Section 03 · Getting Published
Getting published in childrens books
Query letters, agents, submission tracking and what happens to a manuscript after it leaves your desk, explained without promises.
Getting published in children's books is a one-page letter, a well-revised manuscript, and a lot of waiting. In this guide you will learn what a query letter actually has to do, when to send it, and what going indie really costs, so you can pick the door that fits your book instead of guessing.
One page, one job
Before anything else, understand what you are sending. A query letter is a one-page cover letter. That is the whole instrument. Writers treat it like a monument, and the pressure that follows makes the page heavier than it needs to be. The letter has a single job: to make an agent or publisher interested enough to move on to your writing sample or your proposal. That is all. It is not a contract, not a test of your worth, and not your one shot at a career.
The person who reads it knows this. On kidlit.com, a longtime editor and conference speaker reports that she never offered representation based solely on the query letter, and that she has overlooked weak queries and then offered on a strong manuscript. The query is a means to an end. The end is the manuscript.
How long should the letter be?
Shorter than you think. The guidance at kidlit.com puts query letter length at 250 to 450 words. If you have written more, you have not written a longer query, you have written a different document. Every word past that range is a word the reader skips, and skipping readers are exactly what a query exists to avoid.
Why such a tight band? Because agents read in volume, and because a letter that cannot pitch a book in 450 words usually reflects a book the writer cannot yet pitch out loud. If your summary runs long, the fix is rarely in the letter. It is usually in how clearly you understand your own story. Our guide to writing a query letter breaks the drafting down further.
Is there one template everyone follows?
No, and the source page says so plainly: there is no set formula for writing a query that the whole slush pile obeys. Writers keep asking for a query letter template as if a secret form existed, and it does not. What does exist is a sensible flow: a way of ordering the elements of the letter so the pitch lands before the credentials do.
Kidlit.com offers a downloadable handout built from years of conference teaching, including a worked example written for a well-known vampire story, retold from the love interest's point of view. The example is a teaching tool, not scripture. Read the reasoning behind it on the page about query letter format, then write your own letter in your own voice. If you want the reader's first impression to be craft rather than chaos, match the format of the manuscript itself as covered in our piece on formatting a manuscript.
When not to press send
Timing matters more than most first-time submitters expect. The clearest no-go window is Thanksgiving through New Year's. Agents and publishers are on vacation or catching up on the year's slush, most are officially or unofficially closed, and many stop going out with client projects after November 1st because a publishing decision requires consensus, and consensus is out of town.
August is another traditionally slow stretch in publishing, though the source notes the around-the-clock business environment has eroded that summer lull. Trade shows also pull people away: Bologna in March, which is specific to children's books, London in June, Frankfurt in October. The same page is honest about the limits of this advice: you cannot know whether a given agent is traveling, having a baby, or home with the flu. The practical rule is to avoid the holiday blackout and check submission guidelines before every send, because an individual can go from open to closed without much notice.
What to do while the door is shut
The waiting season is not dead time, and kidlit.com makes three suggestions for it. Work on another project, because after you submit you will want your creative wheels already turning. Revise, because the strongest possible manuscript is the best thing you can bring to the door, and one more polish pass is always available; our article on revision in passes shows how to take that pass without tangling every problem at once. And read, inside your category and outside it, which is quiet market research disguised as pleasure.
The page also recommends keeping a favorite and a Plan B at every major agency, since the agent you hoped for may close to submissions suddenly. That is a research habit you can build in an afternoon with a spreadsheet, before any holiday timing question arises.
The other door: publishing it yourself
Some writers skip the agent entirely. A case study on kidlit.com follows a writer who self-published a picture book after months of research, printing hardcover books and selling them through Amazon. Her reasoning is worth hearing even if you never walk her path: she felt a strong connection to the main character, wanted to guide the story through publishing herself, and wanted to choose the illustrator, a choice a traditional publisher would make instead.
Control is the real product you buy when you go indie. The publisher normally has final say on title, format and illustrator. Self-publishing hands you all of it, along with every job a publishing house does: editing, illustration, design, printing, shipping, storage, and a business license. The learning curve is steep, and the source calls it doable for a writer willing to put the time in.
What independence actually costs
The same case study is blunt about money and time. Her book took eleven months from start to finish, faster than a typical traditional cycle but still slow. Hiring a good illustrator runs to thousands of dollars, and five figures is not unusual, before layout, color printing on a large trim size, shipping and storage. Advertising turned out to be a skill and a constant expense: stop the ads and sales drop immediately. Launching meant a blog tour, social media, giveaways, press releases and email blasts, all started months in advance, and marketing continues for as long as the book is for sale.
The page's own framing is worth keeping: each project has its own life, self-publishing suits some projects, traditional publishing suits others, and tenacious writers keep more than one project in the pipeline. Choosing indie means choosing the business side over the creative side, which is why that writer planned to pitch her later manuscripts to agents.
Open your calendar before your inbox
Here is a concrete start. Take the month it is now, mark the Thanksgiving-to-New-Year's blackout, and count the clear weeks you have before it. Give two of those weeks to a 250-to-450-word draft of your query, one week to a reader from a critique group, and one week of rest before a final revision pass on the manuscript itself. Whatever the calendar says, your strongest asset is never the letter: it is the book behind it.
About kidlit.com
Kidlit.com is a website about writing and publishing for children, run by a book editor who speaks at writers' conferences. It carries posts on query letters, submission timing and self-publishing, including downloadable query handouts and a case study of an independently published picture book. The pages cited above are the source of every figure and claim in this article.
In this suite
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Writing a query letter for a childrens book
One page, 250 to 450 words: the query letter that introduces your children's book to an agent is short, has no single correct format, and matters less than the manuscript behind it.
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Do you need a literary agent for childrens books?
Whether you need one depends on the road your book takes: here is what an agent actually does, how that work changes with small presses or self-publishing, and how to judge a fit when an agent wants you.
Every guide in this suite reads against the Critique Groups arithmetic, and two neighbouring suites extend it: Craft & Revision and Illustration.