Some info on getting published in NZ...UPDATED (2014)

UPDATE - You can find a 2016 update on 'Getting Published In New Zealand' here  

I posted some general information on getting published in New Zealand on this blog in 2010 and it would be fair to say that the publishing landscape here has changed somewhat in the intervening years. So I thought it might be helpful to give y'all the 2014 version which is a little different.

So you’ve written 'The End', read your story umpteen times, checked and re-checked it for mistakes, and edited it till it sparkles – what do you do next? 

In the past I've recommended checking out which publishers were publishing what kind of books and then suggested submitting your manuscript to the publishers most interested in your kind. Now, you must first ask yourself - do I want to seek traditional publication of my work or should I self publish? Do you want to go digital only or have your book in print? Go look at sites like Amazon and Smashwords etc... and check out their best-sellers. Some genres sell very well for writers self publishing and it is an excellent option. Some books are best in print. I like picture books this way and would not want to attempt to arrange an illustrator, designer, editor, etc... and the printing of these myself. I want the help of experienced practitioners. On the other hand I am happy to try self publication of a novel, but in most cases I will pursue traditional publishing first. 

So do your homework before you decide anything. 

Then if you've decided to try the traditional route with this manuscript (go look here, here and here if you want to know how I tackled self pubbing a children's novel) start here: - 

Submitting

1. Re-read your work again. If possible read it aloud – you don’t need an audience for this but it is amazing what reading aloud will show you about your work – repetition, incorrect or missing punctuation, troublesome flow, missing information, or dialogue confusion.

2. Research the market – where should you send it? Who publishes this kind of thing? What are their submission guidelines? (Since the last time I posted on this topic publishers Penguin and Random have merged and Harper Collins and Pearson Education have quit these shores. At the moment of typing Penguin NZ have advertised for a children's editor. Publishers ARE still currently publishing children's fiction and non-fiction in New Zealand and are still looking for good material).

There is general information on 'Writing and Illustrating for Children in New Zealand' here at the Christchurch City Libraries website. This includes submission guidelines for most of the children's publishers in New Zealand

or you could start here and check out the online resources at the PANZ (Publishers Association of New Zealand) website.

And/or take a look at these
-Writers and Artists Yearbook
-Children’s Writers and Artists Yearbook
-Writers and Illustrators Market
-Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market
These books are published annually are available to buy from good bookshops and are held in some libraries

3. Do what the submission guidelines say – DO NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE. They supply guidelines because this is how they want to receive your stories. You might think it's a good idea to do something different and stand out from the crowd. But all it does is make you stand out for the wrong reasons. Follow the guidelines.

4. Query/covering letter. You need to include the name of your manuscript, the word count, genre, the intended market, a brief outline of the work, and your publishing credits, if you have some. For fiction you will need a synopsis, and either several chapters or the entire manuscript as per submission guidelines. For non-fiction you generally submit a proposal.


Educational Markets 
The educational market is considerably less robust than it used to be here in New Zealand. Many New Zealand children's writers and illustrators got their start with the School Journal - a New Zealand institution for decades - including me. The School Journal is in the process of changing to a new supplier so keep an eye on their website for submission details. 

School Journals - the contract to produce these is currently held by Lift Education
School Magazine – Australia


Competitions
Check out the NZSA website and Storylines for details on competitions, fellowships, and awards

The Joy Cowley Award (picture book) and Tom Fitzgibbon Award (children's novel by an unpublished author) are important competitions for children's writers in New Zealand. Scholastic NZ currently have the biggest children's publishing programme in this country but at the moment do not accept manuscripts from unpublished authors. However they do read every single manuscript submitted for these competitions (it is true - I know the people who do it!!) and they publish the winner and sometimes also publish other stories entered for these competitions. Entries for both close on October 31st every year

Agents
We don’t have many in New Zealand. You do not necessarily need an agent to get published here. NZ Publishers are used to dealing directly with the author. If you would like to try overseas markets then you would probably benefit from having either a NZ or overseas agent. It’s not impossible to get one. Check out this site for those NZ agents who belong to the NZ Association of Literary Agents. Books such as the Writers Market and Writers Yearbooks mentioned above have contact details for overseas agents.

Writers Organisations
NZSA (New Zealand Society of Authors)
Kiwiwrite4kidz (an online community of local children's writers on facebook)
Storylines (the Children's Literature Foundation of New Zealand)
NZ Book Council

If you are serious about writing there are a lot of benefits in belonging to writer’s organisations and joining critique groups. I have learnt more from my fellow writers than I ever could have learnt on my own.

Handy things to have: -

An up-to-date, reputable Dictionary
A Roget’s Thesaurus
Reference books – Baby names
Dictionary of Classical Mythology
Dictionary of Phrase and fable
Biographical Dictionary
‘How to’ Books
Books on Grammar (The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B.White, Longman)

And the most important thing you can do to help yourself in your quest to create publishable material? - read more books, especially contemporary ones, in the genre you are choosing to write in

On display...

Oi competition judging is haaarrrrdddddddddddd. There was nothing to pick between the entries. Like really. Everyone was inspired and moved by the books they chose. Yay!! But there can be only one. The entry that seemed to most suggest some kind of personal transformation was Dawn Grant talking about 'I Am David' by Anne Holm which gave her the sense that she too could write stories like this. Dawn, you are my winner. I will be in touch to discuss your prize.

In other news, my book While You Are Sleeping features in my exhibit as part of the What Lies Beneath Exhibition at the National Library in Parnell, Auckland. My display will be there from now until February 20th with an accompanying teacher resource (available on this blog - see below the blog title). My exhibit looks like this:

Sweet, huh?

There are four other exhibits along with mine, covering picture books, non-fiction, junior fiction and YA (mine is for poetry). You can go and see them at the National Library (8 Stanley Street, Parnell) or have a sneak peek here at the What Lies Beneath Exhibition blog. You can also download all available teaching resources there as well. There will be five new exhibits every month till April 20th. You should check them out.

A competition - make me a better person

My preparations for Dunedin so far? I am breaking my Docs in. I am (mentally) putting aside DVDs and books I want to take with me. It is going well.

Recently I passed my 700th post (I think this is post 702). I fancy having another competition. More on that later.

Meantime I am working on a few other more imminent things - principally an exhibit about my book While You Are Sleeping for the What Lies Beneath Exhibition at the National Library in Parnell, Auckland starting next Monday January 20th.

And thinking, always, about how I can raise the reputation of children's literature. Folk sometimes recognize the importance of children's books and probably do understand the value in switching children on to being readers. But there is a persistent refusal to believe that a children's book might be literary, like an adult book can be literary. That it might be clever, challenging, thought provoking and capable of making you a better person. This article has been doing the rounds on facebook. It is interesting. I have read a few of the books. I'm not sure they all changed me. I have read other books not on the list that 'have' changed me. But that's always the way with lists. I never agree with everything included, or not included - they are subjective entities. That's okay. But this isn't okay. The one children's book on the list of 50 life changing books is introduced by way of an apology. Sorry for including a children's book. I hope it doesn't offend you reader. Ya know its a children's book, but it somehow actually manages to still have a message that might be of interest/be beneficial to an adult. Maybe it was an accident. Okay - I apologise for my sarcastic tone (lowest form of wit, yada yada, yada), but the tone they have adopted encourages the continued subordination of children's literature to adult literature. This is the common consensus. And if it is never challenged it will never change. Children's books can be transformative for both child readers and adult readers.

So for my competition, to win a copy of one of my books (your choice of any of my books except Clever Moo which are now like hen's teeth or any short story anthologies I am included in as I don't have copies of these), tell me the name of a children's book that changed you (you can comment here or on facebook or Goodreads). I will pick my favourite - judges decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. One winner only - competition closes this Sunday 19th at 8pm. Examples for me would be The Earthsea Trilogy, The Outsiders, The Little Prince, The Changeover, The Lion in the Meadow, Where the Wild Things Are (...'and it was still hot'), to name a few... So get cracking!!

Getting ready...

Now 2014 has arrived, suddenly my trip south is looming large like a charging elephant in the rear view mirror.  Someone asked me the other day if I'd started packing yet. No? Will I need 6 and a half weeks? What if I pack all my undies now? I bought some Doc Martens today - my feet are ready.

I thought I'd start the year off with some juicy links to feed the mind and fuel the soul. I like agent Janet Reid's suggestion here on what to say when someone asks you how book sales are going. Her reasoning is sound I think.

Blog reader and starry librarian, Angela Soutar, suggested I check out this lady. Good call Angela. This post seemed especially pertinent (although it's all good). 'Make it urgent' seems like a good philosophy. You can be Donna Tartt and have ten years between novels but there probably aren't that many writers who can sustain the level of interest Ms Tartt is managing. And while her publishing/marketing machine is VERY switched on and does all the smart things to keep the audiences interest current I can't help thinking that its also just partly that the stars are lined up and things are hanging just right for Donna. We can't all be Donna. I'm going to assume it's urgent.

Along with the cool stuff, there will always be the irksome. The opening statement to this piece says that Kate Atkinson's award win (for her book Life After Life) shows that great writing can also be entertaining. I didn't realise that 'challenging' or 'great' writing had previously been mutually exclusive of 'entertainment'. Why is 'entertainment' an unimportant and/or undesired quality in a book?? And its lack, somehow a measure of greatness? If it is not entertainment, then I can't help thinking of a book as the text of a subject I don't wish to learn, or perhaps a punishment, or maybe, worthy: none of which is great.

And lastly, (but not leastly) I had a nice mention of one of my books in the Listener - A Winter's Day in 1939 was one of children's author Kyle Mewburn's reads in 2013. 

Muse on leave...

So, enough with the pictures of the kids. And sorry I have been AWOL. I have been busy with family pre-Christmas (some significant illness, and significant life changes for my parents) and then there was Christmas when food preparation went into overdrive, consumption into hyperdrive, and digestion into warp drive. And then it was my birthday. I would like to announce that I am a year older than I was last year. And in the last few days I have just been lazy...

In 2012 I was wondering (quietly to myself) if my picture book writing days were over. I hadn't had a decent new idea for what seemed like an age. After all, my latest picture book While You Are Sleeping was penned several years ago. I was experiencing a pb drought. Picture books for me are all in the idea. The writing up of the idea is obviously also an important part of the whole but the idea is what gathers the words to it and hopefully sells it to a publisher and encourages readers to pick it up. When you are working with less than 1000 words, the central idea, the conceit, must be a goody. With a focus on novels for a few years I thought my picture book muse had packed up and jumped ship. It wasn't the end of the world. I was still writing. But I wasn't thrilled about it either. I love writing picture books. I love sharing them. And having my name on the front of them is pure happiness.

Well, wherever my muse had sloped off to - she sloped back in 2013. Just a couple of quick visits. But crikey she must have been off planet, or hitting up some exotic substances or something because she dropped off some very exciting fresh new ideas. I just left the door open for her to return. She comes and goes as she pleases and really, I wouldn't like to tell her how to do her job. I wouldn't make her stay against her will. A caged muse tends to produce only cliches. I just let her know I care and tell her she's always welcome no matter where she's been or what she's been up to. Never appear desperate because they can smell desperation a mile off and it is not an attractive scent. Don't go searching for ideas from other muses - then it just looks like you are copying someone else's ideas. Just keep busy and maintain an air of confidence and belief. If you trust they will return, they invariably do. And I wrote two new picture book stories.

My favourite things

Art Explained

We argue about art. What is it? How do you know? When is it beautiful?

Art is how we react. That is why our children are works of art

Getting your marrow spoon ready for 2014...

It is that shiny, tinselly, reflective time of year when I look back over the preceding 11 and a half months and go, 'What the...'. It would be no exaggeration to say that this year has had more than its fair share of the unexpected. Most of the surprises have been happy ones but there have been a few shocks, frustrations and disappointments as well. Whether good or bad, it has been full on and I must say I feel ready for a bit of a lie down over the summer break. Although I won't be lying down too long as I am doing a talk on junior fiction to some Writing for Children university students in early January and giving some writing workshops at Selwyn College in the second half of January (more on that later in this post) and I have some workshop/talk notes to finesse. Oh, and I am one of the authors exhibiting 'What Lies Beneath' my most recent book in an Exhibition we are putting on at the National Library in Parnell beginning in January. Oh....

So 2013, I have embraced you and sucked the marrow out of you. However I feel like I am still digesting you. I don't know what to think about half the things that have transpired. I am hoping to have a handle on it all by mid 2014. If only things would slow down a little and give me time to catch up....

So my philosophical brain twirlings that have emerged from 2013....

- Don't put stuff off until a better time comes along. The time is now! Enrol, submit, apply, enter, participate! Just do it. Everything, especially in the world of publishing (whether trad or self) takes time. If you start now you will be ready by the time things are actually happening.
- the internet is designed to overwhelm you and suck you in. When I was a kid (bleat) I got a weekly magazine for girls and I could pull out the poster of my favourite boy band (I could tell you who they were but then I'd have to kill you - lets just say tartan was involved) and stick it on my wall. Now I can keep a 24 hour watch on my current obsession, and have a pseudo conversation via twitter when I am not googling their next project. No it isn't healthy. The internet is like a best friend that is a cross between the Bitch in Apartment 23 and Single White Female. Use it, but don't let it use you.
- Say yes to everything, but lock yourself away from time to time so no one can ask you to do something.
- Each year make sure you take on at least one thing you didn't think you could do. This year I wrote a story in rhyme. Next year I am moving to Dunedin for six months. Sucking the marrow folks.
- I have seen a lot of phoenix's rising out of some very deep ashes this year. I have been dead impressed listening to folk talk about the nuts and bolts of the publishing process and discussing the cost effectiveness of taking a particular route with printing, etc.... They've taught themselves how it all works and how to make things happen. The tools are out there. People are sharing information. You know the saying - when you are given lemons...
-doing the step before does not always prepare you for the step that comes next, both in terms of writing and all the associated stuff that goes with it. Bit like raising children really. Just when you've sussed the baby stage, they become a toddler. And when you've finally learned how to wrangle the toddler they morph into a pre-schooler. Each time you begin again figuring out the demands of the age stage and the strategies for growing them successfully to the next. At no point do you arrive at the resting-on-your-laurels stage. That is a myth created by advertising companies
- I have come to the conclusion I want to be a champion for NZ Children's literature. It deserves more attention than it gets

It's good to take stock of the year that's been. It's good to set some goals for the year ahead. Sometimes this can be a little like setting New Year's resolutions which I don't think I ever manage to keep, but organising your thoughts into groups of things you would like to do at least clarifies where you see yourself heading and can help you identify what you might need to do to get there. Want to submit something for the Tom Fitzgibbon or Joy Cowley Awards? They close October 31st so aim to polish that manuscript well in advance. Want to go to Storyline's Margaret Mahy Day (end of March, beginning of April) or Family Day (August 31st in Auckland) then pencil these in to your calendar now. If you want to take Massey's Writing for Children paper (Albany Campus) you will need to enrol for the 2014/2015 summer semester. And if you fancy taking any of the writing or publishing courses at Selwyn College in January you can check out the info here.

Go make plans - be bold and pick something fabulous to do that scares you - and get your marrow spoon ready for 2014