Good Titles are It - and Some Shameless Advertising

I've just found out that the new book of my good friend Steve LeVine is now listed on Amazon (out this fall!!!) and it's got a beautiful cover and this humdinger of a title:

As it happens, the book of my other good friend, Elizabeth Pisani, is coming out next week and she's got a terrific title too which is amazing given her subject which is AIDS and the bureaucracy surrounding it.

Here's a screenshot from the outro I made for her video (that's the opposite of intro - and I'll talk about the video in another blog post):

I know, I know, this is a blog about children's book writing but there's no harm in a bit of shameless publicity between friends? That's what the internet is for.

Anyway, the main point I wanted to make was TITLES MATTER.

This became crystal clear to me at the recent SCBWI before-Bologna conference when a panel of agents read the first pages of blind submissions from the audience. They were asked to react the way they would to any submission.

Agents shredding submissions at SCBWI's Bologna conference

And react they did. It was at times a painful experience. It was like American Idol or any other show from TV's humiliation genre. It made me think of all the rejections I ever received and it made me imagine how agents must have opened my submissions and snickered over my leaden words, my unprofessional presentation, my ... but let's not tread that path again.

The main thing is: the agents always, always, ALWAYS wanted to read more when there was a good title.

So work on that title, folks. It opens doors.

Meanwhile, do feel free to buy Steve's and Elizabeth's books. I mean, it's sooo important that we children's authors inform ourselves about affairs in Putin's Russia and the state of the AIDs industry.

Another reason why we should all engage with technology

I am constantly bashing on about how children's authors have to engage with the internet, technology - with the default world that their readers are growing up with. A few days ago, I received this birthday greeting from my nephew in the Philippines - which absolutely made my day. Although it's made by his parents of course, this is a kid who doesn't see anything unusual in video-taping a message or chatting to me on webcam. He's cute, too.

Brighton Children's Book Festival: the Bookseller's-eye-view

Providing Brighton festival goers with books to buy were the kind people from Bags of Books, the Lewes based children's bookstore (one of a decreasing number of specialist booksellers in the country, I might add). Their stall was located in the corner of a room exhibiting some rather startling photographs.

This was the view from behind the book counter: