Editor Cheryl Klein Shares Expertise With Writers

Cheryl Klein started her editorial career in 2000 when Arthur A Levine at Scholastic hired her.  She is still with Arthur today as Senior Editor. 

In January 2005, Cheryl started her well-known blog, followed by creating a web site the following November. Both helped her delevelop an online audience.  

Once she started running talks online, people began to ask her about when she was going to write a book.  With four years of advice behind her, she started seriously thinking  about using the material for a book in spring 2009.

On July 1, 2009, Cheryl posted on KickStarter.com, a Web site devoted to raising funds for creative projects. She figured she would need to raise $2000 to print 500 copies of her book and decided KickStarter would be a good way to see if her online support and following would translate into support for a physical book.  She then announced her idea on her blog and on Twitter.

KickStarter was newly launched, and mine was the earliest publishing project.  She raised the money in nine days, and by September had raised $3200 and I ended up printing 2000 copies of Second Sight.  Two years later she has self-published her book, Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults.

Second Sight is largely composed of Klein’s presentations at writers’ conferences and other venues, the self-published paperback (released by her own company, Asterisk Books), discusses such topics as devising terrific first lines, writing a strong picture-book manuscript, finding the emotional heart of a story, building characters, and bolstering plot.

Click here to purchase from Amazon You’ll have to order it, since they are out-of-stock right now.

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy