The Weekend Writer: Writing Picture Books. Or Not.

Yes, as author/editor Ellie Sipila, who maintains the website Move To The Write, says in her fantastic piece, The Fickleness of Picture Book Publishing, many new children's authors are interested in writing picture books. She writes about why it's so difficult to break into that field, mentioning a couple of things I've never heard before or thought about. Among them:

There's a nice big backlist of picture book classics, so publishers don't need to purchase a lot of new ones.

Many new writers think they should be instructing the young in picture books and often stick to a handful of themes that have been done to death.

The rhyming thing. For years I've heard that editors and publishers aren't falling all over themselves to buy rhyming books. Why? Have you ever thought about what editing does to a manuscript in rhyme? Because until I read Fickleness of Picture Book Publishing, I hadn't.

If you're interested in picture book writing, you may find Fickleness very helpful.