JET-Popp: Yokohama Children`s Book Conference
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Laura Popp (Mie-ken, 2009-Present) is a current JET who writes fantasy and science fiction for children and young adults, and is an occasional playwright/film maker. Her short work includes a short story titled “In theShadow Realm” and a documentary she made in Malawi. To read about her amazing adventures all over Japan, go to her blog at laurajanepopp.blogspot.com. (And check out the Authors/Books section of the JetWit Library for a list of more writers in the JET-o-sphere.)
Hello again! This week I would like to report on the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference in Yokohama. It actually occurred on November 14th, but, alas, I have been ill with swine flu and other “opportunistic infections” so I was unable to report. But now you get to hear all about it!
For those of you who don`t know, SCBWI is a great group to get involved with if you write for kids. They have lots of events, critique groups, contests, and resources. Here is their website: http://www.scbwi.jp/
A note on transportation. There are many events for writers and translators in Japan, but most are confined to the big cities. For those of you who live in a small town like me, you may be wondering how you will ever get to this wonderful career-building opportunities and still stay within your tight school-teacher budget. Fear not!
There is a wonderful, often overlooked form of transportation in Japan called the night bus. It may seem like a pain, but the bus I took from my home in Nabari to Yokohama was very comfortable. The bus ride was about eight hours, so if I were more accustomed to sleeping on a bus, I probably could have been well rested when we arrived very early in the morning. The earliness gave me plenty of time for sightseeing before the conference, and since my bus home didn`t leave until 11:00pm. Plus it cost less than half than taking the shinkansen, and there`s no need to pay for a hotel!
That said, I was very tired when I arrived back in Nabari at 7:00am. Fortunately it was Sunday, but I would not recommend taking the night bus if you have to go to work the next day. Also, be warned, not all night buses are created equal. Check to see if the bus you want to ride has reclining seats or not, and if there is a bathroom on board or if they stop ever few hours, turn on the lights, and have people jostling past you trying to get in and out constantly. If you are interested in taking a night bus somewhere, I would recommend contacting the main bus station in your town. Most of them don’t speak English, but a Japanese friend helped me get the information and make reservations over the phone. You may be surprised how many places offer night buses to common destinations such as Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, etc.
(FYI, Yokohama is famous for its beautiful gardens and harbor, but if you want to see pictures of that, you`ll have to check them out at my regular blog.)
The conference itself was very beneficial. The main speaker was senior editor Alvina Ling from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. In the first session, she described her own path to becoming a publisher, and how her father met and married her mother. “We both had very clear goals,” she said. “And so should you. The five steps to becoming a published author are to set your goal, do your research, outline a step by step plan, work hard and preserver, and network like crazy!”
The next session was about her day to day life as a children`s publisher. Turns out she spends most of her time in meetings with other editors, the marketing team, designers, illustrators, etc. Any free moment is spent checking and answering email, though she admits that she, like most publishers, is always 2-3 months behind on this. Most of the actual reading of manuscripts goes on at home, after hours. So in other words, she really loves her job, because it`s her life.
There are eight stages to “bringing a book to life” she said. Acquisitions, editing, transmittal, copy editing, design, galley stage, marketing and publicity, and post production. In acquisitions, she reads the manuscript to see if she would be interested in taking on the project. She has to be really passionate about it, because it will take at least two years before the book is actually on the book shelves in Borders or Barnes and Nobel making money.
Also, she has to come up with a publicity pitch for the production and marketing staff and the head publisher to make everyone excited about it. It`s sort of like bearing your soul, she said. She admitted that there were a few times she was really in love with a project but it was rejected by other employees in the house, and she actually went in the bathroom and cried. It was really reassuring to hear that publishers know what it`s like to be rejected too. That`s the sort of publisher you want, she said. One who will be so dedicated to your work that he/she will fight for your book.
A lot of times she knows something is good, but she just doesn’t feel she`s passionate enough about it to be the right publisher for the project. From personal experience, it can take six months for the publisher to get back to you about whether he or she is personally interested or not. Then it can take another six months until they tell you whether the whole crew is on board or not.
The second stage is editorial, which usually takes six months, but can last as long as a year. She said that, contrary to popular opinion, editors do still edit. That doesn’t mean you should send in your first or even second draft. You want the book to be as good as you can make it, but then expect the editor to make massive revisions if he/she sees fit. (Sometimes the editor may even ask you to rearrange plot points, take out or add characters.) Does that mean you have to accept all his/her suggestions? No. If an editor agrees to a project, that means he/she believes in it, and is usually willing to make compromises. But don`t just dismiss what your editor says either. Editors are insiders to the business and know what will sell and what won`t. Their primary concern is keeping the company in business, and the way they do that is by making the book as good and sellable as it can be.
The third stage is transmittal. This is when decisions are made about how to produce the book, how many copies to make, etc. Then comes copy editing, which is basically checking for typos and minor errors in grammar and spelling. Hopefully by this time all the major editing is done. Half way through the process there are meetings about design. Another “contrary to popular opinion” point, nearly all children`s books are assigned illustrators after the text is accepted by the publisher. Author/illustrator duos are very hard to break in. If the author is also an illustrator, that`s another story, but even then, for a new writer, publishers usually prefer to assign them a well-known illustrator. Sort of how a producer might package a new screenwriter with an experienced director.
Little Brown`s head designer, Alison Impey, talked quite a bit about this stage throughout the conference. In addition to your typical illustrated children`s book for 2-8 year-olds, for middle grade novels (ages 10-14) the publisher might want half-page illustrations at the beginning or end of chapters, illustrated inserts with small text, ornamental lettering, maps or diagrams (especially for fantasy and mystery) a character bio page with pictures, an illustrated glossary, any number of things. This was really exciting to me, because I always pictured these sorts of things for my middle-grade novel Dargon, the Human Slayer that I`m submitting to Little Brown, but a lot of publishers don`t do that sort of thing for middle-grade novels anymore, especially in the older (12-14 year-old) range.
After design come the galley proofs. I used to work for an anthology publisher, and if this is a universal term, galley proofs are long sheets of paper with all the text and illustrations and designs, a final draft to check before the real thing is put to press and book bound. Advanced reader copies (ARCs) for reviewers come from this stage.
Last of all, Ms. Ling talked about marketing and publicity. She said another common misconception is that publishers don`t do anything to promote their books anymore and leave it all up to the author. This is simply not true. There is a lot they do behind the scenes. At Little Brown they get it into all the major book stores, into the school catalogs and major libraries, book a few primary interviews and school visits, and get reviews. But alas, a lot of the publicity is up the author. She recommended doing school visits like crazy and charging for them, as this is how most professional children`s authors actually win their bread and butter. Only about 1 in 100 children`s authors make it on writing alone and even then most of them choose to do visits anyway to get more kids to read their books.
I`ve had a number of old-time writer friends tell me that the best way to become a published author is to quit your job and do some decent starving. I hate to break it to you, but these days even if you were to sell a story the day you quit your job, you wouldn`t see that paycheck for at least six months.
Even in the short story market, it`s not pretty. Of the ten “on spec” stories (submissions without commission) I have been paid for, I have never received a pay check sooner than four months after sending in the story, and in that one case, the publisher was less than a twenty-minute drive from my house. I receive my average paycheck about six months after I send in the story. Most “professional paying markets” only pay about one cent per word, so a three thousand word story gets you $30. Woohoo. You probably spent half that much on paper, ink, and postage just to get it to them and receive their response, not to mention the sample copy of the magazine you had to read or any hard copies you gave your friends to edit before you submitted the story. Ms. Ling said, and I quote, “Either find yourself a day job that leaves you plenty of time to write, be a paid speaker every weekend, or marry somebody rich.”
Not that I`m trying to preach doom and gloom or that it`s impossible to become a professional author. I`m just trying to emphasize that if you want to make a living at it, you have to be creative about marketing and publicity, not just your writing. Also, on a brighter note, commissioned work is much better. I`ve done two writing jobs on commission, three if you count a presentation on business writing that I wrote and presented myself. All of them paid me within a week after I turned in the final draft, and, except for the fiction script, paid at least ten times as much as I`ve ever received by simply sending stuff in on spec. Even the fiction movie script paid more than twice as much. So commissions are awesome! If you`re willing to give up a certain amount of artistic freedom, and know how/where to get them. That`s another topic entirely.
For lunch, I took my bento to the rose garden and ate in the gazebo. I`ll go ahead and tantalize you with one picture:
Then I walked along the harbor view again. On the way back, I passed by a shop titled in English “The Best Cheesecake Café.” If you find yourself in Yokohama, try it out. It was expensive, but incredibly melt-in-you-mouth smooth and rich, and float-off-your-feet light.
In the next section Ms. Ling discussed the “good, the bad, and the ugly” of the publishing business. There were a lot of good pointers in this one. First of all, she said if you want a good publisher, you need a good agent, because most publishers these days don’t take unagented submissions. There is the small press route, but the chances of “hitting it big” with a small press are next to nil. They just don’t have the distribution and marketing. I asked her about self-publishing, e-publishing and vanity press, to which she replied with words along the lines of, if you want something for your friends and family to enjoy, those are great, but if you dream of the world reading and enjoying your book, your best bet is still large or mid-sized traditional presses. She said e-publishing has more than quadrupled in the last year at Little Brown, but still accounts for less than 1% of their sales. The same is true for most big houses.
She also mentioned that it’s better to have a small advance (money upfront) and a good royalty (percentage of profits after you earn out your advance). The last thing you want is to have a big advance and not earn it out. In the end, publishers` decisions are based on profit and loss charts, and if they paid you more than the book sold, they are not likely to work with you again. And neither is anyone else. A good advance is about $5,000, and a good royalty rate is about 6%. Of course, this varies from publisher to publisher. Ms. Ling said you know you’re doing well when a royalty check can pay the mortgage for that month.
After that session, Ms. Ling got together with Little Brown’s head designer, Alison Impey, to talk about how they pair books with illustrators and cover designers. It’s a really interesting process. They look at an illustrator’s style, themes, past projects, notoriety, and of course whether or not they have the time. Interestingly, Ms. Impey said she finds most of her illustrators through on-line forums and networking, not through submitted work. Also, the person who does the interior illustrations might not be the same person who does the cover, or other interior work such as text ornamentation or maps. Writers at Little Brown have some say in the cover, especially if they have an agent or a general idea such as “I want a dragon” or “could this be a collage?” But writers almost always go with what the publisher suggests.
We had Q&A from 4:00-5:00, but the only question that stuck out in my mind was “How long should you wait after querying an agent or publisher before you ask them about the status of your book?” She said four months. Sounds reasonable. She said if they don`t respond within a month to that question, you have every right to start submitting to other publishers, even if that publishers says “no simultaneous submissions.” Then if the first publisher gets back to you a year later with a yes that you haven`t gotten from anyone else, you can still follow up with them without feeling as if you acted unprofessionally.
If you have gotten a yes from someone else, that`s when you seek out an agent in earnest, and they negotiate an auction. Auctions can be good or bad. Sometimes they make publishers competitive and they`ll bet as high as they can to get the book, other times they`ll back out of the competition. Overall, an auction is a good thing. If nothing else, it boosts your reputation and career, making it easier to get an agent and publisher in the future.
Personally, I feel that I gained a lot from the conference. I was afraid it might be a waste of time, because I`ve been to so many already, and there`s only so much that can be said about improving characters, plotting, editing, etc. But this conference was different, because it gave me a clear view of what exactly goes on in a publishing house, and what an editor does on a day-to-day basis. It was very encouraging. All writers need a reminder every once and awhile that editors are people too. They`re not out to rob you of your dreams. In fact, they really want you to succeed, because they love books.
At the end, Ms. Ling mentioned that there should be no reason why we can`t at least begin our published careers here in Japan. Later on it might put a damper of publicity and sales, but many English writers find creative ways around this, such as holding book signings at international schools, doing week-long tours twice a year in their home countries, and of course, lots of internet publicity. She said living in a foreign country does not affect a publisher`s decision to publish an author. We also received a list of resources such as online critique groups, publishing and writing conferences in Japan, support groups, and useful English market guides we can get in Japan. This was the most encouraging thing of all, because I was thinking I wouldn`t have the resources I needed to publish a book while in Japan. It`s going to happen. It`s just a matter of time…
Speaking of that, as with over 90% of publishers these days, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers is a closed house. They only take submissions that are represented by an agent, or ones that receive a recommendation from someone they trust. But for being at the conference, Ms. Ling gave us permission to query her through March 15th! She`s looking for middle-grade books (ages 10-14), so first I`m querying her about Dargon, the Human Slayer! If she dosn`t like that one, I`ll query Treasure Traitor. Wish me luck!
Here`s the group photo. Unfortunately, not everyone’s in it because some people had to leave early, but most of us are here. Ms. Ling is second from the left in front. Holly Thompson, the woman who organized the conference, is on her left. She`s president of the Society of Children`s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Tokyo chapter. The woman on Ms. Ling`s right is Alison Impey, senior designer at Little Brown. I am in the front row wearing the black suit, with my head tilted to one side.
After the conference, I went to Yokohama Chinatown! But to read about that and my other adventures in Japan with pictures and video, visit my regular blog at http://laurajanepopp.blogspot.com/
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