Getting Feedback on Your Children's Book

Video Transcript

Hi! I’m Angela Sage Larsen. On behalf of expertvillage.com, today, we’re going to talk about publishing your own children’s story. Please visit my website at petalwinkthefairy.com. Now it’s time for getting feedback to your story. There are two reasons that you would want feedback. One is for the editing process and the other is for the marketing process. There are going to be a couple different times during your story writing process, that you’re going to want to be willing to ask for feedback. Now, I takes a lot of humility and you have to put aside your preconceived notions and be willing to hear what people think of your book. The three different kinds of people that you’re going to want to get feedback from. First of all, friends, usually they’re the nicest ones to start with because they’re going to be encouraging, but you still want honesty of course. Experts, is another one. For instance, I don’t know any fairies firsthand, but I do know a lot of little girls. So I read my story to little girls and let them give me their impressions of the book. The other thing is schoolteachers, they have a lot of dealing with children’s books. Also, school librarians or children’s librarians. Just depending on the topic of your book and who it’s written for, think about who would be interested in it. Then of course, there are the ideal readers. Since little girls are my ideal readers, they were the perfect ones to ask what they thought of the book. There are a couple of ways to go about asking what they think of your book. First of all, you don’t want to put anything in their minds. You want them to come to the story totally fresh and let them tell you what they think of the book; what stood out, what worked; what did not work; what they loved, and what they could do without. So just let them give you their unbiased opinions. Then go back and ask specific questions. Now, if you already have something in mind that you want to know about. Does the rhyming work or did the ending make sense? Then you can ask them those questions, but you’ll also want to ask follow-up questions on the feedback they give you. If they tell you that it didn’t flow, then ask them why. Ask them for specific instances where they felt like it didn’t flow, that way you’re going to get the most precise feedback that you can. If you want to keep in touch with them as you make changes, then keep going back until you feel like the story is exactly how you want it. Then when it comes to marketing, you can say Anna, age four, loves Petalwink because she loves her purple hair.

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