How to write your first children's book - meet the experts
knutsfordguardian.co.uk – Saturday March 21, 2026
Cheshire has produced generations of award-winning children’s authors, from Lewis Carroll to contemporary luminaries such as Alan Garner. Now, in World Book Day month, we discover what it takes to pen a hit for young readers.
For me, it’s Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree. My daughters opt for Dame Lynley Dodd’s unlikely canine hero, Hairy Maclary. Friends and family suggest other titles – Shirley Hughes’ We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola, Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, JK Rowling’s Harry Potter. They’re all stories that endure – enthralling and inspiring young readers and making indelible marks on fresh imaginations in a way fiction rarely does as we mature.
In Warrington, international best-selling author Curtis Jobling traces his success back to childhood inspirations.
One book after another: indie publisher Joffe Books continues to rise
thebookseller.com – Friday March 20, 2026
To enter Joffe Books’ office, one must first navigate several levels of a dark and dimly lit stairwell in a Shoreditch office block – a heart-racing endeavour in more ways than one. But on reaching it, a New York loft-style haven of light and space beckons. A more informal and talkative office atmosphere than some traditional publishers, there is a palpable sense of energy – perhaps aided by the smorgasbord of luxury chocolates in the kitchen. A permanent fixture, I am told.
I am here to speak with founder and chief executive officer Jasper Joffe and editorial director Rachel Slatter, not long after the indie made yet another acquisition, the Severn House list. This takes the imprint count to five, with turnover cresting £10m, Joffe says. Much of this is generated by the digital-first company’s e-books base, but print is growing, up 16% in 2025 to £231,000 through NielsenIQ BookScan.
Genre as Delight, Not Dictator: How Learning About Genres Helps You Write Better
janefriedman.com – Tuesday March 17, 2026
Jane recently wrote about the importance of not obsessing about arbitrary genres and subgenres, whether one is just beginning to write a book or struggling to pitch it. After all, genres (and categories) are the concerns of people selling books, not the people writing them.
Yes, but. Or should I say Yes, and?
As a multi-genre author of seven novels who jumped from literary historical fiction to the more commercial thriller category a few years ago—and sold more copies in the last two years than I’d sold in the previous ten—I want to share my view that genre does matter in ways that can be inspiring and instructional rather than limiting or vexing.
First, let me explain that I came to creative writing via literary fiction and the classics. I fed my late-blooming novelist’s mind with doses of Virginia Woolf, Philip Roth, and Ian McEwan. My debut historical novel was modeled on Don Quixote.
This high-brow literary focus taught me useful things about voice, theme, and the evolution of the novel as a form, which I passed on to my students once I became an MFA instructor. What it didn’t always teach me or my students effectively was how to plot. Or even about how to develop characters, in that I gravitated toward characters who were opaque, passive, and generally inaccessible. While my friends were reading Fifty Shades of Grey, I was thoroughly enjoying Of Human Bondage. (Don’t be fooled by the title; it’s not a spicy book.)
I challenged ChatGPT to a writing competition. Could it actually replace me?
theguardian.com – Thursday March 12, 2026
Every writer I know is in despair at the prospect being replaced by AI. Many of them say they never use it on principle; I know all of them do.
So this week, as part of my AI diary, I’m conducting the forbidden experiment in plain sight. I’m going toe to toe with ChatGPT as a creative writer. Can it truly match me, and might it replace me? Let’s settle this.
We do battle using writing prompts, selected at random from an excellent new guide called A Year of Creative Thinking by Jessica Swale. The first page I flip to has us inventing new words for existing things. It’s very fun. A cheese grater, I decide, could easily be known as a “stinkchizzle”. A very long road would be better as a “slodgepuff”. A fart becomes a “piffsnut”, and a dream an “asterfantastic”. I’m pleased with that one. But how does the machine do?
For cheesegrater it has scritchygrater, which is obviously crap. Very long road? Neverendipath. Bit literal. Trumpelsnort is pretty good, as is slumberwhim. I like nibblink for mouse. For some reason, I could only come up with “pimpsquint”.
Self-publish and be scammed: Jon’s tale of heartbreak highlights boom in fraudsters using AI to supercharge book swindles
theguardian.com – Wednesday March 11, 2026
New wave of publishing scams mimic lonely hearts hoaxes of old – swapping promises of true love for the fantasy of literary acclaim. And the wooing process is now fully automated
Eight years of dedication were poured into the pages of Angel of Aleppo, Jon Cocks’ debut historical novel. Inspired by his wife’s grandmother, a survivor of the Armenian genocide of the early 20th century, it was a labour of love, distilled from thousands of hours of research and oral testimony.
The retired South Australian high school teacher’s project carried the weight of family history and historical truth. It was precisely this emotional gravity that rendered him vulnerable.
The new wave of artificial intelligence-fuelled publishing fraud that began saturating global markets last year lifts directly from the lonely hearts playbook. Rogue publishing schemes – most operating out of south Asia, the Philippines and Nigeria – have become the new romance scams, substituting the promise of true love for the dream of literary recognition.
In six months Cocks has lost almost A$10,000.
Nick Petrie: The Joys and Challenges of Writing a Long-Running Series
crimereads.com – Wednesday March 11, 2026
The creation of every book still feels like holding a newborn kitten in my hand, a small and fragile creature that I never quite believe will grow strong enough to survive on its own. Although I’ve done it nine times now — ten times, if you include the finished manuscript now awaiting the sharp red pen of my copy editor — writing a novel from beginning to end always seems impossible until it’s actually done.
I’m thinking about this now because I’m trying to come up with the next book in my Peter Ash series. As a novelist, this is one of my favorite moments, with many distinct joys and challenges. Interestingly, the challenges, which become more significant with each new book, are the inverse of the joys.
The joy of conceiving a new book begins with the recurring characters. By now, Peter Ash, June Cassidy, and Lewis have become old friends. I know their personal histories, how they think and talk, their secret fears and fierce loves. Sometimes I dream about them. Writing in their voices has become second nature for me, like a conversation around the dinner table with folks I’ve known forever.
Expert advice on how to a write a children's book
greatbritishlife.co.uk – Thursday March 5, 2026
Cheshire has produced generations of award-winning children’s authors, from Lewis Carroll to contemporary luminaries such as Alan Garner. Now, in World Book Day month, we discover what it takes to pen a hit for young readers.
For me, it’s Enid Blyton’s The Magic Faraway Tree. My daughters opt for Dame Lynley Dodd’s unlikely canine hero, Hairy Maclary. Friends and family suggest other titles – Shirley Hughes’ We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Lauren Child’s Charlie and Lola, Julia Donaldson’s The Gruffalo, Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid, JK Rowling’s
Harry Potter. They’re all stories that endure – enthralling and inspiring young readers and making indelible marks on fresh imaginations in a way fiction rarely does as we mature.
In Warrington, international best-selling author Curtis Jobling traces his success back to childhood inspirations.
Publishing houses have hundreds of imprints. What are they exactly?
marketplace.org – Saturday February 14, 2026
The book publishing market share is heavily concentrated in five or so publishing houses: Penguin Random House, Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Hachette. But these publishers all have a vast collection of imprints, and often it seems a book is more closely associated with its imprint than its parent publisher. My question is: What exactly are imprints and what are they for? The easy answer would be branding but it seems each imprint operates more or less individually on its books, implying it’s not just for appearances sake and might have a deeper purpose.
The big five publishers collectively have hundreds of imprints, spanning categories like classic literature, romance, science fiction, fantasy and business.
There are imprints like Golden Books, a brand from Random House whose children’s books have a recognizable gold-foil spine. Scribner, an imprint from Simon & Schuster whose published authors include Stephen King and Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Egan. And Harlequin Books, an imprint from HarperCollins that publishes the famed Harlequin romance novels.
Not all imprints have strong brand recognition among the public, but imprints have a purpose within the publishing world, helping agents know which brand they should pitch to, according to publishing experts that Marketplace spoke to. The people who work at imprints have also developed expertise on books within their brand and know how to market them.
Fanfiction’s Total Cultural Victory
defector.com – Tuesday February 3, 2026
In 2012, a self-published author of erotic Twilight fanfiction, whose books had gained a large fan base online, was offered a seven-figure contract by a major American publisher. E. L. James's Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy would become the three bestselling titles of the 2010s in the U.S. (even Fifty Shades Freed, the now mostly forgotten end to the trilogy, outsold The Hunger Games). They would also sell over 150 million copies worldwide across 52 languages.
The impact was immediate: Op-eds were written. Bad prose was excerpted. Stock photos of fluffy handcuffs appeared everywhere. And, amidst all the endless discussions about ethical BDSM and "mommy porn" and what, exactly, women might want, fanfiction had suddenly become highly lucrative. Instead of asking what Fifty Shades meant for women, people should have been asking what it meant for publishing.
Book publishers were afraid of building shared universes until they saw how successful the Marvel Cinematic Universe was, according to Brandon Sanderson
thepopverse.com – Tuesday February 3, 2026
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is so influential that it has even changed the way books are published. Publishers and readers are embracing shared universes, such as Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse and Jeremy Robinson’s Nemesis Saga. While book series are nothing new, a shared literary universe is different because it can focus on different characters and different time periods in a shared continuity, whereas a series will tell a linear story with the same characters.
Brandson Sanderson, who created the Cosmere literary universe, recalls how the shift began after the MCU took off. “I thought I want to do all these magic systems, all these different planets, and I want to connect them all,” Brandon Sanderson says during New York Comic Con 2022’s Titans of Fantasy panel. “People were really scared of continuity back then. When I was doing this, this was a few years before the MCU came out. Publishers were scared. They wanted one series but they didn’t want this big interconnected thing because the conventional wisdom was this would scare off readers.”
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