How Social Media Can Benefit Writers

Tina Cho and Leslie Tribble are teaming up on this post to show writers why they should be on social media. 

From Tina:

Social media can benefit writers in wonderful ways if used responsibly! I’m on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Twitter, especially, in its concise tweets has brought me lots of goodies. Here are my reasons why you should be on social media too.

You might find an agent. 

I found my agent through Twitter. I was following another agent from Martin Literary who tweeted about a new agent. Bingo! I submitted to her, and we’ve sold five books since 2016.

Adria Goetz is the best!

You might find story ideas.

Someone tweeted about haenyeo (South Korea’s diving women). I looked them up and knew I must write about them. The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story published in August 2020 from Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random and received 4 stars and lots of other accolades. See my website for details.

You might get an animated special deal (i.e. short movie) for your book.

It all started with a Tweet, dear readers!! Because Twitter friends share book covers and book reviews, someone who works for a media company just happened to see the book cover of The Ocean Calls, told her company about it, who got a hold of my agency, who bought the rights to make it an animated special. So keep sharing those book covers & reviews!

You might find a writing tribe.

Because of my books and presence on social media, especially Twitter, the famous Newbery author, Linda Sue Park EMAILED me to be a part of her #kibooka team of Korean-American & diaspora writers. See https://kibooka.com/ 

You might discover your book being sold at a famous store.

One early morning as I was getting ready for school, Penguin Random House tagged me on Instagram. Pottery Barn Kids is selling my book along with other wonderful picture books on equity and inclusion. I was floored! And last weekend I did a video for them!

You will meet wonderful people.

I have met so many wonderful people on social media--authors, illustrators, editors, agents, parents, teachers, etc… All these connections are integral in helping you become a great writer and person. 

Librarians and book reviewers will want to tag you.

Each week I’m usually tagged by librarians or book reviewers or parents or readers who enjoyed my books. I’m humbled and enjoy meeting people around the globe. 

Your publisher will want to tag you.

If your publisher is marketing your book, they will tag you. 

From Leslie:

My social media platforms are Facebook and Instagram. Instagram is my favorite form of social media, and I’ve been posting my nature photos there since 2013 - that is hard to believe!

For me, social media is a way to connect with other like-minded folks. I follow authors, both adult and kid-lit but I also follow a lot of landscape and wildlife photographers who inspire me with their work. Seeing the beauty of their art makes me work harder at my own photography. I don’t have a huge following, but I’ve really enjoyed the connections I’ve made with some of these virtual friends and have even met a few in real life. 

It was the suggestion of some of my social media followers that prompted me to create a calendar. I have zero photo editing skills and didn’t know how to create a calendar at all, but I buckled down and finally produced something I was very proud of last year. It was a huge learning curve, but gratifying in many ways, and I’m already working on a new calendar for 2022. 

My SM platforms have also been a convenient way to promote my self-published outdoor recreation guide. With one quick picture and a few words, I can tell people about my book and have even have others expand my reach when they repost my photo. Free and instantaneous marketing! In fact, now that spring is slowly making its way to northwest Wyoming, I’ll be posting a photo of my book soon, reaching even more folks than last year.

Social media can be a huge consumer of your valuable time, but it can also bring personal friendship, engagement, creative inspiration, career success and overall enjoyment. It’s a good way to get your name out there in whatever field you’re interested in. 

Let us know what successes have come your way through social media!

Tina Cho is the author of four picture books-- Rice from Heaven: The Secret Mission to Feed North Koreans (Little Bee Books 2018), Korean Celebrations (Tuttle 2019), My Breakfast with Jesus: Worshipping God around the World (Harvest House 2020), and The Ocean Calls: A Haenyeo Mermaid Story (Kokila/Penguin Random House Aug. 2020). Her lyrical middle grade graphic novel, The Other Side of Tomorrow, debuts from Harper Alley in 2023. After living in South Korea for ten years, Tina, her husband, and two teenagers reside in Iowa where Tina also teaches kindergarten. 

website: https://www.tinamcho.com/ 

Twitter: @TinaMCho

Instagram: @Tinamcho

Facebook: TinaWheatcraftCho 

Leslie Colin Tribble is the author of Adventure Guide to Cody, 2019. She's written for Cody and Beyond, Cross Country Skier Magazine, Yellowstone Valley Woman, RootsRated, and Sunlight Sports - East Side Stories. Leslie lives in northwest Wyoming with her adventure dogs, Robbie and Milo.

Instagram: @Sagebrush_Lessons

Facebook: Leslie Colin Tribble

My Top 10 Ways to Research Kidlit Editors and Agents ~ by Patricia Toht

Come, gather at my knee, youngster...

I started writing for children way back in the 20th century. (GASP!) While many aspects of writing children have changed over the years, one goal that has remained constant is to find the editor (or agent) who will love my manuscript. 

Here are the Top 10 ways that I've used to research editors and agents:

1. CWIM

In 1995, the year I committed to writing for children, my "bible" for researching editors and agents was the Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market. This book contains listings that are updated annually - names, addresses, and pertinent information about each entity - as well as helpful articles. It is currently in its 32nd printing, so it must be doing something right!

2. Agency Websites

Agency websites are a great way to find a list of their agents and a description of what types of books they represent. You may find a list of clients, too, where you might spot artists that you feel an affinity to. Sometimes individual agents post their wish lists. Above all, this is a definitive place to find specific submissions information for the agency.

3. Edelweiss+

You can get a feel for publishing houses and imprints by looking over their current and upcoming titles, but long gone are the days of requesting printed catalogs. These days, with publishing houses merging and morphing, I find the easiest way to peek at a catalog is through Edelweiss+. I search for an imprint and find their latest list.

4. Other websites/blogs

There are so many great kidlit websites! My top picks for submissions information are:

The Purple Crayon. Harold Underdown's website has so much to offer! In particular, the "Who's Moving Where?" section provides me with the latest information on editor changes at publishing houses.

Kathy Temean's Writing and Illustrating blog has terrific, in-depth interviews with agents each month, as well as editor and art director interviews. 

KidLit411, by Sylvia Liu and Elaine Kiely Kearns, describes itself as "a one stop info shop for children's writers and illustrators," and that's the truth. Scroll down their Topics list to check out Agent Spotlight, Editor Spotlight, and Submissions.

5. Social Media

On Twitter, I find handy hashtags to harvest information on editors and agents. Do a search for these hashtags: #askanagent, #askaneditor, and #MSWL (manuscript wish list), to name a few. Follow your favorite publishers and professionals to keep up-to-date with them. 

6. Conferences and workshops

Attending conferences and workshops may involve a cost, but they come with the possibility of great rewards. Often you can get an editorial critique of your work, which lets you to get tips from the top. And faculty members usually open their submissions window for a few months for attendees - so important for unagented manuscripts!

7. SCBWI

SCBWI is the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. If you are serious about writing for kids, membership in this organization is one of the most important steps you can take.

Among its resources, SCBWI has compiled The Book: Essential Guide to Publishing for Children. It details how to prepare and submit your work. The Market Survey section gives a current snapshot of the market (although change is continual). I like the section "Edited by..." with information that can help pair your book with a receptive editor. 

8. Querytracker

Querytracker is a database of agents and editors, and a channel used by many of them to recieve submissions. The standard membership is free; a premium membership has more to offer, but comes with a cost. (I've browsed the database for information, but I haven't used it for submissions.)

9. Author Acknowledgments

For novelists, you may discover agent and editor names for your favorite authors by checking out the acknowledgments in the back of their books. 

10. The PW Children's Bookshelf newsletter

This is my favorite way of tracking agent and editor preferences! Near the bottom of this twice-weekly newsletter is a list of current book deals. Each announcement includes the name of the author (and illustrator, if it's a picture book deal), the editor who bought the book, the book title, a brief description of the book, and the name of the agent(s) securing the deal. It takes some work, but I maintain a spreadsheet of this information that I can search when I have a new manuscript ready. Using Control + F brings up a search box where I can enter key words to find deals that have similarities to my work. (E.g. I search "rhyme" to discover editors that may be open to rhyming picture books.) Sign up for the Children's Bookshelf newsletter here.

These sources are my Top 10, but you'll undoubtedly find many more. If you have a favorite, please share it in the Comments below.

Happy writing, everyone! Good luck with those submissions!

How to Find Picture Book Mentor Texts ~ by Patricia Toht

I recently reached out to my GROG buddies to help me brainstorm about picture book topics for upcoming posts. I had already covered: 

making a picture book dummy 

page turns 

the rule of three

metafiction

wordless spreads

when your picture book wants to rhyme

The GROG hive mind came up with many suggestions, but one buzzed to the top --

How do you find picture book mentor texts?

• The most important thing you can do is to build your own reference guide. Read! Read! Read! When you find elements that are done particularly well in certain books, WRITE THOSE TITLES DOWN! I have a notebook just for this purpose, and it lists a different topic every few pages (e.g. humor, quirky characters, fractured fairy tales, minimal words, lyrical language, etc.) Soon you will have your own amazing reference guide at hand.

A recent stack of rhyming books
that I checked out of my library.

• Enlist the help of your librarian and/or bookseller. These folks are walking, talking versions of the above-mentioned reference guide.

Love your local bookseller!

• Use Google to sleuth for mentor texts. Narrow down the topic you are interested in and type key words into the search box, connecting them with the plus sign (e.g. picture book + cats + humor). You may soon discover that there are several wonderful websites with collected lists of picture books by topic. 

Nerdy Book Club 

(mine the collective minds kids' book nerds)

Pragmatic Mom 
(great lists from Mia Wenjen)

We Are Teachers 

(check the Classroom Ideas Archives)

Reading Rockets 

(select Children's Books and Authors/Themed Booklists)

Marcie Flinchum Atkins 

(Marcie blogs about mentor texts and how to use them.)

• Poke around Pinterest. Many Pinterest pages have collections of picture books by theme.

• Don't forget Twitter! The recent hashtag #nf10for10 on February 10 focused on nonfiction titles. Here is an example from an elementary school librarian outside of Boston.

• Sign yourself up for a month of mentor texts. ReFoReMo, Reading for Research Month happens every March. Throughout the month, guest posters focus on a particular aspect or theme of picture books and provide a handful of recent titles for further research on these aspects/themes. 
I will be joining the fun on March 7th when I look at "How To" picture books. You can find out more about ReFoReMo here.

I hope this helps you get started on the path to finding picture book mentor texts. 

Do you have questions? Tips you'd like to share? Please include them in the comments below.

My Week Without Social Media: Or, Why I'm Not Nearly As Important As I Think I Am!

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of chaperoning a mission trip with high school students from Kenosha’s St. Mary’s Lutheran Church and Spirit Alive Church.  37 of us loaded up in three huge vans and one Chevy Traverse and headed to Detroit.  We were blessed to use Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington Hills, MI as our base camp.

While in Detroit, we spent the bulk of our time supporting the Matrix Center.  This centrally located building is an oasis in the Osborne Neighborhood, just a few miles on the edge of Detroit.  We cleared vacant lots, did landscaping, painting and a whole host of other projects that the busy staff just never had the time to do. The hot temperatures made outdoor work challenging.  The intense summer sun and heat pushed us all to our limits.  Still, the trip was fantastic in every respect.  While I enjoyed the hard work, I also enjoyed the mental vacation from social media.

Image courtesy Victoria Fields.

We had asked the youth to limit their phone use.  We wanted them to ‘be in the moment’ that seems to develop when folks are not forever looking down at their tiny screens.  They rose to the occasion.  It seemed only fair that if I was asking them to step back, that I should do the same.  I added ‘vacation responders’ to all my email accounts, professed to the social media world that I was taking a break from it.

While I hardly ever have my phone’s volume up, I noticed the ‘notifications’ popping up on my screen over the directions app. almost immediately.  When we stopped, I was tempted to ‘just check’ on those emails or that funny tweet that popped up.  I knew I was going to have to do something drastic.  In fact, when I told my 18-year-old daughter what I had done, she let out an audible gasp.  I deleted ALL of the social media apps from my phone.  Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger.  I even deleted my email accounts.  Besides the camera and photography apps, my iPhone was basically, and somewhat ironically, a phone.  The chaperones were using a group text to keep in touch between vans and occasionally we had to place a random call, so I left those two apps intact.  Almost immediately I felt the relief, but also a bit of anxiety.  The word ‘addiction’ gets thrown around pretty loosely.  I don’t think I’m addicted to the phone, but I have been conditioned to pick it up every time it vibrates, ‘just to check.’

One of the many beautiful art pieces at Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington, MI.

Why did I delete the apps?  Mostly because I have so little self-control; I'm just being totally honest.  I knew that if they were on the phone, I would look.  At first, just, a peek, but soon  full-fledged minutes would turn into hours and so on.  Why not just re-load them?  Well, that’s a good idea, but that would have taken time and by the time I had the ‘need’ to check notifications, the need had passed.  So, I embraced the void.  I figured if something earth shattering happened, I would find out soon enough.  I might even just get a phone call.  Remember those?

The soaring sanctuary of Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington, MI.

Unfortunately, some horrible events DID in fact happen.  There was an attack in France and shortly thereafter there was another shooting of police officers.  We were alerted to the possibility of violence in major cities across America following these shootings.  I had told the other leaders about my social media ‘fast’ and they were monitoring events.  We shared the bare bones of the events with the students that evening as we gathered.  Seeing their faces reminded me how we ‘used’ to get bad news.  Because we were all essentially processing it together, we had time to reflect, cry and pray.  I think we miss much of this in our 24/7 connected world.  By the time one event hits the news cycle there is another event happening.  We don’t’ have time in this ‘modern’ world to grieve.

The baptismal font is large and centrally located at the Hope Lutheran Church in Farmington, MI.

As the week wore on, I noticed that I didn’t even really miss the facebook updates or countless photos of friend's children or vacation images.  In fact, I actually found time to read.  Not as much as I would have liked to, but given the fact that I had 34 noisy teenagers around me all of the time, that I read at all is a miracle!

Detail of a building at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit.

I won’t lie. I was very anxious to re-load the apps and check in with my social media accounts.  Somewhat disappointedly, I must say that nobody ‘needed’ me.  Nobody offered me a book deal, that part in the new action film, nor had I won any lotteries.  In fact, there actually very few emails or updates on my accounts.  I’d like to think that it was because I told everyone I was offline, but I think that the actual reason is that I’m just not as important as I would like to think I am.  I say that not in a disparaging way, but in an honest and humble way.  The world will turn.  The sun will rise.  All without me.

One of the structures at the Heidelberg Project in Detroit.

And yet, despite the fact that I wasn’t ‘missed’ on social media, I made memories that I will never forget; even if I didn’t document them with a tweet, gram or post.  You could say I got to time travel because I saw the ‘future’ in the faces of the youth.  I spent countless hours with them singing, praying, working and sweating.  The future is indeed bright!

The General Motors Building in Downtown Detroit, MI.

How can you manage your social media ‘addiction?’  Well,  Ibrahim Husain’s POST on Lifehack has some fantastic tips, a couple I would like to highlight.  First, he states that you have to acknowledge you have a problem.  Use one of the many trackers to monitor your use.  MOMENT is one of the best in my opinion.  It literally tracks every time you pick your phone up and seeing those statistics can be quite sobering.  After you acknowledge this, you can start working to curb your addiction.  Husain suggests deleting many of the apps from your phone, permanently.  Do you really need Facebook and Twitter on your phone?  I personally have found that using an interface like TweetDeck helps me efficiently monitor and learn from my Twitter feed.  I haven’t found anything similarly for Facebook.  For now, I’m limiting myself to it by using a timer.  

The beautiful organ at Hope Lutheran Church in Farmingham, MI.

I DID make a few changes as I re-loaded those apps back to my phone.  The first is that I turned off ALL notifications except a few key apps (text messaging and calendars).  I will NOT get notifications of new tweets, or posts to Instagram and Facebook.  I won’t even get notifications of email messages. I am sure I’ll miss a few emails late at night or early in the morning.  I apologize in advance to you if that happens. (Three weeks on, I've really enjoyed not seeing those messages on my screen.  It takes a little discipline to 'remember' to check the messages, emails, etc. but that is a much healthier 'problem' than being a slave to the notices.) Who knows, hopefully, I’ll find some time to let my mind drift; it is in that kind of moments I find I do my best thinking.  Maybe my monumental stack of books next to my bed will gradually shrink!  One thing is for sure, my week without social media has had a powerful impact on me.  Give it a try!

The whole crew gathered along the river walk in Detroit, MI.

Twitter for Writers Part 1 by Tina Cho

Got tweets? If you're on Twitter, you know what I'm talking about. If not, I'll try to convince you to join. If you're already using Twitter, that's great, because I'm going to discuss how writers can use this social media in many ways.

For those of you who are new, Twitter is a social media program in which you connect with people, and it allows you to type a message of 140 characters to your followers, called a "tweet." When you make an account, you are given a Twitter handle, which is like your address for people to send messages to you. Author/illustrator Debbie Ohi has a wonderful "Twitter Guide for Authors and Illustrators." And author/illustrator Katie Davis has a podcast "A Beginner's Guide to Twitter."

Twitter has many benefits for writers:

• Connect with other writers, illustrators, and book reviewers. Once you connect with someone, your new friend's followers might also connect with you.
• Read great information about the craft of writing and be directed to blogs and web sites.
• Promote your blog posts. Once you tweet about your post, someone else can re-tweet (share) your post. Then your blog post tweet is automatically shared with their followers, which could be hundreds to thousands of people with one click! So Twitter is an extremely fast way to share information.
• Stalk Follow agents and editors. You can find out a lot of information by following agents and editors that you're interested in submitting to. Sometimes they'll tweet their wish list. You can read their likes, dislikes, whether they have kids or pets, even their religious preferences.
• Write to your favorite authors/illustrators. For example, I found out that Rosemary Wells was coming to Seoul, Korea. I signed up for her lecture, found her Twitter handle, and messaged her that I looked forward to meeting her. She tweeted back! The famous author of my children's Max & Ruby books! Messaging a person on Twitter is easier than messaging someone you're not "friends" with on Facebook. Here's another example of a class that tweeted to an author.
• Practice pitch writing. There are pitch contests on Twitter for writers to type their 140 character pitch for agents and editors to see. It teaches writers to explain their premise in few words!
• Participate in Twitter chats with publishers and agents. They'll usually announce the date, time, and hash tag for the chat. One recent Twitter chat/party is #WeNeedDiverseBooks.
• Check these hash tags. (#) A hash tag will tag a tweet to categorize it. If you search under #MSWL, you will see posts that show the "Manuscript Wish Lists" of agents and editors. Try these others: #querytip, #pubtip

I hope those benefits convinced you to use Twitter or to tweet more! I hope to see you online. My Twitter handle is @TinaMCho.

Join me Friday, May 9th, as I interview Corey Rosen Schwartz about how she uses Twitter to promote her books and communicate with readers.