My first book was for children and I have developed it into a series. I had no clue how to write for this genre so there were a heck of a lot of revisions to get it just right. So to hear someone tell me from a writer’s group, “Oh any one can do that. I can write a children’s book in a day,” was so lovely. Some people, include writers sadly, think children’s books are easy to do. What people don’t understand is one has to write it in a way that it does not dumb them down or so over their head you lose them. It is a balancing act. Getting the dialogue is not easy.
Kids are smarter than people giver them credit for. If you don’t hook them by the end of page one the book is already on the floor while they look for a new one to read. Who do you think buys their books? Parents. And parents who notice what their kids like or don’t like. If these same parents read the book to their children and see how bad it is, they will put it down.
Kids are tough. If yo don’t think so have a group of children beta read your book. If that doesn’t put you in your place and make you want to go in a fetal position I don’t know what else will.
I now do other genres and with that comes new challenges. I am glad though I started with the genre of children. To the question of how hard could it be. The answer is very hard. In fact children literature has been named from a few big sites as being one of the hardest to write.
Children writers don’t always get props. But they should.
Pricing your work and worth is not easy. How do you figure out how much an hour of your time for the knowledge and experience that you will use to help your client? I think a lot of us undervalue ourselves, not wanting to charge too much and scare people off. But yet when we break down the fee we can see how much we have under cut ourselves.
Sharon C. Williams-Author 