AN OPEN LETTER TO TEENAGERS AND TWEENS HOPING TO GET PUBLISHED

How to get published as a teen when you’ve just completed your novel, short story, comic strip, or book of poetry?

Author Jones is here to show you the way.

Oh ambitious teenage writers, Author J. is inspired by your passion and desire. The fast and cool way to get your stuff out there is to publish your own zine or chapbook.

Zine n. self-published periodicals with small press runs (usually under 200 copies), often photocopied and definitely stapled, frequently irreverent, and usually appealing to audiences with highly specialized interests.

For more information go to the very informative zinebook.com.

Zine’s are an awesome way to start building your writing skills, confidence and fans at the same time. Writers typically sell them for one to three bucks after readings at open mic’s, or give them away gratis to friends and family.

You can typically find zine sections in independent book and record stores.

Many open mic’s take place in coffee shops rather than bars and encourage teenagers to fill out their sign-up sheets. Look in your local smaller newspapers for reading listings. If you can, go check out a few and likely some of the readers will have zine’s or chapbooks available for purchase, or for free!

Be bold bring your own work, sign up and read. You will begin to get a feel for where your grammar might be awkward and you will discover where you are succeeding in capturing the crowd or losing them with your storytelling. You will engage with a whole network of writers and learn more about your local writing community.

The Jones would like to add that all sorts of writers show up to these things, goth, science fiction, poetry, absurdist fiction, non-fiction, memoir and so on... you may have to go to a few different open mics to figure out where you stuff fits in best.

Chapbook n. around since the 16th century, chapbooks are pocket-sized books, usually 48-56 pages. Though, like the zine, they have staples—there is more production value in paper quality, graphics, and they are frequently printed rather than photocopied. Micropublishers typically put these out for distribution and review.

Zoe Trope’s book Please Don’t Kill the Freshman started out as a chapbook, (HarperCollins, 2004). As did Grosse Pointe Girl penned by Sarah Grace McCandless (Simon and Schuster, 2004) and numerous others. These writers were able to truly hone their voice and gain an audience before they ever pitched their books to agents.

Both of these forms of tiny publishing are very worthy, respected and viable ways for teenagers (or anyone) to get their writing out there in the world to be seen and devoured!