You can be a children's writer if you really want to.
Making money from writing for children is possible, if you know the market, how to write, and are prepared to write what the market wants.
If you understand why and how publications get sold, and what the potential level of sales are, you can make better decisions about what you write.
- Commissioned work – some organisations and businesses commission writers to produce work for children to read. This may be a textbook, course notes for an educational course, an instruction manual for a computer game, articles for an educational website, fiction stories, or others. To secure this type of writing it is a good idea to let publishers know your areas of expertise so they can keep your name on file should any commissions be required.
- Educational books – these may be written for specific courses, or about specific subjects e.g. physics, geography or mathematics. They may be revision guides to help children prepare for particular exams. Some may be written in relation to particular topics children might find interesting. Educational publications may be commissioned work as well. Often these types of books can become quite popular with teachers and may become required reading for a particular course, so sales may almost be guaranteed.
- Published work – whilst some work may be commissioned by publishers, often authors will approach publishers or agencies with their work to see if the publisher is interested in publishing it.
- Self-published – as you would imagine, this is simply work that the author writes themselves and publishes themselves. It may be in the form of a paper based book or an e-book.
As a note of caution, it is not always a good decision to write books for genres which are popular. Popularity can be a fickle thing. By the time you have finished a book or found a willing publisher, the popularity of that genre may already have dwindled. Besides, if it's not a genre which appeals to your creative senses then your lack of enthusiasm will most likely be apparent in your writing. Instead, stick with books you know you will enjoy writing.
We've been teaching people how to write for children, for over two decades. Many of our graduates have had things published, and some have gone on to be quite successful. Success depends upon many things though, not just being able to write. Perhaps the main reason why writers fail is because many of them want to write what they want to write -instead of being prepared to write what the client or publisher wants them to write. In this respect, success can be as much about "attitude", as it is about anything else.
If you really want to get serious about children's writing, see our course -click here
