Authors have many reasons for wanting to write children's books. One of the main ones is that they have told stories to children and the kids are enraptured by the characters and events that they hear.

Perhaps you read bedtime stories to your kids. Or use stories to instill morals or as a teaching aid. All these help your storytelling abilities. They don't make you into a childrens author.

Some budding authors are under the misaprehension that writing for children is somehow easier than writing for the adult market. How hard can it be? Books for pre-schoolers contain very few words and lots of illustrations so it must be easy.

WRONG.

Writing books for the children's market is more difficult than writing for the adult market.

Here's why.

When we write for the adult market asumes a general level of education. Adults below that standard will not be readers as they find the written word hard to come to terms with as it is below their liteacy level so they usually don't bother.

Depending on the age group of children that you want to write for, you have to bear in mind that the children do not yet posess the full range of reading skills and it will be your job as an author to help them attain this goal.

Publishers are inundated with manuscripts from unpublished authors and their slush piles are sometimes bigger than the publishers of adult works.

Assuming that I haven't put you off yet and you still yearn to be the next JK Rowling then lets have a look at the steps you need to take in order to get a children's book written and published.

There are two main questions you need to ask before deciding what children's book you will write.

What age of child will I be writing for?

What gender of child will i be writing for?

Broadly speaking, childrens books can be broken down into these catagories.

Books for babies.

Mostly pictures and single words to help the very young child begin to associate pictures with word sounds. Age range 0 to 2 years.

Pre School.

Between 2 and 5 years, the child is learning to recognise word sounds and simple sentence stucture. As a child nears the top of this age range, they should be starting to read stories for themselves.

Sentence structure should be simple and big bright illustrations which reinforce the story.

5-7 Year olds.

Slightly longer words and sentence construction more an emphasis on the story. more sentences on the page, typically 2 or three so the child doesn't feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of words on the page.

Again, at the top end of the age range, illustrations get smaller and word count will increase slightly. Word complexity increases to 5 or 6 letter words and sometimes more to help the child work out the meaning of a complex word from its context in a sentence.

8-11 year olds.

Mostly text now, illustrations just to reinforce the text, very few in number if any. grammar and syntax and number of words per page are approaching adult levels at the top end of the age range.

11-17 year olds.

Written in adult style but discussing themes that are relevant to the age-range in question. I'll deal with subject matter later.

Even in these days of overt political correctness, the gender of a child does matter.

Stereotypically, Boys like cars, planes, guns and gaming. Up to a certain age they don't like girls as they come under peer preassure not to be "girly"

Girls like dolls, house, romance (teens) up to a certain age they don't like boys.

Not a full list by any means but it gived you a few ideas to be going on with.

This can be a lucrative area of the market to write for, indeed, many books have been written for the disabled child or children with learning difficulties.

Another market is for books that help able-bodied kids to accept children with disabilities as being normal.

Writing for gifted children.

It's not true that gifted children will read adult books although a great many do but writing foiction starring an intelligent child is a market that is under-exploited at the moment. Such books fall into the problem solving adventure category more often than not.

before you put pen to paper you must research the market thoroughly.

Read books about writing childrens books.

What books are kids reading? What books are publishers publishing? Get yourself a notebook or a dictaphone, go to your local major bookstore and look at the books for your age,gender and abilty range. Are they illustrated? How many pages? What is their avearge sentence and word length.

Who publishes them? Who are the authors? Who are their agents? All this information needs to be cataloged before you sit down to write. Check Amazon's best seller lists for childrens books. Check trade magazines for publishers new releases. Subscribe to publishers newsletters.

Note recurring themes for these books. Death of a pet or relative, for example. what are the issues that a child of your age, gender and ability need to deal with?

How do these bestsellers deal with these issues? Can you do better?

Plan your book after these examples of best sellers.

Then sit down and write it. Don't edit until you've finished. Just write.

You have three choices.

If you are good enough, you can illustrate your own books.

You can send a storyboard and suggested illustrations to a publisher with the manuscript. they will find you an in-house illustrator if they like your idea.

You can hire an illustrator. Don't forget that for the last two option, you may well have to share royalties with the illustrator concerned.

Make sure they are accepting new authors.

Make sure tey accept new childrens authors.

Send manuscript in the form they ask for and the way they ask for it. If it says approach by letter in first instance with idea then do just that.

Send a covering letter.

Write a synopsis.

Write an author Bio ibcluding previous published writing if any.

Enclose enough return postage.

Expect rejection letters. Everyone gets rejected. Not every publisher likes every book.

Keep writing. It can take months for a decision

GOOD LUCK