On The Trail Of Validating Manuscripts

Last time I wrote about sending manuscripts to freelance editors who provide critiques-for-hire.

About the same time I joined The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI.org). That allowed me to find out about and attend small regional children's book conferences. These conferences were important for two reasons.

One, I could get my manuscripts critiqued (you sign up in advance). The downside is that only about 50 percent of the time do you get a real book editor doing the critiquing at the smaller conferences. Script doctors do the rest. Still, I believe any reasonably professional critique is valuable.

Two, these conferences were mostly attended by wannabes like me and they peppered the speakers (book editors) with all the questions I wanted to ask. A lot of the questioning showed the frustration of would-be authors with the state of the children's book industry (more about this later). The grilling of these book editors and their lack of meaningful answers helped shape the direction I would eventually take.

The critiques of our manuscripts came back positive. Mostly the critiquers were saying good stories, yes they're potentially publishable, they need sharpening. Do you think a publisher would buy the stories? Hard to say. This isn't an exact science. Fine.

That was enough for us to polish them up and send them out to some publishers. I also signed up for the big 4-day SCBWI spring conference in LA. A lot of editors from big publishing houses were speakers. And I would be guaranteed a face-to-face critique from a book editor. In my opinion, a person like that was the only true judge.

As I arrived in LA for the conference, I was about a year into this project. Next, what the book editor said.

Michael LaLumiere