Creating Books For Young People

Young people are one of the biggest market for books. It doesn’t matter if it’s the printed book, ebook or the audiobook format, young people are the biggest market for books. That is why there are many authors who seriously consider writing for this market segment.

Consider such famous authors such as RL Stine and Neil Gaiman who have written books especially for young people. If you have not been following the contemporary authors of today, maybe you know the name Dr. Seuss.

Neil Gaiman:

One of Neil Gaiman’s claim to fame in the children’s media world is that he writes the script for the famous SandMan comics series. One of Neil Gaiman’s most famous children’s book which has even been made into a movie is Coraline.

The thing that is special about this book is that it has a very strong horror element but still manages to appeal to child readers and watchers. From the protagonist to the illustrations, it is clear that Coraline is intended for children.

RL Stine:

The same is true with RL Stine. He wrote successful horror books for child readers. He is perhaps known for his world famous Goosebumps horror children books series. These books in fact has set records for being one or the biggest selling children’s book series.

He also wrote entire horror book series for the teenage market. He is so successful that he has become one of the richest authors still living who almost exclusively write horror children’s books.

These two authors are proof that as an author, you should seriously consider the lucrative market for horror children’s books at least. But there are more authors who have become successful writing just for children.

Dr. Seuss

I guess there is hardly a child in the western world or even worldwide that has not read or know about the books of Dr. Seuss. The most popular of these books would be those pertaining to The Cat In The Hat books.

A couple of Dr. Seuss’ books and characters have even been turned into movies and television shows. Even today, the books of Dr. Seuss are still popular among child readers and even many adults who grew up with the books.

If everytime you hear the word children’s books you think about thin books with little text and plenty of child pleasing illustrations, you are correct. Though there are many types of children’s books, these thin books with pleasing illustrations and little text are still the norm.

These kinds of books are the more lucrative segment of the children’s market. This is because of their visual appeal. As small children are still more visually stimulated by beautiful and cute graphics images rather than text, they make excellent gifts to children just like greeting cards.

As gifts to children, adults tend to think better of children’s books as a better gift to children as compared to toys. This is because well-meaning adults like to encourage children to read as many books as possible.

The Importance of Illustrations

And one way to encourage children to read books is to entice them with beautiful and cute images designed to appeal to their young age. In a way, the illustrations of children’s books are the advertisement or marketing to small children and their parents.

This is how important are the illustrations in children’s books. You could say that they are almost the content of children’s books more than the text of the book themselves. Don’t believe me?

Have you ever seen an alphabet book targeted to babies? I have seen children’s books with just images and the only text are single letters. For example, a page of these children’s books may contain the image of an apple and there is just the letter ‘A’ as text.

This proves that you can basically create a children’s book whose pages are mostly composed of just images. The texts are just secondary as very young children are not likely to read them. In case you didn’t know, this is also the power of comics over children.

Could You Create Illustrations For Your Children’s Books?

While it is true that becoming a great graphics artist or illustrator can be learned through practice, not many have the inclination or patience to be one. This might be your greatest obstacle in creating children’s books if you are a one man team.

You don’t consider this a big problem? You better think again. Have you checked around for the cost of hiring a graphics artist or illustrator? They can run into the thousands of dollars for a simple children’s book.

Considering that the graphics images of the children’s book are the main attraction of the book, it looks like you need to spend considerable resources in making sure that your graphics illustrations are of the highest quality.

That is why it is very risky if you do your own illustrations for your children’s books if you are not an expert at drawing. Many would be authors spend less resources on their graphics images and soon learn that the texts of their books are not the ones that makes their books sell.

Because children and young people are considered to be still at an age where they are not considered to be mature yet, authors tend to follow certain rules for writing books marketed towards these young people.

Depictions Of Sex:

If you are the kind of author who likes writing about sex scenes especially steamy or downright pornographic ones, then don’t consider writing books for children. The children may not care or not understand what you are writing about, but the parents and carers of these children will react.

It is no coincidence that many censorship rules that have been drafted by the government aims to prevent children from learning about sex. It is not the duty of this article to point out if depicting sex to children is good or bad, but rules are rules.

The rules say that any forms of children’s entertainment which depicts sex is considered illegal and may land the creator in jail or they may incur fines. There are many instances where the government and the moral police have gone overboard with this issue.

I distinctly remember when I was a teenager when there was a time when comics were considered immoral by the government and the moral police for depicting very sexy super heroines.

It may sound crazy, but there was a time when wonder woman comics were being confiscated by the police because government authorities deemed wonder woman’s costume to be highly immoral.

If you are really interested in writing sex scenes, then you are better off writing romance and erotic novels. And this may be for the better. In case you don’t really know it by now, romance and erotic novels are the bestselling fiction genre.

It is arguable, but the more the sex scenes of a romance or an erotic novel, the better it sells. So don’t despair if you not making it as a children’s book author, you may still make it in the romance and erotic book genre.

Depictions Of Gore:

Violence in some form cannot be avoided when writing most fiction novels. Most novels deal with conflicts. It is inevitable that there would be some form of violence in your story. You however need to remember that the government and the moral police are looking behind your back as you write your novel.

These people have the intention of erasing violent ideas from the minds of young readers. For example, depictions of animal cruelty, torture and gore are strongly frowned upon by these people. There are really laws that prohibit children’s entertainment from containing gore.

There has been a case in America where an author has been put on trial by the government for allegedly promoting gore through animal mutilations in his book. He was being tried because he allegedly influenced a gang of young people to mutilate a cat through his books.

Deaths are permissible, but violent and gory deaths are a no-no in children’s books. Again, we have the government and the moral police to thank for these somewhat silly rules. Everyone knows that in real life, many people die horrible deaths.

But try telling this reality to government and the moral police. Again, the reason why these people made up these rules is to allegedly protect the children from the trauma they can experience after reading these books.

They do have a point. But at what age do we still protect these children from such gory stories? If you like writing gore in your stories, better not market it to children of you may get in trouble with the law.

No One Really Dies:

Though not strictly followed by many children’s authors, this is almost an unwritten rule. The issue of death is a very divisive one. There are people who encourage people to tell their children about death.

There are also people who try to prevent their children from being exposed to the issue of death. It is for you to decide if this is right or wrong, but many parents have this strong notion that children will be traumatized if they see or read that someone has died.

This way of thinking does have merits. I remember in one of George RR Martin’s podcasts, he told his story of how as a young boy he wrote stories for the other children he knows.

According to him, he was warned by his mother to stop writing stories for his child friends when some of the mothers of his child friends complained that their children were unable to sleep after reading the young George RR Martin’s stories.

If a child can be scared by the stories written by another child, then what more if you wrote stories were the child would be traumatized by the death of someone especially someone they really care about.

Using Simple Words:

Another rule of writing to young people especially to children is to use only simple words. This is not an insult to young people, but rather, it is more for convenience. Have you ever read a book and as you read it, you have to resort to using a dictionary just to find out the meaning of the words in it?

This must be the reason why books that use fancy words are getting out of style. No one wants to trouble themselves with complicated meaning words when simple words with simple meanings would do.

If you are an avid book reader and follows the publishing word, you would notice that books about poem are not that popular. There are of course people who love reading poems. But for the greater majority of readers, simple to understand sentences would do.

Writing for young people can be lucrative. Many successful authors have written successful young people’s books. Neil Gaiman, RL Stein and Dr. Seuss are just some of these authors who have succeeded in the young people’s book market.

When it comes to children’s books, illustrations are very important. Children are attracted to beautiful and cute illustrations arguably more than the text of the books. You can write a children’s book page with nothing more than an image and a letter.

If you are writing for young people, consider some rules of writing young people’s novels especially for children. These are no depictions of sex, no depictions of gore, no one really dies and the use of simple words.

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