Too Young to Publish?

For someone who has a story to tell, does age really matter? Teenagers and even kids often find their tender age a serious drawback to getting published. After all, would someone so young be taken seriously when publishing a book?

Truth is, age is nothing but a number and it is never a hindrance to publishing your book. Your age neither defines the quality of your submission nor determine your chances of getting published.

An advantage of publishing young is that there is less competition. If you have to wait until you reach legal age, chances are you will be competing with other adults whose stories may be far better than yours. Young as you are, however, there are things that you need to keep in mind.

Writing requires time and effort. Done with your first draft? Resist that sense of accomplishment just yet – that is only a part of the big whole. Stop at your tracks if you think of sending it off for publication. The first draft is hardly ever the best.

Get intervention. Have others review your work and ask them what they think. It could be your parents, a teacher or someone you can trust. They can help add some creative input to your story. Don’t get too overwhelmed if they praise your work. Take criticism and learn from it as well.

Patience, just as the ability to handle criticism, is important in being a professional writer and in publishing a book. By honing your craft more, you are more confident with getting your book in print. Read your draft over and over again. You will find that you need a lot of polishing to do. Reread it. Improve it. Rewrite it. Your work is not yet good enough until you learn to reread and rewrite many times over. By honing your craft more, you are more confident with getting your book published.

Regardless of age, publishing is never easy at all. Many good stories take years and years to get published; worse, do not find its way into print. The onset of self-publishing, however, has made publishing easier especially for young aspiring authors. Choose a self-publishing company that will truly take care of your publishing needs – from the entire book production, layout, printing down to the marketing of your book.

Lastly, since you are a minor, you will need to get your parent’s consent. They can help you pull all strings that you need to make the publishing process easy and enjoyable for you.

You are never too young to publish. Many young writers have gone on to become published authors. Brothers Miles and William Rabun published their book, My Grandma’s Backyard, when they were 10 and 8 years old, respectively. Dorothy Strait wrote How the World Began, making her the youngest published author. Christopher Paolini self-published his book, Eragon, which then became a bestseller.

Who knows, the next bestselling book could be yours.

The stars to becoming a published author are just within your reach. Publish today and get 50% off on publishing. Get this FREE book publishing guide.

Tips on Writing a Book

Unsure how to go about writing your book? Here are some tips:

When writing a book, there is no rule of thumb on the number of pages or its chapter length, regardless of genre. However, there are some important things that you need to keep in mind when determining your book’s chapter length and page count.

PAGES

Consider the reader’s attention span. There are readers, many of them, who read ‘on the go’ – it could be on their way to work or while having lunch. They are those who enjoy chapters that they can finish within ten or fifteen minutes.

Setting your chapter length may depend on the amount of time it takes to finish reading the material. For example, if it is more than fifteen minutes, you might want to split your chapters into two. This should work well when writing a non-fiction book.

Keep in mind that writing a fiction and non-fiction book is entirely different. Fiction book writing requires the use of shorter chapters, some only a page, if only to immerse the reader into the story. On the other hand, writing a non-fiction book requires a more detailed content, specific to your chapter title or heading.

While it is good to set your chapter pages to twenty, perhaps the most important thing that you need to consider is to incorporate everything relating to a specific topic in a chapter, so as to sum it all up without the shilly-shally. For instance, if you are writing a book about makeup, include all there is you need to write about eye makeup. Tips on applying cheek blush should be in another chapter.

CHAPTERS

There is actually no given rule when setting the chapter length of your book. However, for your work to be considered a book instead of a booklet, your word count should be at least 10,000. In addition, you can create two volumes if your book has over 450 pages.

Submission of manuscript is usually done in a word-processing format, so a 300 word count can fit approximately one page of a 12-point font text, standard size, perfect-bound book. However, you cannot be completely certain of the final length of your book until your publisher will have formatted it for printing.

If you are interested in publishing a book, get this FREE publishing guide and start your journey to publication.