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SCBWI's Annual Winter Conference in New York is just eleven days away! If you're attending, you may be planning your outfits and your evening activities in the city (which you certainly should), but you should also be thinking about how to make the most of the event. So I checked in with a few of the editors and agents participating in the conference to ask for some advice to pass on to you.

Today's topic: CRITIQUES

Editors Krista Marino (Delacorte), Franceso Sedita (Penguin) and Jennifer Rees (Scholastic) and agents Kerry Sparks (Levine/Greenberg) and Kary Kole (Andrea Brown) are participating in the Writers' Intensive that kicks off the weekend of conferencing. At this day-long event, writers have the opportunity to get feedback on a manuscript from a several editors and agents, and writers offer feedback to one another.

Intensives have limited space for writers and this year's Writers' Intensive (as usual) sold out super fast. But even if you aren't attending it, you probably have been or will be in a critique situation, whether at a conference with an editor or agent, one-on-one with a critique partner, or in a critique group setting. Here are some things to keep in mind offered by our group of industry insiders.

Use the same profile photo of yourself across platforms - twitter, your blog, facebook... It makes you more recognizable.

Greg Pincus is a poet, author and social media guru who, through the wonders of social media (and his talent as a writer) got into the New York Times and landed a two book deal with Arthur A. Levine.

Alice Pope is the official blogger for SCBWI, Team Captain for SCBWI's Team Blog, and the former editor of the Children's Writers and Illustrator's Market Guide.



Here's a taste of their words of wisdom:

Greg: There's no one way - each person can follow their own path.

Alice: Just like getting published - it's the same with social networking.

Greg: Recognize that it's not always linear, but a good thing is a good thing. In advertising there's a rule of 7 times of being exposed to something before people buy it. If they see you 6 times via social media, and the 7th time they see your book is in a bookstore... that's good!

the effects are cumulative

You are what you say and do - think of ebay, if someone has a 99% rating, then we trust that seller. Similarly we are all building our reputations online.

Be careful not to hurt yourself - be smart. Greg quoted Jenn Bailey who said that "to get something off the internet is like getting pee out of a swimming pool."

Alice reminded us that in all our interactions we want to ADD VALUE - how can you help? how can you further the conversation?


They've started to share examples of how authors and illustrators have been using social media to further their careers, including:

Readergirlz, five authors who created a safe online community for teenage girls - they're offering virtual author visits and a place for girls to talk books.

Lisa Yee's blog has helped her success and the character of Peepy has become a fun funny extension of her personality.

And me, Lee Wind, with my blog "I'm Here. I'm Queer. What the Hell do I Read?" - which have given me an expertise in GLBTQ Kid Lit and a platform.

There are so many examples, great points and insights being offered.

Here's an amazing one!

Mitali Perkin's blog, where she talks about multicultural books for kids, even includes a post where she talks about and how through twitter she sold five of her books to India!

They're speaking about blog book tours now... Alice is sharing about author Holly Cupala's book blog tour that she recently hosted one stop for on her SCBWI Blog.

Someone asked how you get Twitter followers, and Alice gave this great advice:

If you participate, people will notice you.

The time draws near for the 2010 SCBWI Annual Summer Conference and today I offer yet another TEAM BLOG pre-conference faculty interview. I've talked with the amazing Editorial Director of Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Jennifer Hunt.

Jen oversees the acquisition and development of all MG and YA fiction for the Little, Brown. She edits an impressive list of award-winner, bestselling and über-popular authors including Sherman Alexie, Sara Zarr, Cornelia Funke, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Pseudonymous Bosch, Cressida Cowell, Walter Mosley, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Jewell Parker Rhodes. (She also the proud editor of SCBWI’s very own Aaron Hartzler!)

Jen is offering two breakout sessions--PEAK TO PEAK: HOW TO BUILD A CAREER AFTER YOUR FIRST BOOK and AN INSIDE LOOK AT LITTLE, BROWN BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS--and participating in a panel--A VIEW FROM THE TOP: 4 PUBLISHERS DISCUSS OUR INDUSTRY.

The latest of our SCBWI TEAM BLOG exclusive pre-conference interviews with Winter Conference keynotes and speakers is up on Jaime Temairik's blog.

Jaime interviewed the always awesome Allyn Johnston, Vice President & Publisher of Beach Lane Books, who will be offering three breakout sessions on THE REAL DEAL ABOUT PICTURE BOOKS.

Click here to read the interview with Allyn.

And be sure to tune in *RIGHT HERE* starting Friday, for exclusive live Winter Conference coverage by our crack team of bloggers, Jaime, Jolie, Lee, Suzanne and Alice!

Click here to register for the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York City where you can see Allyn Johnston in person.

Massive, and I do mean massive blog coverage of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) National Conference in Los Angeles at  The Official SCBWI Conference Blog.

The team-blogging effort was led by Alice Pope, who edits the Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market, the annually updated directory published by Writer’s Digest Books.

I also recommend Diandra Mae’s blog Taking Flight for her attentive and fun  coverage of her experience as an attendee of the four days of panels, workshops, talks and socials .

Before we  get into the blogs,  though, here’s a clip of the great picture book artist and creator Tomie dePaolo being interviewed by SCBW National Executive Director Lin Oliver about the “art of the picture book.”  No, the video’ was not part of the conference but part of an SCBWI “Master Class.” But these are two personalities who loom large over the org.

If you’ve not yet heard of SCBWI or know much about it, here’s an interview from the org’s website where Executive Director (and prolific children’s author and producer of movies based on children’s books) Lin Oliver does a good job of speaking for the now global organization.

D’s posts put you in the shoes of someone packing her bags and heading out to Los Angeles for the big event. She ’s a talented illustrator in the Houston area — a former 7th grade teacher now active with the  Houston chapter of SCBWI .

She catches many good quotes and observations in her blog  Taking Flight, like David Weisner’s remark in an illustrators’  Q&A:

“…He did mention that with all of these portfolios he is asked to view at art schools around the country, he’s noticed that there is a serious lack of drawing ability that often hinders brilliant and wonderful ideas. ‘Take a figure drawing class for goodness’ sakes!’ He reminds us that this ”is not about making precious drawings, it’s about learning the craft’ because ‘observational drawings are at the heart of everything we do.’ “

I  enjoyed reading about what apparently was the first ever Illustrators’ Social at the conference. D writes,“What a wonderful concept! Cecilia Yung, David Diaz, Priscilla Burris were there to facilitate the chaos of portfolio sharing, card swapping and chatting. They talked a little about how we illustrators were only 15% of the attendees, and we needed to band together for support.”

So here you go:  Day One , Day Two , Day Three,
Day Four . Thank you, Diandra Mae  for some wonderful reporting.

The SCBWI LA Conference team blog includes the  Golden Kite Awards/2009 Conference Portfolio Awards along with art from the winners of the SCBWI New York Portfolio Exhibition and the Tomie dePaola Award.

Alice Pope on her own Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market blog (on August 12) includes  a transcript of her own tweets throughout the four days. They’re entertaining  even if you’re not familiar with all of the authors’ and editors’ names.

You can read all tweets from all persons who tweeted in real time on  the event at this Twitter site. (Or you can pull them up on your own twitter page by searching for:  #scbwi09.)  The tweets are nano-quotes from the artist/writer/editors/ agent panels and talks,  breadcrumb trails of “kid publishing” thought.

Team blog carries reportage on talks by the wonderful illustrator Marla Frazee
Dan Yaccarino,  Scholastic Executive Art Director Elizabeth Parisi (on book dummies), Golden Kite Award winner for illustration (for Last Night,  Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Hyewon Yum — and more from David Weisner, like how, for those  lily pad piloting frogs of  his Caldecott Medal winning-picture book Tuesday,  he found frog skeletons to study.

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Visit Alice's CWIM Blog for Alice Pope's exclusive interview with author and Summer Conference keynote speaker Kathleen Duey, the latest in our TEAM BLOG keynote interview series (with more to come!).

Kathleen offers lots of great advice for conference goers and talks about, among other things, fear (and why it's good for you).

Three more days until the Summer Conference Blog-apalooza!


photo: Sonya Sones

Highlights Foundation's website is a great resource for writers. In addition to the wonderful workshops they offer, you will find a whole library of writing tips given at previous Highlights Foundation Writers Workshop at Chautauqua. You can search the archives by topic, author, or title.

While I'm on tips, have you seen Writer's Digest Writing Tip of the Day? Today's tip comes from Jane Yolen, directly from her book Take Joy. (Which every writer needs to have!)

Don't forget to sign up for CWIM's monthly newsletter. You'll be one of the first to get news, tips, and market information hot off the desk of editor Alice Pope. The email sign-up can be found at the top of the homepage.

And no, you're not off a day. It's me. It really is Thursday. This short week just has me off a day!

Alice Pope, editor of CWIM, is looking for debut authors of children's books to feature in the 2010 CWIM. Click here for the details on her blog. Get those emails rolling, people--the deadline is August 8th!

Ok, pursuing a Master's is taking up all my time, but I'm done with classes for now and don't have my next one until Nov. I'm back to work on my YA novel and finally hit the 10,000 words mark. That was my first milestone. I'm also taking a slightly different direction after discovering the incredibly gifted writer, Jeffery Deaver during my Jury Duty stint.

I'm not sure why people have such a negative attitude towards jury duty. I loved it, learned tons about our judicial system, and was fortunate to actually serve on a jury. During the two weeks I had to report, only two cases actually went to trial, so I was lucky to have served.

I also entered the Cheerio Story contest today and ordered the 2009 Children's Writers Market Guide by Alice Pope.

It feels good to be back.

I received this question recently, and coincidentally I had a phone call not too long ago with someone in this very predicament. Not a bad position to be in. . . .

I am in the middle of writing a YA science fantasy, but have also been approached by a gentleman with platform to ghostwrite his nonfiction project. I see the nonfiction as bringing in the daily bread, and I know I will enjoy the process, but my passion is firmly in the fiction field. How should I go about my agent search? I’d prefer to have one agent if at all possible, but the pool of agents who handle nonfiction plus science fiction and fantasy plus YA is a short one. Should I let the "name" on the nonfiction project pursue an agent on his own, and sign agreements that way, or should I be the one on the hunt? If the latter, do I just concentrate on the nonfiction proposal, or is it okay to mention my diversity in the query letter? Note: I already know not to actually pitch multiple projects in one query; I’m thinking just a brief mention of my fiction interests.

There is a lot of advice I could give here and all of it depends on where things stand. I think you are a little ahead of yourself on all fronts here, so let’s approach things one at a time.

YA project first . . . since you are only in the middle of the project you’re not ready to query on this yet. Therefore it’s a moot point (or as Joey from Friends would say, “a moo point.”) You can only plan for your future so much, and planning for something that may or may not happen months down the road can stifle someone and eventually hurt her career. For example, who knows what decisions I would have made ten years ago had I known I was going to start BookEnds. No, sometimes the best laid plans are those that are unexpected.

I guess what I’m saying is that you need to look at the most pressing possibility first, and since you have nothing yet to submit on the YA I would simply hold off on worrying about that or even including it in your equation. In an ideal world you would find one agent to handle everything, but we all know that publishing is far from an ideal world.

As for the nonfiction project, I’m assuming you have worked with this expert and have some sort of proposal to send around. You will need to have something, even something short, to send to agents before someone is going to represent you. Before working on anything, though, I would also suggest that you put an agreement in writing. This should stipulate, among other things, how much you each expect to get paid (you could always say that this will be determined at the time of the offer), whether or not you are getting author credit or simply ghostwriting, and what happens if things don’t work out and/or the platformed author decides to find a new ghostwriter. You should of course be compensated for your time. Any time you are coauthoring or ghostwriting with or for someone, you need an agreement. I have one I use for my authors and would suggest you check out freelance Web sites (maybe someone can suggest some) for guidance on writing up your own.

Since you are the ghostwriter on this project and have no real credentials yourself it’s going to be tough to get an agent to represent you separately. I would suggest you work as a team to find an agent that can suit both of your needs as nonfiction authors. Primarily, though, you want an agent with expertise in the subject you’re selling, not someone who necessarily has expertise in YA Fantasy. Remember, your goal is to sell the book. If you need to find a second agent to sell your YA Fantasy, that’s certainly better than having one agent who can really sell neither. The smart author finds the very best agent for each individual project, especially since the nonfiction agent is really representing the book (and platformed author), you’re just a bonus in the package.

Presumably the nonfiction agent will represent both of your interests fairly and honestly. However, if you find that she expresses favoritism to the platformed author and doesn’t seem to be representing your interests at that point, when you have a deal in hand, you could always ask that someone else be brought in to represent your side fairly. In most cases, though (when I’ve done similar projects), it’s worked out pretty well.

To sum up, focus on one project at a time.

Jessica