Review of the 2008 Edition of Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market

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Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market, also known as "CWIM," is one of the few essential books for a children's writer or illustrator. It includes an annually updated (just what does that mean? I'll explain below) "yellow pages" of book, magazine, and other publishers, information about conferences and agents, basic how-to information, and interesting feature articles.

I've been reviewing this yearly for a few years now: and have posted notes on past editions if you want to keep track of new features or articles from year to year.

Contents of Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market: The core of CWIM is taken up by the Markets section. This provides information about publishers of books, magazines, agents, and art repors. This year, sections on greeting card, puzzle, and play publishers have been dropped. There are several profiles of industry "insiders" scattered through, including author/illustrator Mo Willems and magazine writing guru Jan Fields. The book publishers section has about 200 entries, and there is a small section of Canadian and international companies. The entries vary in length, but always include addresses and other basics; they may also include names and titles of editors and art directors, a brief description of a publisher's program, sample titles, award-winning books, and other information. Indexes help you find publishers by subject, a very useful feature. In a feature added last year, a "Names Index" lists editors--handy if you know an editor's name but don't know where they work.

The first part of the book has more articles than usual. After a few with the same basic information come 18 all-new articles, up from last year's 12, and five "First Books" profiles. I always turn to this part of a new CWIM first. This year, I noticed "A Guide to Writing Teen Chick Lit," "Getting Your Art Noticed" (for illustrators), and "Weird Nonfiction," to mention just a few.

Comments Though I like the feature articles, which cover topics of interest to published authors (such as web sites and school visits) as well as beginners, the reason to get CWIM every year is the Markets section. The editors attempt to update every publisher listing every year. Since they rely on the publishers to return detailed questionnaires, they don't always have complete information about every company. But what they do have is almost always accurate, and saves anyone who needs information about children's publishers an enormous amount of time and effort.

But just what does the cover's claim of "Completely Revised and Updated" mean? To get a sense of that, I did a careful comparison of 20 entries in this year's edition with the 2007 edition. Six were unchanged. One was deleted. One publisher was added. Half had new sample titles or award-winning books listed. Four noted personnel changes. There were no address changes. There were five with changes in other information. And one publisher that had been closed to unsolicited submissions is now listed as open. Does this sound like less than a complete update? Maybe, but it's important to note that all six of the publishers with no changes were small, while all of the larger publishers in the sample had updates and corrections. You can be sure that addresses and personnel are correct, even if they don't change from year to year. Keep in mind that the information in this year's guide was collected in early 2007, so to keep it up to date you will need to rely on resources such as my Who's Moving Where page, tips from friends, and information published in industry magazines. Starting with the latest CWIM does give you a considerable head start, though.

CWIM is carefully fact-checked and proofread, but I did note a couple of glitches: the Table of Contents does not list the "Clubs and Organizations" section, though it's there in it usual place, before "Conferences and Workshops." When I checked the updating, I also noticed that a new art director was listed among the HarperCollins personnel, but the one who had left was still noted later in the entry as a contact for art samples. Of course, you should cross check any information you find in a market guide against the publisher's guidelines and web site.

Who Needs Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market: Obviously, writers and illustrators need this, and should buy a new edition every year--because so much does change. But other people can use it too---teachers and librarians and others professionally involved with children's books will find this a useful reference, since it puts addresses and other contact information for children's publishers at your fingertips and also has some discussion of current trends. Publishing professionals looking for a handy and inexpensive alternative to the usual industry guides may also want this on the shelf.

Information on past editions.

Where and How to Purchase the 2008 Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market:

You can, of course, also purchase CWIM at any bookstore. If they don't have it, they can order it for you.

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