanted to come because I was worried I’d be too upset to see the store torn apart.”
Business is expected to continue as usual on the company’s website and at stores that aren’t closing.
After a slew of competitive blunders and missteps in the last decade, Borders Group Inc. found itself in trouble and had to cut staff, shut stores and shake up its top management.
Critics said the company botched its move into the book publisher digital age, causing sales and earnings to plummet. At the same time, mass merchants including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Target Corp. became major players in the book-selling market, often offering lower prices than Borders and rival Barnes & Noble Inc.
But Borders maintains it isn’t done for good. In a letter e-mailed to customers and posted on the company’s website last week, Borders President Mike Edwards said the company hoped to emerge from Chapter 11 as “the destination of choice.”
About 6,000 of the chain’s roughly 19,000 workers will be laid off as part of the closures. Among them is Rich Kilbury, a christian book publisher, who was pushing a cart stacked high with books at the Pasadena location Sunday.
“It’s depressing, but we kind of saw it coming,” he said. “Business had dropped off.”
The promise of discounts attracted Victoria Rose to the Pasadena store, where she was browsing mystery and thriller books. The 60-year-old high school English teacher said she was never a regular customer because she could find a better s
Google aims to use its position as the world’s most popular search engine to erode Amazon’s dominance of e-books in the book publishers industry, while Apple Inc harnesses the iPad tablet and iTunes online store to make its own inroads. The competition means Amazon’s share of digital books will decline to 35 per cent over the next five years from 90 per cent in early 2010, New York-based Credit Suisse Group AG estimated in February.
With Google’s effort, each publisher is negotiating different revenue-sharing arrangements, though all of them will keep the majority of the money from each sale, the person said.
Michael Kirkland, a spokesman for Google, confirmed the company’s plan to start an online bookstore this year. He declined to comment further about the project.
Google Books, a separate initiative to scan books and offer publishers ways to sell them online, has been held up in court until a settlement with publishers is approved.
Fair advantage?
An accord between Google, the Authors Guild, and other authors and book publishers would resolve a 2005 lawsuit that claimed Google infringed copyrights by making digital copies of books without permission. In February, the US Justice Department recommended altering the agreement. The agency argues that Google will gain an advantage over competitors.
Amazon.com, Microsoft Corp, AT&T Inc, and the governments of Germany and France also objected to the agreement, saying it would give Google unfair control over digitised works.
Google fell $26.40, or 4.5 per cent, to $555.71 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market, following an announcement by the European Commission that it’s probing the company’s business practices. The shares have declined 10 per cent this year.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the e-book store yesterday.
President Obama already has “senator” and “Commander in Chief” on his resume, but now he can add his newest achievement: Successful children’s book author.
Random House Children’s Books announced Tuesday that the president’s latest book, “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters,” is the fastest-selling picture book in the company’s history. The book publisher said 50,000 copies were sold in the first five days after the book’s release.
Written before the president took office, the tome for tikes pays tribute to such celebrated Americans as Neil Armstrong, Jackie Robinson, and George Washington. Obama’s proceeds will be donated to a scholarship fund for the children of fallen and disabled soldiers.
Over a million copies of another November presidential release by a Random House subsidiary, former president George W. Bush’s “Decision Points,” have flown off the shelves since the memoir hit bookstores November 9. The book is the third by a presidential author to top the million-copy mark, joining former president Clinton’s “My Life” and President Obama’s last two books, “The Audacity of Hope” and “Dreams from My Father.”
A 76-year-old British writer has been jailed for six weeks in Singapore after the High Court found him guilty of contempt of court over a book that raised questions about the independence of the judicial system.
Alan Shadrake, who lives in Malaysia, had refused to apologise for the content of his book, Once a Jolly Hangman, which deals with the use of the death penalty in the island state.
Mr Shadrake had offered to apologise for offending the judiciary before being convicted two weeks ago, but Justice Quentin Loh ruled that his book had scandalised the court.
He said Mr Shadrake had shown “a reckless disregard for the truth” and “a complete lack of remorse”. The defendant had contended that the book amounted to “fair criticism on matters of compelling public interest”.
At a sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Mr Shadrake was also fined S$20,000 (US$15,400) and ordered to pay costs of S$55,000. The prison sentence was lighter than the 12-week term sought by the prosecution.
M. Ravi, Mr Shadrake’s lawyer, had urged the court to censure the author rather than imprison him. “This is by far the most serious sentence [for contempt]. It is the harshest punishment so far [for this offence in Singapore],” Mr Ravi said.
Mr Shadrake was arrested in his hotel room after travelling to Singapore to publicise the book in July. The Singapore authorities have said that charges of criminal defamation are also being considered.
Overseas human rights campaigners condemned the proceedings. Phil Robertson, deputy director of New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Singapore was “damaging its poor reputation on free expression by shooting the messenger bearing bad news”.
The Singapore authorities have robustly dismissed claims that the courts discriminate against individuals on grounds of nationality, background or status.
Ministers are unapologetic about restrictions on free speech, however, which they say are essential to prevent conflicts between the prosperous island’s mainly Chinese, Indian and Malay population groups.
K. Shanmugam, the law minister, said in a speech in New York two weeks ago that Singapore’s “small society” could not withstand the impact of US-style media freedoms.
“For example, the faultlines in our society, along racial and religious lines, can easily be exploited,” he told an audience at Columbia University.
Singapore’s controls on expression include a state-supervised and mainly state-owned media, tough libel laws and restrictions on street gatherings of more than four people.
Mr Shanmugam questioned the objectivity of organisations such as Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based press freedom organisation, and Freedom House, a US group that campaigns for civil liberties.
RWB ranks Singapore 136th in the world for press freedom, below Iraq and Zimbabwe, while Freedom House has angered Singapore by ranking it below Guinea, where more than 150 anti-government protesters were last year killed during a rally.
“I suspect that our rankings are at least partly due to the fact that we take an uncompromising attitude on libel – and the fact that we have taken on almost every major newspaper company [in the world],” Mr Shanmugam said.
Singapore, with a population of 5m, also imposes heavy penalties on criminal offenders, including caning for violence and vandalism, and the death penalty for murder and drug trafficking. It has one of the lowest crime rates in the world.
If you write for children, grades K to nine, you might consider submitting to
Stone Arch; it is an imprint of Capstone Publishing.
According to Children’s Writer Market Place, Senior Editor Beth Brezenoff explains, “Send an age-appropriate writing sample and a resume. We don’t need to read full manuscripts to know whether a writer will work for us. We do need to know that writers are reliable and have work experience.” She goes on to explain that even with NO experience you can still submit.
http://www.capstonepub.com/category/LIB_PUBLISHER_SAB~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Write for a younger age group? Check out
Picture Window Books, another imprint of Capstone Publishing.
Picture Window Books publishes fiction and nonfiction easy readers, picture books and chapter books, grades preK-4. Words and illustrations weave together and captivate the imagination to inspire the learning of science, geography, history, language and character values.
http://www.capstonepub.com/category/LIB_PUBLISHER_PWB~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then there is
Kane/Miller Book Publishers who publish nonfiction for ages 2-12.
According to the Submissions Guidelines page:
Kane/Miller Book Publishers is a division of EDC Publishing, specializing in award-winning children's books from around the world. Our books bring the children of the world closer to each other, sharing stories and ideas, while exploring cultural differences and similarities.
Although we continue to look for books from other countries, we are now actively seeking works that convey cultures and communities within the US.
We are looking for non-fiction for ages 2-12 on those subjects which are particularly American: sports such as baseball, historical events, American biographies, American folk tales, etc.
http://www.kanemiller.com/contact.asp#submission~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Finally, check out
Orchard House Press.
Here’s a bit from their submissions guidelines page. “We are a very pro-child company, so don't treat children as expendable in your story lines. We're only interested in publishing books that are timeless, not the next "hot thing."
There guidelines are very specific, so be sure to read them carefully and follow them just as carefully.
http://www.orchardhousepress.com/Happy submitting!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related Articles:Stepping Stones to Publication
http://www.karencioffi.com/2010/04/6-stepping-stones-to-publication/Writing to Get Published
http://www.karencioffi.com/2010/03/writing-to-get-published/Critiques are Essential
http://karenandrobyn.blogspot.com/2010/01/critiques-are-essential.htmlWriting Resources and Programs:You can also check out this description and great review of
Writing, Publishing, and Marketing - You Can Do It!&nbs
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By:
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on 1/10/2010
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This is my fourth, but probably not the last, post focusing on
free resources from children's publishers. If you're just arriving, you'll want to check out the older posts to see parts
one,
two, and
three. If you know of a publisher I've missed,
drop me a line!
Salariya is the UK publisher of the immensely popular Scholastic "You Wouldn't Want..." series which I discussed in a
previous blog. They've put four of their more
popular titles online for direct viewing, with a little bit of interactivity and related links to boot. Check out the
online versions of
You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator,
You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy,
You Wouldn't Want to be a Polar Explorer, and
You Wouldn't Want to Sail on a 19th Century Whaling Ship. Some of the links which appear at the end of each book are equally worth exploring.
I don't know how I mentioned Candlewick in my previous post without noting their very cool
Ology World site. While this is topic of a post on this site, I'll leave it to you if you wish to sneak a peek. Your boys especially will like the interactive approach to nonfiction.
I also mentioned the Walker US site and the Walker Australia site, only to find out that there's an equally impressive
Walker UK site. The
Kids Den presents the user with th
GREAT resources! Thanks so much for sharing!
I’d also like to add another Google doc, “Kindle Freebie Day Promo Places,” which lists where to promote your book on the day it’s free: http://bit.ly/OEUNLj
Thanks for adding this, Delin, appreciated!
Thanks for dropping by Julie! Note the additional resource Delin has kindly added in her comment.