Cheerios® Spoonfuls of Stories® Children’s Book Contest

Cheerios invites previously unpublished adult authors to submit their children’s book manuscripts in the second Cheerios® Spoonfuls of Stories® Children’s Book Contest. Cheerios will provide cash prizes to up to three winners, and the top winner will have their book evaluated by Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing for a potential book deal. A book deal is not guaranteed. For a complete list of rules, go to Spoonfuls of Stories® Contest Official Rules.

Last year, Shellie Braeuner, an SCBWI member from Nashville, TN, was named the grand prize winner. In addition to her $5,000 prize from Cheerios, Braeuner received a book deal from Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. Her winning story, The Great Dog Wash, is being published and will be printed and available in Cheerios boxes in the spring of 2009. The book also will be available in hardcover on bookshelves in the summer of 2009. Two first prize winners, Alison Anderson of Cumberland, WI., and Kate Heilman, an SCBWI member from Chicago, each received $1,000 from Cheerios.

Deadline: July 15, 2008

Prizes: $5,000 grand prize and winning story will be reviewed by publisher for a potential book deal. Two $1,000 finalist prizes.

Target age group: 4 to 8 year olds

Word length: 500 words or less

Open to: Authors 18 years or older

Submit your entry online: Spoonfuls of Stories® Contest

Judging Criteria:
 
1. Age Appropriate 
    Is the topic/subject matter appropriate for children ages 4 to 8?
    Are the words and the tone appropriate for young children?

2. Emotional Connection 
    Does the story provide an emotional connection with the reader?
    Does it provide a lesson for kids?
    Does it bring a tear to your eye?
    Does it offer high giggle-ability? 
    Are the characters and storyline engaging/appealing?

3. Writing Quality 
    Is the book well-written overall?

4. Uniqueness 
    Is the storyline/plot distinctive or extraordinary?
    Does it re-tell a known story or historical event in a new or
    different way?

5. Read Aloud Potential 
    Is this a book you can easily read aloud with children?
    Is it a book that could be enjoyed again and again?

Stories must be in English text only, and not illustrated.

May Contests

Thinking about attending the SCBWI Summer Conference but can’t afford the tuition?

Take your best shot at the fAiRy gOdSisTeRs, iNk. $1,000 SCBWI Summer Conference Grant.

Submit a 250-word double-spaced essay describing what you hope to accomplish by attending this year’s summer conference.

Send your essay to: fairygodsistersink@yahoo.com

Deadline: May 15, 2008
Winner will be notified on June 1, 2008

Questions about the grant may be sent to: mlhershey@aol.com

fAiRy gOdSiStErS, iNk. is a small, benevolent squadron of children’s book authors who believe in the magic of passing forward lucky breaks, bounty and beneficence. Members include: Thalia Chaltas, Mary Hershey, Valerie Hobbs, Robin La Fevers and Lee Wardlaw.

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Byline Juvenile Short Story Contest

Wanted: Fiction for ages 5-8; 9-12; or 13-16. State targeted age group on manuscript.

Word length: 2,000 words or less

Entry fee: $5

Prizes: $40, $30, $20

Deadline: May 22, 2008

Check out these other May contests at Byline:

New Talent Form Poem: Deadline May 3
Column/Op-Ed: Deadline May 10
Heavenly Poem: Deadline May 17

 

Can I use the three little pigs in an activity book?

I am working on activity books that are based on traditional stories, including The Three Little Pigs. Is it a violation of copyright to use these stories? How do I go about submitting them to a publisher?

Generally speaking, traditional stories such as “The Three Little Pigs” are in the public domain, meaning the length of copyright has expired, so they can be adapted, abridged, and otherwise reprinted and published in new formats. However, using a well-known folktale also requires some research. In her article Copyright and Fair Use of Published Materials, Heather Forest points out that printed and recorded versions of folktales are copyrighted and writers and storytellers are not free to use the exact text of those versions without permission. To avoid using copyrighted text, Aaron Shepard recommends researching the copyright before using any version of a folktale. For a list of references, read his article Researching the Folktale.

Publishers of activity books usually have their own specific guidelines for submission. Visit your local bookstore and library. Look for books that are similar to the ones you are working on. Jot down the name of the publishers of those books, then get a copy of the Children’s Writers and Illustrator’s Market look up the publishers and follow their guidelines for submission. Be sure to check the publishers’ web sites for updated submission guidelines, or requests for specific projects. For more information about marketing your project to publishers, you will find several helpful suggestions in my article The Elephant in the Room: Marketing Your Children’s Manuscript.

How can I sell the rights to my out-of-print books?

My publisher is no longer going to publish children’s books and has offered me back the rights to nine of my children’s novels. How can I sell the rights to my out-of-print books to another publisher?

It’s customary for rights to revert to back to the author when a book goes out of print, or as in your case the publisher quits publishing children’s books, or if the publisher goes out of business. Most publishing contracts include a clause to that effect. Make sure you ask for and receive a signed release of rights from your publisher for all nine books.

You have two options. You can query publishers to see if they are interested in publishing your books. Or you can publish them yourself. Either way has advantages and disadvantages. If you decide to query publishers, consider small publishers. They tend to keep their books in print longer, because of POD (print-on-demand) technology. And they are more likely to consider reprints. The disadvantage is that the books can still go out of print.

The publisher for my first book, Carly’s Ghost went out of business in 2002. According to my contract, the rights reverted back to me. I asked for and received a signed release of rights from the publisher. In 2003, a small publisher Zumaya Publications, picked up Carly’s Ghost, plus my new title Harpo Marx is Seeing Things and combined them into a 2-book anthology, The Road to Weird. In the process of finding a new home for my out-of-print book, I was also able to bring out a new title.

In your case, perhaps an independent POD publisher would be open to combining some of your titles into series anthologies, combining 2 or more titles into one book.

Jacket Flap has a database of children’s publishers. Also check out the Colossal Directory of Children’s Publishers.

You might also consider POD publishing services, such as Lulu, iUniverse, and AuthorHouse to self publish your books. It’s much easier, and less expensive to self-publish than ever before. The advantage is that your books will remain in print for as long as you want. It’s important to remember that they all charge a setup fee. At Lulu there’s no setup fee, but they charge a fee for an ISBN and for each item sold.

Write4Kids publishes an interview with Joi Nobisso you might also find interesting. She obtained the rights to her out-of-print picture books and self published them.

The best resource I’ve found on POD publishing services – and it’s a good one – is The Original “For a Fee” Print-On-Demand Publisher by Dehanna Bailee. She has compiled comparative details on more than ninety POD publishing or self-publishing companies, which are listed in an easy-to-read, printable chart.

Are there any online resources for teen writers?

My son is 14 and a very good writer. But he is sort of shy about his talent. I think it would help build his confidence if he could get some of his work published. I also think he should meet other writers his own age. But it seems like most of the writers groups are for adults and the web sites for young writers are geared toward younger kids. Are there any online resources for teen writers?

I think it’s terrific that you encourage your son’s writing talent! Young writers need lots of nurturing. 

Because of the internet, there are many more opportunities for young people to exercise their writing chops. Teens can gain confidence by meeting other young writers and also get their work published online. Most teens are familiar and comfortable with email and online chatting so this is the perfect medium to coax them out of their shells.
 
The Young Writers Club is geared for 7-15 year olds as a way for them to publish their work and learn new skills. Young Writer Magazine also offers opportunities for young writers to get their work published both online and in print. A good way to meet other writers online is through critique groups. Young Writers’ Clubhouse has a critique group and Writing up a Storm offers a critique group and a discussion board. Writing World’s Resources for Young Writers lists more young writers discussion and critique groups, along with links to markets and lots of other resources.

For young sci-fi writers, Resources for Teen Writers offers links to advice, contests, markets, workshops and more.

Review: Just Be You

Just Be You
By Ann Louise Ramsey
Crown Peak Publications
April 2008
40 Pages

Once again Ann Ramsey creates her own distinctive brand of magical realism through digital imaging in Just Be You. Honey the Cocker Spaniel is the star of this quest for self esteem. She is surrounded by ducks. So naturally she tries very hard to be a duck. One day she looks in the mirror and sees someone very different. She begins to explore what makes her unique.

Ramsey weaves the story into the enchanting illustrations with her trademark poetic charm and grace. The result is a timeless fable for all ages. 

Readers young and old alike will delight as Honey leaps off the page and grabs hold of their hearts. What a face! What a range of emotions! What an actress! Honey definitely has a future on the big screen. Join in this adorable pup’s crusade. Prepare to fall in love. I hope this is the start of many more Honey adventures to come.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Peggy Tibbetts

Meet Ann Ramsey and read more about the book at the Just Be You website.

Review: The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming
By Joshilyn Jackson
Grand Central Publishing
Hachette Book Group
March 2008
311 pages

The ghost of a young girl shows up in Laurel’s bedroom in the middle of the night. When she follows it to the window she sees the body of her 13-year old daughter’s best friend, Molly floating face down in her swimming pool. Of course that would turn anyone’s life upside down. But Laurel Hawthorne isn’t just anyone. She’s a professional quilt designer who has created an orderly life with her video game designer husband, David, among the meticulous homes and gardens of their Victorianna subdivision. There is no room in their lives for this tragedy.

Yet Laurel is haunted, not only by the dead girl but also by her daughter Shelby’s reaction, and her friend Bet who was staying over at the time. Bet Clemmons is Laurel’s do-gooder project, a young girl she has rescued from dregs of society in the washed up little mining town of DeLop, which represents all that is unholy in her life. As a trained artist, Laurel knows there’s something wrong with this picture. But up till now her whole life has been about burying secrets, not digging them up.

In order to get to the bottom of this inconvenient mystery, Laurel calls on her estranged sister Thalia. The polar opposite of Laurel, Thalia is a flamboyant actress and the keeper of secrets. Laurel knows she can get Thalia to do the dirty work. What she doesn’t know is what that will cost her in the end.

Joshilyn Jackson’s vivid characters and spellbinding prose – you can almost hear the drawl and smell the earthiness – weave a tale as intricate and fascinating as one of Laurel’s quilts. Jackson takes readers on a journey past the façades of flower gardens, swimming pools, and Wal-Mart, through the crumbling asphalt and broken dreams of lives in the rural South, to uncover the mystery of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming.

Copyright (c) 2008 by Peggy Tibbetts

Find more books by Joshilyn Jackson at her website.

 

Can I renegotiate my contract?

I sold my first picture book to a small publisher for a flat fee. Now, a year after the book’s release, the book is selling really well and was just picked up by a children’s book club. Because of my contract I won’t see any royalties from my book’s success. That just isn’t fair! I had no way of knowing my book would do so well way back when I signed the contract. Do you think it’s possible to renegotiate my contract? What should I do?

Congratulations on the success of your first book!

No, it’s isn’t fair that you won’t see any financial gain from the success of your book. And you certainly had no way of knowing the publisher would be so successful at marketing your book. The problem is you signed a contract. A signed contract is almost impossible to change after the fact, unless it contains a loophole, or language that indicates that the contract expires after a certain amount of time. The problem with an expiration clause is that even if you try to negotiate new terms, such as a royalty, or percentage of sales, the publisher also has the option to cancel the contract and take your book out of print.

Since I don’t know the details of your contract, the first thing I advise you to do is hire an attorney to look over the contract for any loopholes, or openings, for re-negotiation. For example, I don’t know if you sold all rights to your work. If that’s the case, you simply can’t negotiate a thing. Then again it’s possible that the publisher did not include a clause about book club sales, in which case, you could have an opening to renegotiate. But I’m not an attorney, and only an attorney can accurately evaluate the situation for you.

For more information on publishing contracts see Attorney Ivan Hoffman’s Articles for Writers and Publishers at his web site. 

Kindle Spirits

 

My Kindle and I have known each other for exactly 44 days, 2 hours and – okay about 6 weeks – and I am falling in love.

First let me explain how I got to be the lucky owner of a Kindle. My husband, Tod is a BlackBerry-toting gadget geek. Besides the BlackBerry, he owns an iPod, a Thump, a Sling Box, and a Sirius radio player. He’s totally into the feed, if you know what I mean. So when Kindle first arrived on the scene, I sent him a link to the demo and wrote: “this looks pretty cool”.

I haven’t bought an ebook reader because I thought they were too expensive and too limited in functionality. For $300 and up, I just thought an ebook reader should do more than store and display books. I didn’t want to lug around an iPod, an ebook reader, a cell phone, and a Palm. Well I don’t own a cellphone so that took care of that. I got a Palm instead. I can jot notes, make lists, play games and music, access the internet, and read ebooks. Problem is, reading ebooks on my Palm is a pain in the eyes. Plus the battery has the lifespan of gnat.

I wasn’t at all sure I wanted a Kindle. I just thought it looked cool and did lots of things. But at $399, I thought it was way too spendy. Tod ordered one for me anyway. During the 3 weeks I waited for it to arrive, I fretted that I wouldn’t like it, then decided I could always try it out and send it back.

When my Kindle finally showed up I felt apprehensive. I hate the learning curve that comes with new gadgets or software. So I set aside 2 hours and put my Kindle to the test.

The relationship began clumsily. My Kindle slid too easily out of the bookish-feeling, black and gray cover. So I decided to read the User’s Guide sans cover. But my thumbs got in the way. On the right side of the device is a long page forward button, and on the left the previous page button. So whenever I accidentally pressed my thumbs down I jumped all around the text. Gah. I put the dang thing back in the bookish cover and magically returned to my previous place in the User’s Guide – near the beginning.

Wait a minute. I paused to comprehend what just happened. The Kindle remembered where I left off in the text before my thumbs got in the way. Impressive.

The User’s Guide was really easy to read. No doubt it was written by geniuses who get that I don’t have a lot of time, I want my questions answered right away, I want to be able to click and learn at the same time, and once I’ve done all that I want to retain what I just learned because I learned by doing and not just reading a manual.

Plop. Damn Kindle slid out of the book cover onto the floor. Grrr …

I was all thumbs and the cover seemed useless. Had it not been for Mike Elgan’s opinion piece, Why Amazon’s Kindle is revolutionary: Surprising facts about Amazon’s new Kindle e-book reader, which I read before my Kindle arrived, that would have been the end of it for me and my Kindle. However his article intrigued me and I didn’t want to hurt Tod’s feelings, so I decided to press on.

Four hours later I had finished reading the User’s Guide, surfed the internet, purchased and downloaded a book, subscribed to a periodical, wrote and saved a memo, and sent a file from my computer to my Kindle. How’s that for fast and easy? Ok. So maybe it took longer than I allowed for, but at the end of those 4 hours I totally knew how to use the thing. I was infatuated.

Besides doing all that stuff, the Kindle is an MP3 player. I can listen to music on speakers or via headphones. I can also listen and read at the same time. Or I can download and listen to audio books. For a quick guide to the oodles of Kindle features, please do read Elgan’s opinion, Why Amazon’s Kindle is revolutionary. I can’t explain its functionality any better than he did. And he’s right about everything.

I was concerned about the PDF issue. Currently Amazon claims they are working on PDF compatibility. They advise users to send PDFs to their Kindle and see what happens, but there might be a formatting problem. This week I got a free PDF from Write4Kids.com. I wanted to put it on my Kindle so I sent it from my computer to my Kindle address. Voila. It came right through, formatting and all. No problem.

Gotta love it.

Let me explain exactly what that means to a writer like me. Kindle is Word compatible. That means I can send the file of this review – or any manuscript – to my Kindle, then read and edit it on the device. I edited this review on my Kindle – while listening to Afro Celt Sound System. So tragically hip. Okay. I admit. It’s a bit rudimentary as a handheld computer. But to be able to read and edit a file away from my desktop impresses the living daylights out of me. Yes I do have a laptop but the Kindle is way smaller and easier to lug around – and it’s energy efficient. Ding.

Also, it’s easy on the eyes. Ding-ding-ding.

The battery life seems similar to the BlackBerry. I get hours and hours of use especially if I turn off the Whispernet and use it only when I need it to buy and/or download content, which is also really easy. A dangerous thing for an Amazon junkie like me.

I’m too starry-eyed to claim downsides at this point. Let’s just say my Kindle and I do have some issues. I finally found the most comfortable way to hold it while reading is to place it in the bookish cover. I glued a Velcro strip on the inside of the cover and one to the back of the device, which has solved the slipping problem.

Amazon offers a limited selection of newspapers, magazines and journals, and blogs. However I’m not jumping at the chance to pay $1.99/month for a subscription to The Onion blog, when I can read it online for free. For someone who’s on the go a lot, the convenience is probably worth the price. At $3.49/month, a subscription to Salon via Kindle is nearly twice as much as the online subscription rate. The Nation is more reasonable at $1.49/month. But The Nation is weekly and Salon is daily. There again, I guess it’s the convenience thing. Amazon needs to offer more selections in newspapers, magazines and journals, and blogs. And they need to lower the price. Or perhaps I need to travel more.

Kindle doesn’t do email but that’s okay with me. I need to spend less time on email, especially when I’m reading.

There is what I call an integration factor. Since this is my first real ebook reader I have to adjust my reading habits to make room for Kindle. I am still finding ways to use it. Every week I learn something new it can do for me. My Kindle and I definitely have a future together.

Because I’m not using it all the time, Tod and I can share it. He can download files and ebooks and read while I’m not using it. When we start fighting over it, he can get his own Kindle and transfer all his stuff. But for now we are Kindle spirits.

OBTW, the Kindle travel case and the Mighty Bright light are the 2 must-have accessories.

Fun for Kidz Magazine Markets

The Fun for Kidz Magazine group includes three magazines: Hopscotch for Girls, Boys’ Quest, Fun for Kidz.

These magazines publish 6 issues per year, so their editorial needs are limited. However they do welcome contributions from published and unpublished writers. Each issue of each magazine is themed, so it’s possible they will hang onto your submission for several months and/or publication may be scheduled years ahead . I sold an activity piece to Hopscotch for Girls which was published four years after they accepted it.

Payment is 5 cents/word or $10 per poem or puzzle, upon publication. So you may have to wait awhile for the check. However they only buy first American serial rights, which means after publication, you still own the rights a can sell your article as a reprint.

The target age group for all three magazines is 8-10 year olds. Their stated philosophy is dear to any children’s writer’s heart: “Our point of view is that every child deserves the right to be a child for a number of years before she becomes a young adult.”  Who can’t get behind that?

Fun for Kidz Magazine publishes 500-word activity articles, plus puzzles, poems, recipes, carpentry projects, jokes, riddles, and crafts.

Hopscotch for Girls and Boys’ Quest publish fiction (1,000 words or less), nonfiction (500 words), and poetry. Topics include pets, nature, hobbies, science, games, sports, careers, and recipes.

With such a broad range of possibilities, you can go through your files and look for a piece that fit their needs. Take the time to review your work. Punch it up a little. Make sure it meets their guidelines, then submit it!

Below is a direct link to the submission guidelines for each magazine. As always, please read the guidelines carefully and make sure your submission meets those guidelines.

Fun For Kidz Magazines Submission Guidelines