If you’ve started submitting your work, you probably know that you need to study the publisher’s catalog. What’s new? Who do they work with? What gets the most buzz?
While some of these things are just as easy to find online (new books) as they are in a print catalog, some aren’t. What books got a two page spread? A excerpt? Have a special marketing packet planned? For these you need to see the catalog.
Fortunately, more and more publishers are putting virtual catalogs online. The trick is knowing where to find them.
Along comes Early Word (http://www.earlyword.com). Technically, their audience is librarians and their goal is to make researching acquisitions easier. To do this, they pull together information about new releases from various publishers and this information includes catalogs. When you visit the page for a particular catalog list, just remember to scroll down the list to the children’s catalogs. For Spring 2009, I checked out Feiwel & Friends, Henry Holt and Square Fish. There was a lot more but I need to head out in a bit.
I found out about Early Word through the 1/14 Children’s Writing Update which is put out by the publishers of CBI (the Children’s Book Insider). Special thanks to them for all the information they bring to struggling writers! They have a new site up and I’m looking forward to checking it out this afternoon. Hope to see you there.
–SueBE
One Writer's Journey 