Writing Middle Grade & YA | Trad Pub Talk LIVE STREAM!

hello everyone we are live and thank you for joining us sadly we are down one panelist jl is feeling ill and cannot join us but we will forge on for our discussion of middle grade and kind of middle grade versus y a only because everyone here also writes y a and we want to kind of explore the differences between middle grade the middle grade market ask any questions in the chat that you want i am mostly here as a moderator i'm going to try to catch as many of them as i can and my lovely ladies here are going to chat amongst themselves and i will let each of you introduce yourselves shout out your books shout out your channels if you're lindsay and michelle like shout out to me tell people where to find you etc uh lindsay you can go first well hello everyone my name is lindsay you can find me at the youtube channel lindsey puckett i am an author mentor match mentee and i did write y a but right now i am focusing on middle grade i have a middle grade in the query trenches and i'm also drafting my second one um i like spooky middle grade so that's something that you're into you can come hang out with me i do a lot of videos on writing vlogs discussions and talking about writing and trying to publish with disabilities so if that sounds fun you like that messy stressy vibe you can come hang out with me that's my life right now all right michelle you're next me okay hey on my screen hi guys i'm michelle schusterman and i'm a middle grade and young adult author um i have about i think i'm at 16 published novels right now my most recent was uh the launch of a middle grade mystery series called kudo kids that i co-authored with olympic medalist alex and maya shibatani and that came out last month and the second book will come out in july right in time for the olympics it said at the olympics i should have mentioned that anyway um and i'm also the author of the y novel the pros of cons and my youtube channel is um writing workshops and traditional publishing chats on mondays and on fridays i do writing vlogs that's it so hi i'm emily ly jones i've written four young adult books the most recent one was the bone houses and my next book is a middle grade that comes out in 2022 it's called unseen magic and it's about a magical small town in northern california and it's been a lot of fun awesome i love that title thanks um well just to start out let's do basics and kind of had a question in the chat so it's perfect talk about what's the difference between middle grade and y a in particular age ranges both of characters and readers because those are i mean let's just just dive right in on what is and isn't feel free because i i you really can't talk about middle grade without talking about whey because most often i see people be like this is why a and i'm like that's middle grade yeah um oh god i just did a whole webinar on this on the reedsy youtube channel a couple months ago and it's really good like sony oh thank you so many questions came in after like i tried this is just a topic that people love to dissect so i think um like as far as age range goes remember that you're tarting targeting a slightly younger reader than the age of your protagonist so like if you have a 13 year old protagonist you're targeting 8 to 12 year old readers i would say keep that in mind don't mix up protagonist age and reader age 14 is what i call the dead zone you don't get a lot of 14 year old protagonists for reasons sadly i think this is a travesty because i think that's a great age to explore the transition from tweenhood to teen hood but booksellers don't know where to put it in the young adult area or the children's area and that's where the problem comes in and then 15 and up protagonists that's going to be your young adult but i think really what it comes down to is the protagonist's emotional journey because i have been through um writing an entire novel that i thought was middle grade and i gave it to a um beta reader who was also an agent who told me this is actually a young adult you say the protagonists are 13 but the journey that they're having emotionally is is older and and they were right and i had to rewrite the whole thing so i think that's something we should really get into is like are your protagonists figuring out how they fit into the world or are they figuring out how they can change the world fitting into the world like learning your place in the world that's more of a middle grade theme how can i change the world that's more of a young adult theme so that's that's like where i would start that's a really good definition yeah yeah and i think it would also be interesting to talk about because so i'll actually might as well dive right into one of my favorite questions which is would you consider harry potter middle grade at the beginning wide toward the middle and end harry the other 11 and at 17 and i think we should talk about how things have changed uh middle grade nya as marketing categories and how you mentioned the bookstore it's all about shelving so my salty opinion i will throw in harry potter is never y a it is middle grade from start to finish because the writing style never changes the themes get darker and it's always shelved in you you can't split shell the series so it's middle grade basically uh percy jackson as well even when it gets to get older i was waiting for that romance then i reminded myself it's still middle grade it's not going to be the romance you want same thing with harry potter yeah i've never gotten steamy when people call harry potter i get irrationally angry i know it it is you can clearly use those seven books to see like that 14 year old dead zone that fourth book is so pivotal because it he is getting older and and like the way that book ends it definitely that's when it takes on the darker tone and at the start of book five harry is such an angsty teen like on that on that respect that is so great but like to that too it lands very well i still have collected feelings about it yes capslock capslock um but i agree with you tonally and like as far as the romance goes romance tends to be really important in why a regardless of what genre you're writing in not so much that it has it but like it's teenagers are going to be thinking about and exploring sex and things like that and you're just not going to see that in middle grade and you didn't really see that in harry potter throughout the series even as the little romances bloomed they were chess monster yeah yeah it's an appropriately middle grade way to describe it yes but it's not white even though they were allegedly 16 in that book right right right i think a lot of middle grade has to do not with the age of the characters but with how the author approaches voice and subject matter like you said harry potter deals with some very dark things but it handles them in a very middle-grade way makes them accessible to young readers in a way that's understandable kind of breaks it down into bite-sized bits like one of my favorite middle grades is the girl who drank the moon and one of the main characters who has most of the point of view is like a really old lady but again it's written in a way that's super accessible to kids so i think a lot of it has to do with how the author approaches the voice and subject matter it's like what's that the book the curious incident of the dog in the night time is a young protagonist but that's adult it's because of how it's written it's all you're right voices has so much to do with it yeah the same thing in ya whenever people are like is my novel why a and they say more about it i'm like no that's clearly an adult novel it's okay to have an adult novel with a kid protagonist with a t protagonist if you write it like adult right um the answer is always of course read in the category you want to write in is is advisable um that kind of speaks further to audience uh who you think the readers of middle grade are considering kids reading up etc what age do you think the true audience is [Music] that's interesting i'm gonna let someone else answer that but i do think that's really interesting as someone who is querying um because i have to make this appeal to a 30 year old woman in new york you know so uh yeah that that's super interesting um i i know this isn't exactly what this question means but it is like an avenue that we could like kind of discuss because you do need to write something that would have like i guess a little bit of literary appeal to adults a little bit enough to pique their interest you know i mean for the editors but also for the librarians because they have parents teachers yeah because they're the ones buying it kids aren't buying their own books exactly no that's really true um i mean i i think i i consider my readers to be depending on the book because some of my middle grade books are a little younger than others so like 8 to ten or nine to thirteen um i've done school visits for some of my books where i'm with like third to fifth graders and then i've done some that are like sixth to eighth graders um they're all i mean there's avid readers in all all of these spaces you know and i think a few of my books skew more literary and a few are just super young commercial like would be categorized as easy um what's it called for reluctant readers you know things like that so i don't know it just depends um but yeah it's true you kind of do have to consider those adults that are kind of gatekeeping a little bit which is frustrating it truly is because some sometimes they do a wonderful job and sometimes i feel like you know they're a little out of touch with what kids are actually interested or not interested in reading but that's another topic i have problems with why a too but i don't know all the opinions about that oh my god sometimes i'm like can you know maybe they write a book for middle grade that's very literary and for adults so they could win the award because they couldn't find them as adult literary and i'm like but would a kid like that book i don't know they might be offended in school either way but that's actually really interesting because you mentioned reluctant readers in the younger middle grade versus upper middle grade do you guys want to talk a bit about basically i guess we'll say lower versus upper even though i don't think that's strictly the definition um what kind of middle grade are you guys writing how do you kind of land on the voice and the that you were writing like how how do i'm genuinely curious because i i can't imagine tapping into your younger self to do middle grade how how is my question go you know i'm sorry i feel like i'm talking too much i don't think i'm tapping into my younger self i've just i i spend i'm a teacher i've spent a lot of time in classrooms and i've taught kids of all ages and i just think about my my kids that i've taught in the past when i'm you know like the book the book i have under contract right now is scholastic and it's specifically for scholastic clubs and fairs and it's going to be in the third grade catalog and i know that age group so i know that's going to be my younger and slightly more commercial no lots more commercial um kind of kind of writing but it's not honestly i mean i would read anything as a kid so i don't think i'm a good you know i was reading like rl stein and fear street and all that stuff but i was also reading stephen king and like it was all i would read anything and i think a lot of people feel so weird back then like i try to explain it to people i'm like i was reading exactly goosebumps and beer street but also john grisham at the same time because there was no y a no real y and ui wasn't a thing back then it wasn't so it's just a weird jump like you you hit the ceiling on middle grade and you're like i guess i'll read for some people it was like tomorrow pierce for for me i did john grisham and then of course like the classics like jane austen because there was nothing else yeah it was a weird time it was a weird one um what about you lindsay and emily how old are your protagonists and how did you approach your voice uh or did you write i i only know a little about your books bad friend is it upper middle grade your your guys and stuff i'm not sure if i'd consider mine upper or lower i tried to write my protagonist is 11 years old so i assume that readers are going to yeah right in the middle and i have read a lot of middle grade just because i used to be a children's book seller for six years so it was literally my job to read a lot of young adult middle grade and picture books so i'm not so sure that like i ever really left the 12 year old mindset so much so getting into the whole like mindset of a kid i just kind of tapped into that inner 12 year old who's a little bit scared of the world a little bit eager yeah not quite sure what's going to happen in the future so i think that's a super interesting period also yeah you know it's so full of possibility and fear and giving me flashbacks i don't want to go back i know yeah my okay so the uh novel that i'm querying right now i would consider that upper middle grade it definitely has almost like a it's a first person present tense kind of almost feels a little bit like why contemporary like that feel you know that like voice that like quirky angsty kind of snarky that's how i would see like my uh character right now and so that for me is upper upper middle grade um and the themes are just a little bit a little bit heavier um the book that i'm writing right now is completely different which is terrifying me um but it's like a third person it's past tense it's got a really heavy narrator kind of like almost telling the story and like a lemony snicket esque uh that feels very younger much younger to me yeah a way that's actually scaring me because i've never heard anything like that but it's exciting uh so yeah just totally different vibes and i guess that's what makes the difference i don't know i have to tell you i love it when authors say their books are scaring them i'm like oh that means you're onto something let's go yeah there was a scene in my book i was writing it and i'm like this is also the moment i kind of figured out this have to be middle grade because there's a scene in my book that is absolutely terrifying and i'm like it's too scary for teens i have to write it for kids sleep well kiddos yes actually you brought up a really good question lindsay um casey asked this in chat um pov for middle grade versus y.a first person is kind of bog standard for y.a but middle grade traditionally more third person but there's more first person nowadays how do you guys feel about pov in middle grade and how do you approach it um i this is a non-scientific observation but i feel like with middle grade you tend to see a little more first person when it's contemporary and a little more classic for other genres or did i say that right yeah like fantasy and things like that but i i definitely think i mean obviously you can do first person middle grade i've done it multiple times for many books and um i don't know how you're gonna have to circle back to me because i'm trying to think now of how i make that decision on what person it's going to be in because you know what for nanowrimo i'm writing a young adult novel but it's going to be in third person so i don't know for me actually it's funny um i just started drafting this new middle grade i'm like i'm still in the first act um and i did like a whole vlog where i talked about struggling between finding if i wanted to do it in first person uh third and i basically didn't know so i wrote the first two chapters in first person voice and in third person voice and i just read through it when i was done and figured out which one felt more like the true story that i was going for and for me that was third person weird quirky narrator so that just me um sometimes it's literally just getting in there getting your hands dirty and like figuring out what works best i think and that's a very good way to approach it i agree wrong i always write in third person i've only managed first person for a short story it's an easier decision yeah whatever feels right for the story honestly just like for young adult middle grade i'll you know just play around with it that's good advice lindsay okay um as i scroll more questions there are more questions uh it's just hard to keep up with everything i let's talk a little bit about because i feel like white is going to come up a lot as well um how do like for you what was what have been the kind of differences and struggles between writing why a and writing middle grade do you approach one or the other differently um and what was it like for you the first time like if you started in one what was it like the first time you wrote the other maybe start with that question because i just threw like three five questions at you so all right wait emily did you start with why a right you so i'm the opposite i started in middle grade and shifted to y a that's interesting interesting now i want to hear both of your answers because i want to compare um well okay when my y novel is co-authored i had two co-authors on that book and we you know so we wrote it together and we knew immediately because the book was going to be in three different povs and we knew we wanted all of them to be first person and we would each write one of them and hopefully the voices would sound different enough from each other and um i had written two middle grade series that were first person point of view so i was very comfortable with first person the thing that was toughest for me was when we got feedback from an early beta reader who was like you guys need more romance in this book these are three teenagers with a bunch of their friends in a convention center in a hotel for five days like stuff's gonna be happening we need romance and the most obvious character to have like a hook-up scene was my character and i was like i was just so nervous about reading one because i had never done it before um but i did and it ended up being my favorite scene of mine in that entire book because it goes horribly wrong and it's like publishers weekly called it slapstick it goes terribly comically wrong and i just i don't know i so i was really anxious about the romance sex part but once i did it i it was it was a lot of fun actually it's awesome so that was the opposite i went from young adult to middle grade and for me it wasn't too much of a leap i mean i mostly cut out like some of the swearing and a little bit of content and the main difference for me was finding a slightly different voice and that a lot of my young adult characters tend to be slightly ironic a little bit embittered a little bit world query but middle graders aren't there yet right they're a little more heartfelt than my young adult characters so finding the distinction between like they can still laugh at each other and be a little bit you know snarky sometimes but they haven't quite reached that like world weary everything is terrible moment that a lot of teens do right so reaching for my like voice that kind of straddled the line of still being realistic you know because middle schoolers are not all like you know super bright and sunny and cheerful all the time but you know they haven't quite had the pessimism a lot of teenagers do yet right i love that that's great um i i i don't know what my my answer would be i went from writing like dark why a that actually given agent feedback they were all like this is great but this is adult rewrite and send it back to me so um i actually wrote like an apparently dark y.a or that was adult um so i went from writing a dark gritty wife uh adult fantasy to like cutesy contemporary middle grade my hardest struggle was um my critique partners would like call me out they'd be like you cannot have a torture scene in middle grade like so like that was my big struggle was like the scary scenes or the really emotional scenes that were like you know negative they were just like no chill out just so hard to nail for why a as well but between y and middle grade your characters have to emotionally react so differently depending on their age trying to think of 12 year old me awkward no i know and it often like there's a oh gosh i hope i can explain this right there's we were talking about how you make your middle grade appeal to adults and very often i think in middle grade with the way adult characters are are seen through the eyes of the young protagonist an adult reader sees things that are happening that a younger reader doesn't because the younger protagonist doesn't but that layer is in there does that make sense yeah that makes sense and i would uh guess that that's probably one of the things that makes middle grade deceptively harder to write than people think because i think the misconception is well middle grade people say that about writing for kids generally and they always lob it all together they think why a is easier too but i think it's harder the younger you go i think middle grade is more challen at least maybe this is also because i i can't fathom it but it seems so hard to strike that balance mm-hmm yeah you're really writing for two different audiences when you write for kids you're writing for the parents and the grandparents who have the checkbook and the kids who are actually gonna read the book so yeah yeah in some ways you have to look at it on two different levels like when i was writing a lot of scenes with the adults in the book um i would know that if there's any adults or even teenagers who picked this up they would know what was going on whereas the kids would probably be reading it an entirely different way yeah yep and so that's definitely nuance that writers would need to consider if they're writing and if they uh just if you find that your work isn't landing maybe look at that and i want to cycle back to the question of why and romance because it came up in the chat and i actually think it's a very interesting distinction because it also can bring up upper middle grade which is a newer thing but first because we've mentioned it and hinted at it but some of the people streaming especially they're used to me they're used to ya so anyone tuning in now hi we're talking about middle grade which is very different in large part because i know less about it when people ask me talk about middle grade i'm like pointing them to other channels like lindsey and michelle i'm like they know stuff i don't but let's talk about massive different in the difference in the middle grade market that most people may not realize how it is marketed and why and why you can't do a splashy twitter to sell your books to kids right basically because a lot of 11 year olds aren't on twitter and even if they were like their parents would probably be like why are you following like a 30-something year old who's tweeting about like boozy thursdays or whatever like i sing some middle grade authors not naming names every once why i'm like that's not a good idea on your social you do you but this is just like personal naval gazing even as y a like i am very careful about even like referencing drinking eve i'm not like a clean read like person but i'm super careful because i'm like some of my audience is 14 dream responsibly i don't know i know i know i know a middle grade slash young adult author who posts photos of herself and this is not in a judging way but like revealing photos shall we say and um once i might be thinking of the same person that you are it's time a kid tagged other kids on one of her posts and was like this is the author that came to our school guys and she she was like but i just instagram i want to live my life and i wanted to be like i mean yeah but maybe we're not thinking in the right same person we're going to talk later but yeah so little bird in marketing you publishers market to adults not to kids and it's this weird in between you have to think what would a 40-something librarian from iowa think yeah of the cover of the title of the blurb of you publishers market to them not to 11 year olds it's fascinating it's and it's frustrating it's so frustrating but yeah it's absolutely true you do have to think about it there's a reason and i'm gonna say this and this is not me being salty i appreciate these books this is why you see so many um you saw so many in recent years award-winning middle-grade books that were all that like super charming southern drawl kind of voice and that's fabulous i mean i dearly love a lot of those books they were beautiful but like that really speaks to a lot of librarians who are also on awards committees and yeah and you know decide really big important state lists and things like that um and it's not to say kids don't enjoy those books i'm sure i mean i know many kids dearly cherish those books so that's not this isn't a criticism it's just an observation that's why you have so many of this like this specific kind of voice that's and and style that's happening and not so much of all the other things that are available you know or should be available i guess i agree with that so hard that was kind of like um yeah what i meant by like the whole the authors you know the pulitzer prize thing they couldn't get an adult so they were like alfred middle grade but um like uh yeah because there's so many books that are middle grade that i really like i i love literary goals and i if they're middle grade that's great and i read them now and i'm like wow that's so powerful but if i was a kid i would hate this like i'd be so bored yeah yeah i didn't like awards bait books when i was that age exactly it's like the one exception yeah yeah i didn't like the books they signed in school and sometimes i just didn't read them as much as you want i don't think that was a sign but i definitely never read it a tree grows in first time i never read it i didn't have your heart shattered um yeah but i wasn't saying the giver more than once don't know why but it was yeah that's when i was like that we all read that way too young i was like that should be a high school book not a middle grade book yeah i was assigned it in dc was so i was nine or ten and then i was assigned it again in high school interesting now hold on i'm just so many questions there's a lot of good ones in here uh well let's briefly kind of cycle back to the romance and why a question um because anytime you bring that up i know that people get really worried and i i know that i'm sorry i probably should i should have explained that better your book does not have to have romance i i i feel like i guided us the wrong way editors do like to see romance and white but certainly it is not required and please if you're writing and it's so much better now yes and if you're writing a book with aromantic asexual characters please bring those on and i'm sure editors would love to see them it's it's that was just one example of like romance it for teens is going to have this other element this the sexuality element and for middle grade while they there is middle grade where these kids are exploring their sexuality it's not the same as sex yeah and it doesn't mean they have to have sex but it's just not like quite as front of mine as it is for teenage characters and so if your asexual sex is still something you're dealing with yeah and that's not the distinction for me when there's a complete absence of even a reference to sex in a way novel i'm always like it feels a little strange i don't need the character to have a romance i don't need the character to hook up because like 60 teenagers don't i actually love a little realism in y a um but it's odd to me if the character doesn't even notice social pressures other people doing things um and that's you wouldn't bring that up in middle grade in the same way as you would y a right so it's just kind of an awareness of it but also i do think it's fair to like warn ya editors and agents some more than others are going to push you to have more romance in your books it's it's happened to me over and over and over again which is fine because i like romance but even as a romance writer it's been like oh increase this to like more more and more so it's a note that you might get frequently and then you just wouldn't want to work like if an agent's like oh i liked it but it doesn't have romance that is the wrong agent for you but know that many agents of y a and editors well-meaning well i do it too as a critique partner sometimes like if you want easy marketability in ya increase your romance thread but you don't have to so that's my like market opinion but we need more non-romance ye books great and um are any of you familiar like i know just tangentially about it i feel like with the emergence of upper middle grade which is basically lower y a that can't be sold as lower oya anymore and it's kind of shifted to middle grade what are the rules for romance there i'm curious because i feel like there are more upper middle grades with like 13 year olds who go through some romance in some cases yeah um i would love to see more examples of this the one and this came out a long time ago and when you win the newbery you can do this but rebecca's ted's book goodbye stranger it really straddled that line because it was if i recall 13 14 year old protagonists one of them was like embracing growing up and one of them was not and that that contrast was what made it interesting and there was a sexting plot line that she explored there and i think and this is milgrade and i it was in i mean of course it was embraced by librarians because it was rebecca's dead but like it was so great that that kids have that to read about because god knows they're experiencing it they're hearing about it i'm not saying they're doing it but they're they're they know what it is and some of their friends but horrifying yes i mean it is you know and i don't know that's so if if that's becoming more of a thing with upper middle grade now like i i say awesome um a new release i think that came out this year or last year was um julia murphy's dear sweet pea i don't know if you guys have heard that i've heard of it i don't know much about it it's a really good one and it's got like fat rep and like it's just it's really great um uh she is 13 turning 14 and she's in seventh grade uh the character is and she talks about like periods um first crushes things like that and it you know like you guys were saying earlier it doesn't go like explicitly into like details but she doesn't have like a cute little crush and like you know something like that yeah it was nice that's awesome i need to read that one i've loved her previous books so i need to open that up um i just want to throw something out just for this user an agent shouldn't cost any money so i just want to like caution you here if an agent asked you for money that is a scam literally always flows toward the author not away so just fyi take care of yourself uh but smart that you turned whoever it was down because it was definitely a scam so take care of yourself um [Music] i know this is a why a question but because you know we might as well talk about uh content and cleanliness across the board because that's a good question uh this is for y but drinking sex and drugs in her books upper end of ya is it problematic and for hawaii no you can get away with almost anything it's how you write about it yes i feel like yeah a lot of teams have their first experience with really heavy topics through reading because it's a safe way to experience those things like it has been scientifically proven that imagining something or thinking about how you deal with certain scenarios actually helps you deal with them in real life so reading about heavy things is honestly a pretty decent way to deal with something you're probably going to have to face eventually so as long as they're handled like in a responsible way like there's a difference between writing about a topic and glamorizing a topic yes so if you're like glamorizing drugs i mean probably not great for teens but if you're writing about them in a realistic way they do affect a lot of teens lives like it's a reality that a lot of kids live with yeah um i was thinking about what was that book kate messner's um the seventh wish do you guys remember that one i think i'm thinking the right one it came out years ago and it is the main character it was middle grade the main character's older sister has an opioid addiction and that's like the main plot is the family struggle around this and her that book and kate mester is like wildly successful and was already at the point of this book coming out but she got disinvited from school visits and like all kinds of things happen because parents and some teachers were like we don't want our kids think about this and it's like but your kids know about this because guess what a lot of them are going through this in their families do you have any idea do you know anything about the overhead crisis like this is the best place for kids to either feel seen and read about their family's experience in a book or read about their peers experience and be able to like empathize better with what they're going through i i will never get over the backlash that that book got i find that really upsetting and i i would hope that today because this was several years ago i would hope that today it would be different we're in a different climate now maybe where people would understand the value of having that kind of story for a young reader i should hope so i mean i feel like fiction gives a lot of kids the tools they need to deal with real life so you're just taking away the toolbox parents right yes exactly uh quick question on here um about appealing to middle schoolers when you're close to their age um so maybe this is a visit question almost like how do you how do you interact with the age group when you do stuff stuff i'm very intelligent yes i'm a little i feel like they might be too close to my age to really enjoy it so like the person who's writing this question is a middle schooler is that what i should presume uh or maybe a little older or maybe a little older if you if you're a young author i i can only assume that you are also a voracious reader because that has been my experience as a teacher is that all kids who are trying to write books at a young age read the heck out of books and just don't think so much about trying to relate to all of your peers in fact i would advise against that because they're all going to have different tastes and they're going to connect with different books in different ways write the book that you want to read write the book that connects to you i think that's that's the best way to go and it's and it's going to be great yeah i think age two um being close or far away i don't think that's very relevant you know in the sense of making an enjoyable book i've read lots of people that are like 70 writing from middle grade that make great books and some people that are like teenagers writing for actual teams and that's great too so um i don't think it has to do with your age so i wouldn't even worry about that i just write the book you love and i'm sure i'm sure that'll be great um here's a good question again about topics but are there any topics that are off limits in middle grade nya but especially is there anything that like you'd be hesitant to write about in middle grade or maybe we could talk about it's i think it's all framing and lensing exactly how you handle it yeah yeah a lot of things can be off scene too and just mentioned um i i think if you have like on-page traumatic things happening sometimes that can feel more ya or adult at times um at least in my experience of reading middle grade yeah but yeah it's all it's all framing it's framing and it's like being a little softer being very careful what you actually show on screen um relying more on metaphors rather than explicitly saying exactly what is happening in certain first traumatic events you know what i mean things like that i think but no i don't i don't i can't think of anything that i would say oh that's off limits off the top of my head i mean if somebody throws something out there maybe i'd be like oh yeah never write about that but i can't think of anything at all um it's about tone too so meaning you can cover sexual assault in the middle grade it's not going to be in a whimsical fun adventure book necessarily that's probably it going to be in a more literary you're going to use metaphors you're going to like cleansing [Music] books do exist that's like a horrible thing i can think of where i'm like that might not be your go-to on right in the average middle-grade novel but it doesn't mean you can't do it because that's something that happens to kids yeah absolutely last year that came out about it and it was really well received because again the author handled it very very i hate this word but tastefully it's all about how you work with the subject matter and just imagine if that book gets into the hands of a kid that needs exactly that book okay that's where the magic is and then and you know we talked about how they're marketed it sucks on some levels you can't market directly to kids but it's a good thing you want those librarians and those teachers and their those parents to know who needs a book and you trust them to get it into the hands of the people that you want though also i'm always fascinated by um because writers and publishers can't do this you can sneak things in into books for certain markets to hope that they get into the hands of the kids that need them this is most i've seen it most often with lgbtq ia books where like uh at least i have librarian friends who are like they're like glad that like the cover was just like a pretty literary cover and they know that they can give it to the kid and their parent is never gonna know what's in the book because it's not on the back flap so it's fine right right not that they have i hate that they have to be snuck i don't like that at all but i do know in some markets that uh certain types of books might be challenged so it's lensing it's like getting it in there i'm catching up sorry i'm jumping around [Music] can you guys talk about um maybe some like marketing publishing stuff like because the middleware market really is different do you approach um your personal branding differently with middle grade um are there like i'm an articulate but i feel like there's industry stuff with middle grade that's worth talking about and i'm not sure because if as far as marketing your own books it's totally different than marketing ya and why a you can rely on so on social media and just being online so much more i think i mean definitely as a middle grade author you want to have an online presence of some sort i i hate saying that i'm sorry i'm like internally shuddering at giving that advice because if i had my way i would just be a hermit it was like not on social media at all um for me uh school visits like that one-on-one connection with kids and word of mouth is gonna do far more for you than getting a bunch of retweets or a bunch of instagram followers or anything like that that's been the only thing for me and and what's really interesting and kind of goes back to one of the first questions we talked about is that when a kid meets an author it's such a special experience that they're probably going to want to read all of your books in the future no matter whether or not it's actually in their wheelhouse like i i did a school visit the last one i did right before the the lockdown started i was in new york earlier this year and i had this like group of i think they were seventh graders and they and we were reading one of my upper middle grade books it's like a dark fairy tale um they were super into it and i was kind of nervous because i had brought to the class galleys of my next book which is way younger like two of the three points of view are animals it's like a super younger fluffy happy animal adventure book and i was talking to these kids and like one girl was telling me how much she loved stephen king she loved the blood like they were just they were those kind of kids and so i was like god i'm gonna show them this book with these animals on the cover and they're gonna be like this is so dumb and they were like clawing over it one of them i mean like they were coming up to the teacher after being like how do i get that book blah blah blah it's just because they met me when they meet you as an author they remember you and they want to read your books because that's special to them so yeah school business is like that's like you're right yeah that actually brings up school and library markets and you can offer more advice but to those who are writing middle grade uh you definitely have to position yourself and be comfortable with the idea of essentially public speaking because you're absolutely right school visits sustain the average middle grade writer that's how a lot of them make the majority of their income um it's fascinating to me you talk a bit more about kind of how those get set up tips and tricks for it and it doesn't come naturally to everyone so like how the heck to overcome social anxiety and not wanting to talk in front of groups of kids and because i find it fascinating but you're right once people meet you they're more inclined to buy your books i mean that goes for any age group two events it does it's true word of mouth is all right i think but it's especially true with kids i really believe that um oh man okay um okay i'm gonna save the anxiety question i think that's a whole other we can get to that next day um i i set up all my own school visits and honestly i just cold call and cold email people i i moved to texas last year um from new york and i i emailed i mean i i think i emailed 200 different schools in the districts surrounding where i live in dallas um trying to set up a tour for the fall because i had a book coming out and um and it worked i mean i booked a full week i visited like god i can't remember how many different schools and it was super successful but i'll be honest it was a ton of setup work some publishers will it's the same as with sending authors off to festivals and events they will set up these kinds of tours for a fraction of their authors and chances are you're not going to be one of those and i definitely was not one of those so i set up all of my own school business but the thing is if you when you contact the school and the fact that you're local especially if you're doing this in your own community they're like oh my god an author listener area that's so cool and it and they're almost always more than happy to set something up for you um and how do you manage payment because i think what's important to point out is that you can and should ask for not you don't have to always but there's especially just it's worth just noting especially if you're an author who is not i'm sorry about a white male i'm so sorry but it's just so true yeah they will either lowball you or try to get you to do things for free i've heard don't do it for me and that's not just because you're doing work and you deserve to get paid for it like that's that should be enough reason for you to but here's what happens when you do a free school visit they treat it differently they treat it like babysitting it's not they're not as prepared you show up and you're just kind of like watching the kids nobody is treating it as a special thing if they offer you even a very small honorarium it becomes more of an event that everybody is taking seriously and it's so much more successful and better for the kids okay so i would say always even if it's like even if it's a 100 honorarium i would say that's on the low side for doing a presentation but that's that's still going to make them take it a lot more seriously covers your gas and exactly a little bit of your time okay um and it's hard to do research on this because authors are all over the place with what they charge i mean you try looking up what different authors rates are and it's like so i know i've heard some of what's uh some authors get paid for like like thousands on appearances and stuff and i'm like excuse me to go do three presentations at a school yeah that's not fair to the schools man schools i i am a teacher like i said i understand schools don't have big budgets either there has to be a happy compromise here um and i i've done like free visits for like title one schools and things like that i will work those into the mix but more often than not the school's going to have at least somewhat of a budget to to help you you know to pay for you and all the preparation that you did leading up to it and the travel expenses and the fact that this is a full work day for you and all of that like definitely definitely charge for school visits do you find that that is like the number one like thing that helps you market and like make money is the school visits more than anything else um is definitely the best thing to help me market market my books and i would say it it's helped me out financially like i it's it's still not like as big of a slice of my income as all of my writing combined like ghost writing plus writing my own books but it's it's very a good supplement a hearty woman that's so interesting because again that's one of those things that makes middle grade different is you never hear about like why authors going to schools and doing school visits for their which by the way is totally an option i think high schools would absolutely love to have authors come in and talk to teens and teens would yes yeah especially like diverse authors and stuff like that like i would have loved that when i was a kid right yeah i mean it's it's totally possible somebody needs to tap into that emily are you planning on like school visits or anything when your book comes out i know with with covid going on it's like this is an extra special time i live in the middle of nowhere in a very inaccessible part of northern california so trying to do school visits will probably not work the best for me but at least i would have to do it as like a tour in which i just left my house and was like gone for several weeks because getting in and out of my area takes several hours on very curvy narrow logging roads but the good news is that people are so used to zoom now that virtual school visits are very easy to set up hopefully i can set those up yeah absolutely nice um actually do do we all love because i i think all of us have anxiety stuff do we want to welcome to being a writer we all have anxiety but dude why don't we talk a little bit about doing events uh and and specifically with middle grade you're interacting with kids is that different from interacting with although i guess you're also interacting with parents and teachers and whatnot but like tips for overcoming anxiety with public speaking lindsay you got the smile like oh no let's see your face i'm sitting here thinking like that's not me but then i'm like oh like girl you have a youtube channel like that's it honestly helps you practice like i am so much better on panels since i started my youtube channel because i know how to spiel fast uh and i'm just yeah it's helped me at least for uh events i haven't done school visits they do slightly terrify me so yeah but in fairness it's partly because i'd have to talk to teenagers and i love teens but they're scary okay that's that's the thing because i was gonna say alexa you've done so many big i mean you've done public speaking like i've seen you do it i have done it with you i am not discussed about 500 people watching me talk but a room full of teenagers is really scary i think a lot of adults are far more intimidated by kids in teens than they are by their own peers i think that's a big part of it i don't know okay so i do have anxiety about talking to people i it's not nearly what it used to be for me but i started tackling it when i graduated from college and became a band director so my first job when i was 23 was a high school band director that was like day one of it was standing up in front of a room of like 100 something teens and teaching them um and i it was terrifying honestly i was it took me a long time it was just like steadily overcoming those those nerves and getting more comfortable every time i did it and realizing that they they saw me as an authority figure and i didn't i don't know you don't i think part of the things the thing with teens and kids is that you don't have to try nearly as hard as you think you do and that's when adults get themselves into trouble they start trying a little bit too hard to connect and i'm hip with the kids a little whiff of that and it gets a little you know what i mean but just be yourself and on a more practical note i have a few author friends who do a lot of events and they deal with heavy anxiety and they they recommend beta blockers i don't know if you guys take those but there's supposedly you know quite helpful in helping you right before you go on just like tamper it down a little bit working retail is a great introduction to public speaking because my entire job was going up to strangers and being like hi buy things you know you want to okay so i got over any fear of talking to strangers really fast my thing that i always have to remind myself this is for teens more than young kids it's so strange to me though that they they see me as an adult and it's like reminding myself i don't think i'm i'm like what uh they think you're an adult just like carry that with you i'm an adult although sadly you're also like i remember when i was that age and i thought all older people were like much older than i realized they now are like when i like i remember being 11 at summer camp and thinking that the 17 year old counselors were like the height of maturity and then i got to 17 and i was like no no you've put the trust of your life in the hands of a bunch of hormonal 17 year olds yeah you're lucky you did not die we almost died a couple times i have stories actually should write a middle grade novel i don't know no legitimately we almost drown in a storm drain on a camping trip okay you need to write this middle grade summer camp book don't put 17 year olds in charge of children in the middle of the mountains is all i have to say lightning struck the water it was very dramatic i loved camp it was great anyway i went to quaker camp actually which is oh my god this just gets more and more interesting with every new line you add no violent sports there was no archery yeah because they're quakers they're not capture the flag count as violent i feel like that's very had to be very very careful we did actually do capture the flag but there was no tackling no violence okay yeah it was i loved it because i got to do arts and crafts all the time and they were really into singing around the campfire i was like these are this is my speed as an indoor sketch anyway i digress uh but like with teenagers like because i do mentor teens i will say it still terrifies me to go into a random high school because i'm like i don't know them they they think you're cool if you're like an adult with a job it's very strange that's important to remember is that like teenagers today are very different than they were when we were teenagers in in so many different ways and like i think the biggest most the biggest way they're different well no this probably isn't true one of the most important ways they're different for us is that they're nerds and they embrace the nerds you don't get that anymore you're like you're like king of the high school if you're a nerd right and like if you're an author coming in like it's the popular kids who are gonna flock to you it's just very different than it was for us just the kids are all right there the kids are all right honestly i have never had a bad experience standing in front of a group of tweens or teens they've like you might get your odd one or two who look like they don't want to be there but as a whole it's it's just been a very welcoming experience every time and like most of them are just excited and they just want to interact with you and talk with you and and it's not at all it's not judgey it's not the sea of judgmental eyes that you picture and i got to skip math class so right they're super excited even there here's the just related as an introvert does it get easier to talk about your work in schools yes i i find that every time i do a visit it's gotten easier for me and more fun i have more fun every time i do it and that's true of events too um yeah and uh we kind of because three of us have channels emily we're gonna peer pressure you into starting a youtube channel jk um thanks it legit helps you practice yeah with public speaking etc i to recommend not everyone can start a youtube channel if you can i really do recommend it to people but just practice uh one of my tips for any author this is any age group um find local bookish events conventions events etc and volunteer if you can and like work with them get used to interacting with the authors and then eventually at some events um you might be asked to moderate things i got i mean this is how michelle and i met at dragon con because i was on staff for years and years and years i got so much more comfortable with being on panels public speaking as a moderator you don't have to talk that much you're just doing an introduction and you're kind of feeling questions but you get used to it and you get to of course watch what the authors do that was so much practice for me it was a godsend it was so helpful and then i was able to say to my publisher when i got a book deal i am very comfortable on panels then you can send me anywhere and when they get an author like that they will usually use that to their advantage but also your networked in and you can use your own connections and very often when you volunteer for a book event if you become an author they'll take care of you so it's kind of nice because then you can be on panels as an author and those connections are really valuable yeah that's that's kind of everything yeah again especially and i i really i'm not trying to be like salty at all i i know that's the second time i've said this but especially when your publisher is not really going out of their way to do anything for you when you make those connections on your own you will find invites coming in um just because you met some people and they liked you yeah and then connect like contacts now right and like everything i cancel because of kovid uh but the for my second book my publisher didn't schedule anything but i scheduled a bunch of stuff and like i had connections and i had some measure of control and then i'll get cancelled yep yay uh when does that look we're fine well that book came out in february my next one is next year i hope things open fingers crossed i'm fine school books or uh imagine doing school visits for that one alexa for the ivy for the ivy the iv honestly i would love to that would be amazing sign me up well because though in fairness i've thought about that book and school visits for that book it wouldn't really be talking about my book i would literally just like do college counseling probably i would give them like a spiel because like i like to do that and i would talk about like all that stuff and be like so what are your essays on please title i want to get into college without killing anyone yeah right it's don't kill people is the lesson that i want people to take away no i mean uh well just i'll selfishly throw this out when is the ivies coming into netgalley i have no clue i've been checking it every day soon uh i peng a random house is a mystery to me they're actually like very organized and on top of things so i assume it'll be there when it magically is meant to so i hope so i want people to read it and i also don't because i'm terrified hi it's great it's amazing thank you i appreciate you i'm in a hate cycle though right now so good times good times past pages the words swim they don't make sense every sentence seems incredibly basic you know the usual the usual um oh i know that there were other questions about middle grade sorry i totally lost the plot um well actually let me throw up a non-middle grade question while i find more middle grade questions because this is just general and lindsay i feel like maybe you can throw in too i said that september was a bad month to query is that changing yes it is uh it was actually august was the worst august was like the black hole of querying um i started to see things shifting toward late september and now october november i know a lot of people who are finally getting requests we're also finally getting rejections but i guess it's better to hear than not to hear it all and i also know several people with offers so things are moving again and submission is happening like it i basically can tell that a lot of agents need to like sign things because publishers are buying again so well you're right you're right well let's not go there no i'm just kidding no like i think you had mentioned maybe in a live chat or like in one of your videos um that publishers were behind for filling their 22 lists and now they're buying yes so they all of a sudden whoever you know makes their money is like hey we need to fill these slots and so they put pressure on their team which puts pressure on the agents to get these slots filled and you know get books out there and of course when the publishers get hungry the agents get hungry and therefore things start picking up again so yeah i agree things were a little weird in july and august um but yeah i mean i was dm and you alexa and i was like i just got like eight responses in one week i know someone who had like august like part of the reason i made that video i was helping someone query and i was like this is weird there were like they just weren't getting responses and um things things have picked up in like the last two and a half weeks for that project which went out in august so yeah um yeah though it's still abysmal it's just better than it was before like 20 20. so more agents than ever like i check the query tracker stats just don't respond ever like more than it was two years ago it is not great that sucks and i know like yeah anyone who gets like an agent this year i'm just like you did it like every hurdle that everyone already talks about that's normal in publishing like you get an extra gold star yeah seriously well here's just another uh general publishing question because we just love to kind of clarify uh do you have to have your book proofread by friends or family before publishing or does it have to go to professional editor first um if you're pursuing traditional publishing if you'd like to get an agent you do not have to hire a professional editor i wouldn't you need to find critique partners and beta readers it's actually better if they're not family and friends but i know especially when you're younger family and friends it's start work start where it's easy like nothing wrong with that but you can also get into the writer community and find fellow writers writing similar books they're going to make the best beta readers and critique partners because they actually read in the same space as you they'll know more about it like your parents might ask questions that you're like well that's obvious because it's a middle grade and they'll be like i don't read middle grade and that answers so many questions um if you were going to self-publish hire a professional editor and unfortunately that's the thing with self-publishing it it can be expensive it's definitely better to hire a professional if you're going to publish so all right sorry what other middle grade stuff do y'all want to talk about hmm what have we not covered was submission different for middle grade uh is it different because michelle obviously you've gone on submission a ton but emily you had a comparative experience was it different for you i mean i was trying to sell at the beginning of the pandemic so that was a little bit different and it did sell at the beginning and you did well done but um this one i'm i think i just it went a little bit faster for me i think because something about this project i mean kind of struck a chord with a lot of editors i think and it like went on submission pretty quickly and sold pretty quickly so yay um just in terms of writing like i wrote the whole book instead of sometimes i've been writing a lot of why a on spec you know writing a book proposal instead of the full book where since i was going into a new genre i had to write the full book and make it as absolutely polished as i could because i want to prove i could do it so first i would prove to myself i could do it i was thinking like the publishing houses will look at like even though you're writing a new age category they'll look at your ya sales is that like a truth that happens or is that i have no idea where they at least look at your sales but i don't think it has nearly the impact on their decision yeah because you're it's a different audience i mean if you're if you're a massive why success then yeah they're probably going to be more interested in your middle grade but if you have a young a young adult out and it the sales aren't great i don't think that's going to matter because they're not they're targeting somebody completely different yeah i wondered how that would work if it would impact yeah oh and i feel like if you're a new york times seller obviously yeah that would make a difference but beyond that yeah i also um i've heard from multiple middle grade people that one of the nice things about middle grade uh if you want to change the pace from y a uh it isn't all buzz focused it isn't all like one and done it isn't like if you don't break out on your first book you're dead you're gone um middle grade allows for a slower build over time and it's really about a catalog more than one title i think it's a lot like romance books obviously because i think romance readers and middle grade readers actually have a lot in common in that they're really voracious readers i remember when i was working at the bookshop i had the same ten-year-old come in every day in a row for five days to pick up the next book of the series because he finished them in one day and i feel like it's a lot of the same if you can create a backlist that's especially a series you will hook readers and they will just devour it because like being a middle schooler you don't have a full-time job you have more free time to actually you know pleasure and they're shorter too yeah a little bit shorter um this actually this this is relevant to this question um if you want to get published in middle grade y a is it easier to get an agent or a publisher to accept a standalone or a series let's answer this in relation to middle grade first bearing that in mind i honestly don't think one is easier than the other do you guys feel the same i used to say it might be slightly easier to sell a standalone only because publishers aren't always as willing to commit to a series but let's be real series especially middle grade are just wildly popular you know so i i i would say it's a toss up honestly between the two i i will also and i was going to say this earlier say that um if you're doing a middle grade series be ready to write those things fast because your your reader ages out in a blink you know like the first series that i published was a four book series and all four books came out in the same year wow you know it was like a secret yeah did you read them all like one bam bam bam or did you actually like it this year happened no it was it was like we got the deal it was a it was technically an ip project so i didn't i i sold it it was an idea that they hired me to write and it was like outline in one month draft in two months edit in one month then book two same process book three same process just over the course of a little over a year it was crazy it was intense it was you impossible i mean it's just amazing those bloodlines well i have i glossed over it earlier let's talk about word counts for middle grade let's talk about the length how long it takes to write them etc i love the word counts that's the best part so what are the word counts for your books um on average oh let's see i would say for my what i would call my slightly maybe upper middle grade novels 50 50 000 and my younger are like 35. okay that's that's about average for me not ugly that's not like set in stone for everybody though obviously um the one that's in the query trenches is uh 26k which is short and i i lucked out though because a lot of agents at that time i was querying were like shorter why fantasy or i'm sorry middle grade i gave us a quarter middle grade and i was like there's definitely a market for a shorter middle grade honestly especially yeah younger readers really like them yeah and they they room for illustrations yes my middle grade i believe it was 70 000 words at my last word count so it's a little bit longer yeah and that's i think that's normal i love chunky books when i was in middle grade that's the thing that makes you feel cool to like hold up yeah at least i have to serve all the different readers and there's a lot more range in middle grade than nya period i mean there's i mean it literally covers a much longer span the re like it really is if you think about when you were that age like you changed so much just from like eight to ten so the books that you're going to read are going to change and but you have to serve the eight-year-old who wants to read a 400 page middle grade fantasy and who wants to read 120 page fun light book and i love they're all served in middle grade yes um and to answer the part of the question about why a i i still feel that standalones have an edge unless you have a really juicy fantasy series concept especially romance yes meaning because y a is very series of verse currently but the ones i've seen breakthrough like cell as series are all fantasy with a heavy romance element so because those are the ones that do the best um and in general even regardless though it should always stand alone the first book like solidly standalone because you just never know what's gonna happen um i love writing standalones honestly i used to write series you know that obviously didn't get published now i'm like oh i love standalones because it's like this pressure but that's just me spammers are just really satisfying because you can just hold the whole book and be like this is the story i'm over it i'm done moving on i realized i said my book was 26k it's 36k not 2016. but yeah i realized that what i was thinking about like because my first y book i was going to plan it out i was like a four book series and stuff and then when i switched over to the middle grade i was just like i don't know how i'm gonna do this and then i wrote like 36k and i was like hey this is wonderful and really that was like my first two acts of like the y i mean even for me switching to thrillers which are 20 to 30 000 words shorter or can be right knowing that i could actually finish a book at 70k i was like this is amazing i love the shorter word council um this is a very good question i've talked about popular in dodge honors nya middle grade are there any tropes genres kind of dead spaces in middle grade honestly i would say no just because middle grade is often where a lot of people get their first start at reading on their own and so all the tropes are new and fresh to them yeah so it doesn't matter if a trope's been overdone a thousand times it'll be their first time reading it yes so i feel like middle grade tends to have fewer dead genres just because we know that like that's i think aragon's a really good example of this like yeah aragon was very you know it was a little bit formulaic in terms of you know the hero 1000 faces and star wars and all of that but it was a lot of middle graders first reading a fantasy on their own and they devoured it and kept on reading fantasy so i feel like yep or think about um oh god i'm blanking out dork not dork diaries what's the other diaries diary diaries yeah like those are huge but but diary as a format for middle grade will always sell because kids cannot get enough of the epistolary format like you know yeah for sure i can't think of any dead genres in middle grade honestly i mean i'm sure some genres like there's a little ebb and flow to it with the market but nothing i my age and i have talked about it she says sci-fi is challenging to sell not as challenging as y a but more challenging than other middle grade genres yeah not in no man's land like nya but like she only has one why sorry middle grade sci-fi client because like she she can only have so many on our list basically because they are more it's a smaller market in middle grade right um because i have asked her about like sci-fi uh but actually of note you know how in that video i went on and on and i said what i said and no regrets and i continue to be correct time travel y a superhero y a it's just 98 of the time just not gonna work out for you both of those do very well in middle grade and a lot of the time because i will look at when people write those for y a i love you i also literally wrote them myself i'm calling myself out you'll look at them and go it's so cutesy this should be middle grade and i think that is one of the inherent problems in those tropes they're cutesy and they do work better with slightly younger audiences or you go all the way to adult um and y.a just is very resistant to those subgenres of sci-fi but they do well in middle grade so yep yeah that makes sense oh oh sci-fi i love you so much it's so weird it's like it's such a popular popular genre period but with y.a and middle grade it's always been such a struggle and i don't know why you know i have a theory okay um so i think not always but a lot of times sci-fi is known as like a boys club genre they're really resistant to letting women in and i think that at least on the adult ends middle grade and ya readers are women so i think that maybe that has to do with it yeah i have a lot of theories and pain um men and women writing sci-fi are treated very differently including nya it's interesting i have feelings uh also lots of great questions this is kind of a follow on the series question would it be easier to bring an entire series to an agent for middle grade i.e they're done do you advise that my the conventional wisdom at least that i've experienced would be to say no like what i always heard when i was first starting out was just query them one good book with series potential but don't tell them you have a bunch of books written that's not what agents want to hear that's not what editors want to hear but i am open to the fact that maybe that's changing i don't i honestly don't know um but i because of the turnaround time if you if you came to them with something that was completed and done and great i mean maybe it could work out i don't know like so did you have the same experience when you were starting because i was told like i yeah i wouldn't honestly only because what can happen is they'll take book one your agent could have game changing edits yeah and if you sell it your editor could have game changing elements plus you should be improving as a writer with every book and i hate my older writing it feels stale so i would want to rewrite those anyway if they were already written because you'll learn so much on whatever the first book is that you sell that you bring new skills to the next one so that's my personal opinion i get super embarrassed about older writing but that's just me i would say that like i wouldn't go on sub right now with a full series i would write a first book and then i would write um like a i don't know a proposal with pitches for future books to show that it had legs um for for a lot of the same reasons also i just wouldn't want to waste my time writing i mean it's it's hard enough to write one book that you might never sell why write three four five that's what i'm saying too like if your goal is to be an author like if you want to do it as a career um think of like how many years you're going to take to write that full series and what if that first book never sells then you have a full series and what you do with it when you could have been writing four or five standalones or other books and an agent with each one differently or it's just it's kind of like i guess what you're going for if you're loving that series and no one can talk you out of it right but if you really want to be a career author i think you need to write the first one if it doesn't work move on they don't invest hundreds of hours into something that's not going to pay off basically yeah uh this is a good question how do you get involved with ip and how to compare with writing your own books slash do you have any advice i'm fascinated by this as well um oh well i got my first one it was through my agent like i i i'm not sure if i would say having an agent is absolutely crucial to getting ipwork but i i certainly know that's that's how i got mine um the editor had just happened to email a bunch a couple of agents saying i'm looking for somebody with this exact experience to write this specific series and and my agent happened to be the one one of the ones she called and that was that was it but since then i expressed to my agent like i really love doing ip work i want to do more of it so i have auditioned i did the math on this a few weeks ago and i can't remember but i think i have auditioned for at least 16 ip projects um with like book packages like separate ones you know you've heard of um oh gosh ally yeah alloy i've done i've auditioned for them all of the other packages but also i've auditioned at like um in in houses like for harper and for things like that and auditioning just means they send you a pitch and they usually what they want is for you to write a sample chapter or maybe a couple of sample chapters so they can get an idea of your voice some of them actually want you to like they give you an idea and they want you to write a synopsis so they can see you might be involved on different levels of story editing they might give you a full outline and be like write it exactly this or they might say hey here's an idea what do you get what would you do with it and they just want to audition different writers and see where they would take the idea um and i've of of those 16 i think i've gotten just like barely under half of them um only one of them has ever paid me to audition getting paid to audition is like very very rare so there's that to keep in mind but for me it's more than paid off because you know before this live stream started we were talking about longevity and that's that's been it for me i i i would be out of the game if i was still 100 relying on selling my own novels it's the ip stuff that's keeping me going at this point but i mean that's just how it is and i i'm hoping that will change at some point in the future but for right now everything i have ip work so mm-hmm of advice i can give just based on what i've seen with other people is what you said don't be afraid to put your own spin on it because that's often what can get you the job um i did help uh one of my mentees audition for ip for middle grade um and i helped her br they gave a very a very generic top line pitch and i was like well what if this and what if this and i i think it helped her get the job that we came up with things that only she could write essentially yeah that would be like if you want it to have this flavor you have to hire this writer basically exactly yeah if you i think a good a really good company to look to is alloy like look at deals that alloy is making and how they're picking their authors because they they come up with super high concept ideas but that then they find authors to do exactly what you said to put their own spin on it and make it theirs in a specific way that nobody else could do so people are don't aren't like oh this feels packaged it doesn't feel a package it's unique to that author you know so yeah look up alloy pitches because if you can learn how to write your own even better my joke about the ivs is i wrote an alloy book but it's all mine hey even though that's true though that is so true oh man boom uh yeah that's that's a whole other topic of how to write high concept commercial fiction uh pay attention to the deals and packagers are the best at it they just really are they are so good at drilling down to concept although it's fascinating is so much ip y'all will never know as i p like um meaning like your stuff wasn't like licensed ip it's the kind of ip where you can't tell it's ip which is the best kind because and you make it yours you know i'll be honest it can even not even like as far as the feel of the book but scholastic for example the books that i'm writing for them right now are all ip but i also own the copyright it's very weird like some publishers just do it that way they just the way that it's working is the editor is just like okay for the next one how about we do this idea and i'm like okay and i write the outline and it fully feels like my own book but the idea came from them and i hold the copyright it's a really unique setup and so every house every packager everybody that you deal with they're going to have like a slightly different way of handling it but i would just say go for it and when you do get an agent if you don't have one yet just tell them that this is something you're interested in if it is and and ask them to get you auditions and like actively seek them out and it's fun and even if you don't get them it's practice you know it makes you a better writer and you get to see these ideas that these packages are coming up with which is super fun yes i just really want to write a mass effect book someday somebody hire me there is such a big audience for that i i watch a lot of booktube and they're all like when's the mass effect book coming out those are published by titan which is my uk publisher not that i have any poll i i just they literally just get my books delivered and i don't do anything emily would you get that one day um you'll have to come to booknet fest because one of the creators is a huge mass effect fan so that'd be awesome yeah you should come to book that fest anyway yeah for sure i want to go to any con these days i'm like i miss being in convenience i think this is really interesting because there's so much like mystery i think that yeah so i'm like i feel like i'm learning a lot from this conversation okay but that said we don't want to run too long today so if anyone has any last questions throw them into the chat and just briefly i want to put this up just just kind of uh so right series for self pub and standalone for publishing i'd say i wouldn't look at that look at it that way it's more like you need to know the publishing path that you want to take and then be thoughtful about that publishing path if you want to be traditionally published you want to be traditionally published uh and i would then follow our advice but if you want to self publish then self plan to self publish is what i mean and i will also throw in since we've been talking about why a and middle grade you need to be very aware of how those do in self-publishing i did see a stray question much earlier in the chat about ebooks middle grade readers are not reading on kindle they even during even during covid they read physical books traditional publishing in all kidlet but the younger you get especially overwhelming advantage over self-publishing uh particularly uh with digital versus physical but also just traditional publishing has all of the relationships and inroads with the school and library markets especially they and bookstores and that is where overwhelmingly the purchasers of middle grade still go why a is very similar though so it's not just oh i want to write a series so i'll self-publish do all your research um series can do well anywhere but it's about what you want for yourself and i just i caution people to be very very very circumspect about self-publishing kid lit in ebook only without understanding the market um physical books reign supreme still in kid like the kids are all right they still like physical books i actually didn't realize until recently like kovid how many of our peers don't even have e-readers period yeah they don't own them i do read a lot on kindle but only certain genres i will say that the sliver my like when i look at my sales hardcover and paperback are the majority of the circle and even audiobook for the ones i have audiobooks is a bigger sliver than ebook um and part of that and part of that is also price point but at the same time it it's the kid lit audience isn't snapping up the 299 sale it's the adults right yeah on kindle yep so which is great because many of our books cross over um but yes yeah so um [Music] can i ask a quick question is that okay okay um okay so i'm you mentioned audiobooks i'm actually really curious about uh the audiobook market for middle grade versus y a so i write i write about like disabled middle grade kids and i myself can't physically read so i'm like am i going to write a book that i can't even read you know so i'm interested in like i'm assuming it's not as big in middle grade as it is nya have you guys had experience with that you know alexa do you know i don't know i wish i had more statistics for you yeah um i i have it i have just only two or i guess three of my books have audio had gotten audio deals um i honestly uh i know far less about the middle grade side thus far all my a has had audio book yeah um i feel like audio in general is just increasingly more popular it's more prevalent so i can see that shifting and changing more and more especially a lot more than you said it's it's more accessible accessibility yeah although par i mean this is a whole if we could just have a whole conversation about how messed up audiobooks can be just with like the different rights and overdrive and access because like for example uh audible will not put any of their ebooks uh sorry their audiobooks on overdraft which is the most accessible way to get audiobooks through libraries so if you have an audible original they are not available to a large majority of patrons at a reasonable price so ah the whole audiobook industry has problems it'll literally be down to who you're published by and who they sell their audiobook grades to right um i i was happy to be an audible book not complaining however i'm hopeful that the ivs will be more readily accessible on audiobook because i'm with a different publisher who does diff audio differently right i'm curious to see how that compares to i feel like with audiobooks in the last year or two we've been in just kind of a big flux where people are trying to figure it out like it's yeah for like the last decade ebooks have dominated the conversation of it's gonna ruin print but audiobooks have actually turned out to be so much more popular than anybody could have predicted you know a good quarter of the people i know exclusively read on audio oh yeah yeah yeah i do a lot of my reading on audio especially during the pandemic i've done a lot of more audio books than i used to yeah yeah so ask your middle grade friends for me because i'm really curious about how the audiobook thing works for that because are kids listening to audio books i mean i know we have people but like i don't know a kid i used to nanny i don't know neither one of them listened to audiobooks i'm like nothing really matters because it's the adults that buy the book but it does matter and you would think they would because like the the storyteller i mean we that's like such a primal childhood thing you know you think i don't know oh i mean i'm going to ask around about this something no when you get the statistics i want to know them because that's super fascinating yeah yeah all right i think we should wrap it up some of the other questions are very specific we can like chat about them in chat but we had a good discussion of middle grade you can leave anything additional middle grade specific down below in the comments you know we can kind of look at them final thoughts final book plugs latest books by the things i'll have channel links down below i think they're already there trying to remember what past alexa did um thank you so much for joining me um yeah everyone like wait where people can find you and all that chess i'm at lindsey pocket this is my channel you can come subscribe and i'm on twitter instagram i always do this wrong all right i met there's my channel um and i guess i'm on instagram i think i've posted there twice in the last like six months so that's not my point you're following me there but i'm on youtube twice a week so and emily is not on youtube but yeah i'm not a youtuber but i do have a kitten so it's so cute books people come by your middle grade is out next uh 2022 so you're one of the 2022 yeah and you're like it should be fingers crossed and uh buy the bone houses everyone i love that book all right everyone have an amazing sunday happy i'll say day november 1st how was it november 1st happy nano if you joined us instead of writing welcome go sprint go do your go go do your words go forth and write yes bye everyone bye

Channel: Alexa Donne

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Length: 92min 2sec (5522 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 01 2020