Nancy I. Sanders's Blog, page 12

How-to-Write Classes for Children’s Writers

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As many of you know, I teach classes on how you can write for children.

I’m excited to announce a brand new class on writing funny stories for kids!

It’s called WRITING HUMOR FOR KIDS and is available now at the Serious Writer Academy where I’m one of the instructors.

I love writing funny stories for kids. I think my favorite funny series that I wrote (quite a while back for Concordia) was called the MARSHAL MATT series: MYSTERIES WITH A VALUE.



And I’m currently working on a funny story that’s a 4-book middle grade novel. In my class, WRITING HUMOR FOR KIDS, I teach you the nuts and bolts of how to do it. I let you know all the tricks of the trade that I use in my own writing so that you can use them too!

CLICK HERE to learn how you can buy the audio of that class (with handouts) as well as my other class, DEVELOPING 3-D CHARACTERS.

Oh, and if you want to take the class that my friend, Tina M. Cho took to learn how to write a middle grade novel, CLICK HERE to find out more info!

Happy writing!

Inspiration for Us All

 

I have a writer friend that I am so proud of! Tina M. Cho is really rocking these days and pumping out those children’s books!

On her blog, she shared some of the story behind the story of one of her most recent and exciting children’s book contracts she signed.

It’s an inspirational story every one of us needs to hear about. The hard work. The time. The frustration.

And ultimately, the reward.

CLICK HERE to read an amazing post by Tina about the remarkable journey she took to write her newest book.

Oh, and be sure to take a minute and congratulate her. In this hard and often lonely business, we writers need all the encouragement we can get!

Permission for Image Use-2

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Before I move on to explaining how I kept my travel journal/research trip for my book, JANE AUSTEN FOR KIDS, I wanted to mention something I remembered about getting permission to use photographs I took from historic sites on my trip.

Many permission forms will ask you for the PRINT RUN information for your book. You have to provide this before they will sign the permission form.

Since I already had signed a contract with my publisher to write the book and take photographs to include it in, I simply asked my editor for that information.

But if you don’t have a contract, the very least you can do is fill in general information that most books have for their print run. Then when you get your contract you can go back to that historic site or place and request a new form to find. Don’t ever do this blindly…always talk with your contact person about what to do if the print run information changes significantly from the info you write down…will it be extra (large) fees? Just be open and honest and don’t sign anything you’re not sure of. Just move on to some place else that is more reasonable to work with if a place starts throwing expensive cost quotes out to you.

On the permission form they’ll need your name and address and e-mail address. I created a brand new e-mail address that I only use for permission forms like this related to my book projects. The wonderful thing about this is that all my e-mails from my book project research and image permission forms are in one handy place without any other distracting e-mails mixed in.

Here is the PRINT RUN info most places request:

Working Title: Always include a “working title” because up until your book actually goes to print, the official title can always change!

Publisher: Just say unknown if you don’t yet have one

Initial print run: 5,000 is usually a realistic number. This is a typical number of books printed when a book first comes out. Talk with your contact person at the historic site about this number. Some places will really charge you a lot if the number is higher than this. Make sure they are reasonable, especially if you don’t know your publisher’s actual number.

Price: Just look up a typical cost of a similar book to yours on Amazon. Again, mention that it is unknown, but probably…$XX to give them a ballpark figure

Edition: Paper and e-book. These days always include both paper editions and e-book editions because publishers usually want to do both right off the bat.

Rights: World. If you can request world rights without a hassle, go for it as you don’t know what the publisher will want.

Language: English. From my experience, English is all you need, especially because every contract I’ve ever dealt with that I can remember always paid me when someone negotiated translation rights. So just asking for English should be fine.

Expected publication date: Just say unknown if you don’t yet know

When I’m getting ready to contact historic sites or other places I want to take pictures for my writing project, I just type all this info up in one handy place so I’m ready to go.

Oh, and just a note…this is by no means legal advice!!!! Before you sign anything always make sure you are absolutely certain about what you are signing.

Hope this helps!!!!

Permission for Image Use

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Before I’m embarked on my Photo Research Tour to take photographs for my book, JANE AUSTEN FOR KIDS, I had to do my homework.

When I signed the contract to write JANE AUSTEN FOR KIDS, I knew I needed to acquire a number of images to include within the book. I had no intention of traveling to England at that time because you can pay companies for permission to publish their images in your book.

Plus there are a lot of images you can use for free that are in the public domain because they are copyright free and royalty free.

I started my search for images by seeing what was available for copyright free and royalty free. There were actually a number of these either of historic England or relating to the books Jane wrote.

Just a note about these free images. For each image I submit to a publisher for use in a published book, a permission form is required. So I saved the URL and printed out the copyright form from the sites where I got these images. Each image had its own copyright form and URL link in my final manuscript submission.

Then I started looking for companies in England that I could purchase permission to publish images in their collections.

I discovered 2 important factors.

#1 Many of the images I could get permission to use were NOT actually owned by the company, so I would still have to track down who actually owned the images AND get permission (and pay) them as well. BIG red flag.

#2 Many of the images I wanted to use were quite expensive to pay for permissions.

At this point, I decided to investigate historic sites such as churches that might have images of Jane or her life.

I just started searching online for historic sites like these, finding their contact information, and e-mailing them.

I found out that a significant number of these historic sites informed me that they owned images and artifacts of Jane’s and that I could take my own photographs of these items or images and publish them for free.

So now I was faced with a question…pay several thousand dollars to get permission to use a small amount of images (and still have to track down who owned them) or use that money to travel to England to take my own photographs and get tons of images to use. (Many that might never have been published in a book before!)

No brainer! I opted to travel to England for my third official photo research tour. It was the trip of a lifetime (and I have it all documented in my travel journal!)

But once again, each image I would eventually publish in my book had to have its own permission form.

Guess what? Most historic sites and image resources have their own permission form. No sweat! They just e-mail me the form, I signed it, and carried it with me on my trip. When I arrived at any given historic site, I had the form with me and the contact person’s name and the rest was easy peasy. Most of the contacts met me at the historic sites and what a delight that was to meet them and talk about my book project.

For places that didn’t have permission forms, my publisher provided me with ones for us to sign. We did it all over e-mail.

So if you want to include photographs in a potential book, first ask the historic site or image source if they already have a permission form you need to sign.

If they don’t have an official permission form, I send them an e-mail stating that they give me permission to use the image in my book. I print it out when they return the e-mail with their permission. Then, when you do sign a contract with a publisher, you’ll probably need to go back with the publisher’s official form and have them sign that.

That’s pretty much how permissions works for photographs and images.

(Oh, and for those sites and places that don’t let you take photographs or use them in your book, just thank them and move on. Keep looking! Hopefully you’ll find some.)

Writer’s Journal: Research Trip

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Over my 30+ year career as a writer, I’ve gone on 3 significant research trips. I’ve always referred to them as a “Photo Research Tour” because my mission was to take photographs of my book’s topic to eventually publish in the printed book.

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The first book for which I embarked on a Photo Research Tour was AMERICA’S BLACK FOUNDERS. I traveled to Philadelphia, Mount Vernon, Monticello and more where I took lots of photographs at historic sites, museums, and churches to publish.

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My next book that I needed photographs for was FREDERICK DOUGLASS FOR KIDS. For this trip I walked in this great man’s footsteps as I visited Maryland to locate his birthplace, the plantation where he first worked, and various homes he lived in and places he worked after he escaped from slavery. Once again I got permission from a wide variety of historic sites, museums, and churches to take photographs to publish in my book.

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It wasn’t until my most recent Photo Research Tour, however, that I had the idea to take along and create a writer’s journal during my trip. This time I headed to England to take photos for my newest title, JANE AUSTEN FOR KIDS. Creating this travel journal took the experience to an entirely new level!

In the upcoming series of posts here on my blog, I’ll share some of the joys I experienced and techniques I used creating this journal. I hope you’ll gain information and inspiration to learn how to create a writer’s journal on your next research trip, too!

A Four-Book Giveaway

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As writers, I truly believe it’s important to build a sense of community. I think this involves helping each other boost our books. It’s a tough world out there in social media and landing contracts and getting the word out about our books. Every hand of help we can give to each other is an investment in many rich ways.

That’s one of the reasons I’m excited to share that I’m a member of the book-launch team for one of my online writing friends and fellow contributors to the Christian Children’s Authors blog. Glenys Nellist has a touching and sweet brand new book coming out for little ones, Little Mole Finds Hope, and I have the privilege of giving you a shout out about it!

Hurry on over to her blog! For a limited time, she’s giving away four copies of her brand new book! CLICK HERE to put your name in the hat.

But more importantly, join in on the fun to help give the shout out to one of your fellow children’s writers. Hopefully, one day we can do the same for you!!!!

Writer’s Journal: Journaling an Event

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When you attend an event as an author, there are oodles of handouts you can add to your event journal.

When I attended the annual conference (AGM) for the Jane Austen Society of North America, I collected as many handouts as I could. Many of them I glued on the spot into my event journal. I used my handy little pair of scissors to make them fit. I figured that when I got home, I’d have time to ponder and reflect on the handouts.

I particularly wanted to share this handout that you see in the photo above. At the time when I glued this into my event journal, I just thought it was cool. Fun. A little paper to fold and play a game.

It wasn’t until later, when I was planning my teacher’s guide to go along with my book, Jane Austen for Kids, that I got the idea to create something similar to put in my teacher’s guide. (Coming soon!)

The moral of this story is…even if you don’t see a use for something while you’re at an event, add it to your journal. It can be the inspiration for a new idea when you’re looking for one.

So this wraps up my posts about keeping an event journal when you attend a writing-related event. I hope in the year ahead you’ll find lots of opportunities to create an event journal. Have fun!

Writer’s Journal: Journaling an Event

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Keeping a journal at a research-related or writing event can be so rewarding in so many countless ways.

For example, when I walked into the workshop on making a Jane-Austen era turban, there was a stack of postcards.

I took two.

TIP: If it’s available, always take two of colorful 1-page double-sided handouts so you can glue the front up AND the back up and have both there to see. (If only one is available, tape it into your journal after you get home, don’t glue it, so you can flip it over to see the back.)

I glued them immediately into my journal–the front as a reference for the style.

The back as a reference for the presenter’s contact information.

The benefit?

I eventually added a craft to my book, JANE AUSTEN FOR KIDS, on how to make regency era turban. I used notes from the workshop to create my own series of how-to-instructions, and when I hit a glitch, I used the contact info on the postcard to call the presenter and ask her for help.

And as you can see, I also took hand-drawn illustrations as notes, too.

I’m definitely not an artist, but I’ve learned not to be shy about sketching little sketches when it helps.

Here’s another double-sided flyer I took two of so I could glue both sides in my journal.

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Cyber Monday Sale Serious Writer Academy

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Yes! Serious Writer Academy, where I am one of the instructors, is continuing on with the holiday fun and having a Cyber Monday Sale!

Classes will be 40% off if you use the code CYBERMONDAY19.

So far, I have one class with the academy, an in-depth 75 minute video class you can download and watch at your own convenience. Plus it has oodles of handouts that are printable worksheets to help make your writing a success.

DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS WITH TOP SECRET DETECTIVE FILES is the inside scoop on how I develop characters whether I’m writing a picture book or a chapter book for a best-selling series…whether I’m writing fiction OR nonfiction.

Today you can get my class (plus others!) at Serious Writer Academy at this great discount.

CLICK HERE to go directly to DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS WITH TOP SECRET DETECTIVE FILES.

Black Friday Sale Serious Writer Academy!

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Yes! Serious Writer Academy, where I am one of the instructors, is joining in on the holiday fun and having a Black Friday Sale!

Classes will be 60% off if you use the code BLACKFRIDAY19.

So far, I have one class with the academy, an in-depth 75 minute video class you can download and watch at your own convenience. Plus it has oodles of handouts that are printable worksheets to help make your writing a success.

DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS WITH TOP SECRET DETECTIVE FILES is the inside scoop on how I develop characters whether I’m writing a picture book or a chapter book for a best-selling series…whether I’m writing fiction OR nonfiction.

Today you can get my class (plus others!) at Serious Writer Academy.

CLICK HERE to go directly to DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS WITH TOP SECRET DETECTIVE FILES.