Finally understand the kidlit market and where your book belongs in it.
Find the right age group for your children’s book!
Middle grade? Young adult? Chapter book? Follow this actionable, step-by-step system and work out your story’s ideal audience and how to give those readers (and agents) what they want.
🌟 WITH CHALLENGES AND PRIZES FOR ACCOUNTABILITY! 🌟
This workshop is ideally suited for anybody who thinks they’re writing middle grade or young adult!
Welcome to the best job in the world! 🌈
Hello, lovely author! Do you dream of writing a novel for children or teens? Well, I don’t blame you because it’s the most fabulous, rewarding job ever (apart from maybe getting to edit it!).
But if you’re new to this space, it can feel a little overwhelming.
Even if you’re coming to kidlit (that’s children’s books) as an experienced adult fiction author, there are so many new terms and conventions that it’s easy to get lost.
Have you written a book but have no idea which age group it’s actually for?
Toddlers? Young children? Teenagers? Older?
Wondering what ‘middle grade’ and ‘young adult’ mean and what the differences are?
You want to get it right when you query agents but it can be a tricky distinction!
Worried your book is too mature for children?
Can you have kissing in middle grade? Is sex allowed in YA?
Stressed about the right word count for your age category?
Don’t panic! With this step-by-step interactive guide, finally nail your book’s perfect readership and learn what children, agents and publishers are actually looking for in that category, so you’ll stand the best chance of achieving your publishing dreams and putting something fabulous out into the world!
👉🏻 The audience matchmaker framework! 👈🏻
This step-by-step course, complete with videos, workbook, quizzes and exercises, will take you from confused to confident in no time. By the end, you’ll know exactly what sort of book you’ve written and who is dying to read it!
Run your story (or idea) through this 12-step framework to finally figure out your ideal audience.
Featuring:
⚡️ 12 actionable steps to determine your book’s audience
⚡️ 90 minutes of video with subtitles and transcripts
⚡️ 3 self check-in points to assess your progress
⚡️ 2 quizzes
⚡️ a cheat sheet to fill in using what you’ve learned
It’s easy to get excited about a course and then just let it sit on your computer, undone and unloved.
Or maybe you do the course and learn loads and get really fired up to put the thing into action, but days go by and you just don’t do anything with all that new knowledge.
To make sure you actually put these lessons into action and come away with something tangible – a specific, accurate age category for your book – this course comes with a challenge.
Complete the short ‘Kidlit audience cheat sheet’ form at the end of the course to record the discoveries and choices you’ve made about your book’s readership and I’ll give you a very special prize!
You’ll win a Real-time Review – a video report from me where I’ll look at 250 words of your story (or a pitch / synopsis) and record my immediate thoughts and live reactions as I read it – no prep or notes. I’ll tell you what audience I think it works best for, and whether the opening is compelling.
Who’s teaching this thing, anyway?
Hi, I’m Siobhán O’Brien Holmes and I’m a developmental editor of children’s books 🌈
I used to give talks about middle grade and YA to writing groups like The Society of Authors and they always went down a storm.
So many people came up to me afterwards to say ‘oh my gosh, I didn’t know any of that stuff about children’s books before!’ or ‘I thought chapter books and middle grade were the same thing – now I feel like I get it!’ or ‘Woah, I’m so glad I came to this talk before I started writing my book: my plot didn’t fit the audience at all!’
So I put all my expertise into a super fun, colourful, jam-packed course for anyone interested in writing for children who needs an extra push when it comes to identifying the ideal audience for their story.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
What we’ll cover
Whether you’re a total beginner who’s never written a word or you’re a seasoned pro switching from a different audience, you’ll come away from this course with a solid understanding of the children’s and young adult space and which age category your book or story idea fits into. Plus, you’ll learn how to lean into that readership even more and make sure your book aligns with the audience expectations and publishing conventions that go with it.
By the end, you’ll know:
🐺 what all the age categories in publishing mean, from board books to adult fiction
🐺 which category your book or idea fits into
🐺 how to spot audience clues in other books and apply this to your own story
🐺 how to work out your readership based on your book cover and blurb (which you’ll create!)
🐺 how to make sure you book’s wordcount, main character, themes and content align with the right audience
🐺 what to do if your book isn’t for the age group you thought it was
🐺 three golden rules for kidlit authors
A note: This workshop gives an overview of the entire publishing landscape, from picture books to adult fiction, and aims to define and explain the differences between all these age categories.
If you’ve written a story and have no idea who it’s for, this workshop will absolutely be able to help you!
However, while we do discuss picture books, early readers and chapter books in this workshop, these aren’t the main focus and I won’t explore how to write those types of books as those are specialist skills I simply don’t have! We go into much more detail about middle grade and young adult here.
What you’ll get when you sign up:
- immediate access to all course content
- 23 lessons
- 90 minutes of video with subtitles
- full transcripts of all videos
- a personalised book recommendation based on your interests
- discount code for my services and courses
- invitation to The Wolf Pack, a private Facebook group for authors
- kidlit plotting cheat sheet PDF
- the Monster Guide to Kidlit Genres and Subgenres PDF
- 7 simple ways to tell if a book’s middle grade or YA without opening it PDF
- extra links and resources