Children’s books and rejection

November 13, 2014 News

I’ve just received a rejection on the children’s stories, which makes it a bit difficult to know what to do with them next.  They took a little while to write, so I don’t really want to give up on them, but apparently there is no market for folktale-style story telling any more.

My cynical suspicion is that there won’t be such a market until someone independent makes a fortune from them. That won’t be me: I’m no artist, and these stories do need illustrating. I certainly don’t have the funds to hire an illustrator at the moment. Ragged Angel doesn’t do children’s books and strictly speaking didn’t do fiction book until I begged a few years ago. And the main market doesn’t like my style.

I may just release them as text-only freebies on Smashwords or Draft to Digital, or possible create a wizzley article for each. At least that way, they will be read.

On a brighter note, Escape has done quite well, although I’m still tempted to write the pedant’s extensively footnoted version which fills in and explains in detail everything that is going on. Sometimes an eye for detail may go a bit too far!