Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
Building confidence through children's literature
Award-winning children's author Neil Rosen, also known by his whimsical pen name Professor Stork, joins me to share his inspiring journey from a bookish childhood to rediscovering his passion for writing later in life.
His latest graphic novel, Mila on Purpose, celebrates friendship and diversity and aims to help children build confidence.
We also weigh the pros and cons of each publishing method, from the lengthy process of landing a traditional publisher to the financial and creative freedom of self-publishing.
We share practical strategies for parents, from finding books that align with your kids' interests to making reading a shared activity.
Don’t miss our discussion on writing series to build an audience, featuring everything from children’s rhyming books about nature to engaging fiction.
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If you want to write books for the purpose of making money, that starts right at the beginning and you want to go down the publisher route, you have to start right at the book, beginning with the kind of book you're writing. You want to write a book that publishers are going to want. You want to write a book that's in a popular genre. You want to write a book that's in a popular genre. You want to write a romance novel. You're going to want to write something that you're writing almost for the publishers more than for yourself in terms of the message you're delivering.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. So today we have with us a children author. His name is Neil Rosen and he writes under the pen name Professor Stork. He's an award-winning author of over six children's books, including his latest release, a graphic novel titled Mila on Purpose. Neil writes picture books for children ages three to seven and graphic novels for their older brothers and sisters. Grow your Circle is the first book in the Mila on Purpose series, which encourages children to explore purpose and find their own sense of meaning as they mature. So, neil, welcome to the show, so happy to have you here.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm glad to be here. It's a beautiful morning here in Oregon, so books come to mind.
Speaker 2:Oh nice. So, Neil, my first question to you is why children's book?
Speaker 1:Neil, my first question to you is why children's book? Why children's book? That's a great question and I think it just starts with I probably wrote my first book when I was eight or nine years old. I was one of those kids who had a bed full of books right under my covers and when I'd roll over they'd fall out on the floor because I was just reading all the time and I was into the Hardy Boy mystery book series and I actually wrote one of the Hardy Boy books and so I did a ton of writing when I was 10, 11, 12.
Speaker 1:And then, after I graduated, went out into the world, went into business, did all the things people do, and I didn't write for probably 30, 40 years. I wrote a business book and a couple of other things. But then, as my career went on and I got a little older, I started to got back to the writing and the children's books and I love it and I've written books for my grandchildren and I've written books for other children. But, like you said, it's important. Part of it is because it's so important when you're writing books to there's more to just writing a children's book than a children's book, and I think you've written some children's books, so you know what I'm talking about. You don't just want to write a book that that's fun or cute. You want to write a book that has some meaning and has some purpose and and, and books that matter to kids, that that can do things to to help them grow up and to help them think and to help them feel good about themselves. So I really feel like I'm doing something that hopefully is helpful, and Mila on Purpose is really a great example.
Speaker 1:Mila on Purpose is a series and the first book in the series is Grow your Circle hashtag Grow your Circle and it's about the importance of having friends and the importance of having a circle and what a circle is. And Mila learns that when she goes through some interesting times at school where a new girl comes into class who doesn't look like her and she wants to meet her and make friends with her, but she's nervous about it and she gets help from all the people around her and eventually the girl becomes her best friend and her circle grows. And she gets help from all the people around her and eventually the girl becomes her best friend and her circle grows, and now it grows in ways it has never grown before. So that's a book that I think, when kids read, it is something that they can take something away with and hopefully make them feel more comfortable in situations that maybe they weren't really comfortable in before that.
Speaker 2:That's a very nice message actually, especially, for example, where I live in the suburbs of Washington DC, in Montgomery County. Our schools are extremely diverse, so every kid is like half something you know, like half Japanese, half American or kids with immigrant parents. So you know it's not homogeneous anymore. So it's nice to send that message that you know it's okay to pick outside of your own and, you know, introduce yourself to new cultures, new backgrounds. So it's a very, very nice and important message, especially during these times. Oh boy, it is, and it's even very, very nice and important message, especially during these times.
Speaker 1:Oh boy, it is, and it's even more than okay. You actually grow from it and you learn from it too. So it's not just okay, it's something you almost need to do, that you need to seek out, because that's how you're going to grow as a person.
Speaker 2:Correct. Correct. That enriches your life, so that's really wonderful. So, neil, I just want to ask you a bit about your publishing journey. So I speak a lot with authors on this podcast. I think you're maybe the episode number 50 on this podcast, which is great. I stuck with it that far and I'm enjoying it. And many of them tell me that the hardest part for them in their publishing journey is not actually writing the book, but finding an agent, publishing a book, all of that. So I want to hear about your publishing journey. Do you have an agent? If yes, how did you find it? Did you self-publish All of that? So, if you can walk us through your publishing journey, do you have an agent? If yes, how did you fund it? Did you self-publish All of that? So, if you can walk us through your publishing journey, Sure, to this point, my publishing journey has been self-publishing.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:I've handled it all, I've done it all. I've hired editors, I've hired illustrators, other people that I work with on social media, and I'm trying to put together the whole package. And my real goal over the last few years has just been to really grow as a writer and really understand who I am as a writer and the messages that I want to deliver as a writer and how I want to deliver them, and I've made a lot of growth that way. I focus. I focused more on that than it, than looking for an agent or looking for a publisher at this point in time. I have a whole bunch of new books coming out and I'm feeling.
Speaker 1:I'm feeling you know, if you've written, you know you, you think your first book is great until you write your second book and then you see how much bigger it is and then you write your fourth book. Now I'm closing in on like a dozen books and so I'm getting very comfortable with who I am and what I'm delivering and stuff like that. I have some really interesting new books coming out and so I haven't really decided, going forward, what I was going to do, but I found that writing incredibly time consuming, even children's books, I think. Sometimes it's probably harder to write a 32 page children's book than it is to write a 300 page novel, because every word is so important.
Speaker 2:The word matters. Yeah, have you ever tried going the traditional route?
Speaker 1:It matters.
Speaker 1:yeah, have you ever tried going the traditional route. I haven't yet. No, no, I thought about it, but at this point I haven't yet tried to do that. Part of it is also because when you go the traditional route, there are a couple of things about it. I've learned a lot about it, I've looked into it, but there are a few things about it that bothered me. One is that you have, you know you're a two-year, it'd probably take you a year to get an agent or publisher and then two years after that before anything gets published. So you're doing this far away and a lot of the stuff I write, like Me, learn, purpose, I think, is sort of timely, and that would be something I'd have to change.
Speaker 1:I'd have to try to move from timely to timeless which maybe you can do, which I'm doing, by the way, with some of my new books. Another problem is, if you write, even if you publish, you're still responsible for doing the social media, marketing and the outreach and all of that stuff. It's not like you get a publisher and all of a sudden, okay, you have a publisher, you don't have to worry about that anymore. You're still doing all of that anyway. So you know, for those reasons I really haven't looked at it.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you said that you've done it all and I actually self-published my first novel. For me, I love the fact I had actually a publisher before but then I took my rights back and I self-published it for many reasons, but I love the fact that I have control over everything. You know the pricing, you know. I look at the reports, the daily reports. I can decide to put it for free on KDP Unlimited. All of that. This is all within me. But what I realized is it's a lot of money up front to put and so far I'm still in the hole, right, because you know, you pay for the editor, all of that, and for some authors it will.
Speaker 2:You know, it will probably be too expensive to afford it. And for me, like now, thinking to do another, self-publish another book, you know I also need to come up with you know, I don't know five grand to do that and you know I have bills to pay. I have three children. You know I'm still paying a mortgage. Like it's too much financial responsibility. And what is your advice for someone who really wants to get published cannot get a traditional publisher, and coming up with, you know, thousands of dollars is not an option either. So what do we do in this case?
Speaker 1:Well, I think you're talking about really two totally different things here. One thing is. One thing is why are you writing? Okay, if you want to, if you want to write books for the purpose of making money, that starts right at the beginning and you want to go down the publisher route, you have to start right at the book, beginning with the kind of book you're writing. You want to write a book that publishers are going to want. You want to write a book that's in a popular genre. You want to write a book that publishers are going to want. You want to write a book that's in a popular genre. You want to write a romance novel. You're going to want to write something that you're writing almost for the publishers more than for yourself in terms of the message you're delivering. So it really starts right back there. I've always, you know, like I said, if you want to write, if you write a romance novel, you'll probably have very little problem getting a publisher. If you want to write, even with children's books, what are the hot kinds of children's books that are really being written now? A lot of graphic novels for teenagers and things like that. A lot of graphic novels for teenagers and things like that. So you're writing for the market rather than writing for yourself. So it's two totally different routes. To go down With self-publishing, I don't know if you'll ever make money.
Speaker 1:I don't know it costs money. I don't know if I'll ever make money. You write enough books and maybe then you're getting a. You're getting a little money from each book as it goes along and you're trying to build it that way. But a lot of people I know who have published with publishers don't make money either. Sometimes they get an advance to write the book, which is nice, but they don't. They don't really make it's difficult. I mean, there are how many millions of books that come out every year and how many become bestsellers? And I've actually had two books that have come out and have been bestsellers out of the gate and you still don't make much money. You know they're bestsellers and that that's a big deal for a month or two and then after that you got to get back to it.
Speaker 1:Why do you write? I write. Well, I was, uh, I actually I had my own kids. I had three kids and now I have five grandchildren and I and I was a teacher for a dozen years teaching elementary school kids and I really, for the most part, think that it is really important for young children to be reading stuff that's going to get this world into a better place. And I know that sounds real haughty and crazy, but that really is why I write. I want children to have stuff to read that's going to impact their lives and the lives of people around them, that's going to put them on a mission, that's going to make them want to take care of the earth we live in, that's going to make them want to be friendly and be open and be kind and be generous and things like that, because that's eventually how the world will change so the message is children's book will change the world.
Speaker 2:Can we adopt this mantra?
Speaker 1:children's books with children's books with a purpose really. I mean, they really are like, like and they're all about. They're all about friendliness, they're all about they really are all about purpose. They're about leadership, you know, developing your leadership skills and giving good examples of leadership and things like that. I've started a a family book club and the family. I've started a family book club and the family, yeah, and so people join my family book club. It's free, and every month I send out books for different age groups to read and with the books I send out questions that they should ask the kids.
Speaker 1:And it's built on four basic tenets and one is to get children reading the other is to get children reading books that matter, books that have some meaning and some purpose. The third thing is to read with children, which parents do. They read to children when they're very young. They start to read with them when they're a little bit older and learning to read themselves, and then after that they sort of let the kids read on their own. And it's really important for parents to continue to read, not every book, but once a month read a book with a kid, and then the fourth piece of it is to then have a conversation, have a conversation with about the book. So teach kids how to read. They learn how to read. Teach them how to choose books that are meaningful, so they're reading books that are meaningful.
Speaker 1:Read the books with them, and even if you have a teenager who's reading a graphic novel, there's no reason a parent can't read that same graphic novel not with the kid at the time, but just read the novel and then have conversations with the kids about the book, which will help you. It does so many great things. It just it shows kids that you love reading and that that's really important to you and part of your life, and it's a great way to communicate with them and take their temperature and get a, get a. It's a nice mental health checkup and it's also just a reading checkup where you can get a feel for how well your kids are understanding what they're reading and also see the types of things they're reading, because that'll affect them. So I believe that's really important from the youngest age, all the way up till at least they get to high school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I have a parenting question for you, since you're an experienced parent and have grandchildren. So my kids used to read. I used to read to them when they were younger and then they used to read and now they just stopped reading. Uh, when they're teenagers and I keep telling them and they, they know reading is cringe, I don't want to read. You know, like reading is they? They think reading is not cool and they're just stopped reading. And we're always fighting over like stop, stop looking at your device, go read a book. You know, and it's just a constant battle and sadly, they're not reading these days. So how can I?
Speaker 1:solve this? How old are they?
Speaker 2:I have the older one. I have three kids. The youngest is six. I read to him. He's fine, but the oldest are twins, they're 12.
Speaker 1:And if you take them to the library or something, they don't see any books they want to pick out or go to a bookstore or get them a graphic novel.
Speaker 2:They used to, but this year they're like resistant. I was like, oh, let's go to the library no. Let's go to bars and novels no, let's go to bars and novels no. And they're like kind of this rebellious teenage years.
Speaker 1:And they're not reading on their iPads either. No, well, I'd get them a book for their birthday. I'd get them a couple of graphic novels no, I wouldn't. I would look up what books are really popular with 12 year olds. They're boys with 12 year old boys and I'd get them a book and I'd get myself a copy and I'd tell them I'm gonna read this, let's read this, and then let's sit down and talk about it and see if you're able to have a little bit of an impact that way, because sometimes that'll work yeah, or maybe shall I start like a reward system for them, like if you read this, you like, shall I bribe them or no?
Speaker 2:I mean I have to go to that route, like I'll give you five dollars.
Speaker 1:I don't think. I don't think so because I'm sure they have friends who are reading. Twelve year old kids these days are reading a lot. I have a. I have a granddaughter who's 12. I have a grandson who's 13. And they read a lot and they're reading all these Harry Potter types of things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they already finished them.
Speaker 1:Right. So there's a whole bunch that come after them. I can actually get you some names of some books. I'll check with my grandson. I'll get you some names of books Because kids that age are reading these books. They're popular.
Speaker 2:Percy Jackson Percy.
Speaker 1:Jackson.
Speaker 2:How are they doing in school? Good, yeah, yeah, a's.
Speaker 1:Mostly A's. Yeah, okay, do they have a lot of reading that they have to do for school?
Speaker 2:They do. Yeah, they have, like one of them is in the gifted and talented program, so they have to do a lot of reading.
Speaker 1:So that may be part of it. That may be worth thinking about it. Did they read over the summer or no?
Speaker 2:No, that's the sad part, and I'm like reading all the time. They see me read. I have books all over the house.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But maybe it just depends, we'll see.
Speaker 1:Right, it might just pass yeah, it might just yeah, no, I'm sure. I'm sure. I'm sure, with a mother like you and reading all the time with all the books in the house, that they will find it interesting. What are they? The one other thing you might really consider is what are they really interested in because you might be able to talk about.
Speaker 2:That's true like now their interests change. Like my son now is obsessed with basketball, so he's been actually reading books about like basketball legends, like michael jordan and lebron james and that's the book, yeah, uh, but I think he kind of finished them and now he just wants to play basketball. So that's what the phase he is in right now that's.
Speaker 1:But that's not bad, because if he got a book like air, which is a book about michael jordan or something like that, and read that and you read it you can have a nice conversation about it. I mean, it really does have an impact. It really does make a difference. It's worth you reading one of the books and it doesn't have to be anything really formal, even when you're driving them somewhere in the car or doing something to just talk about. I read that book and you know what's the book called air? By my.
Speaker 2:Okay, maybe I'll buy it for him and we can yeah, it's about um.
Speaker 1:It's about how michael jordan, um, it's about nike and how michael jordan got involved with nike and how Michael Jordan got involved with Nike and how the air shoes came into being and how it got so rich and everything. So it or. But I'm just saying any book like that, but you read it too, and then you'd be surprised if you drive home from school one day and you just bring up something. Man, I read this book and I was really surprised that this happens. Might start a whole conversation there.
Speaker 2:That's a good idea. Okay, so I want to shift gears a bit and talk about marketing your books. So you mentioned that, even if you're traditionally published, you have to hustle right. You have to market your books, you have to go on podcasts, you have to use social media. So what tactics have you been using and what worked for you and what didn't work? Where did you get the most success in terms of selling your books?
Speaker 1:Well, I think the biggest thing is and where I've had the most success and probably where most authors have the most success is really planning out and doing a good book launch, where you really launch your book, bring people together, give it at a reduced price, offer something for people who will write reviews. I've gotten 90 to 100 reviews on different books and I think that's probably it's a part people talk about, but it's also the easiest part, because you just and you build your following. You have your podcast, you have people who follow you and at that one point in time, the way Amazon works and the way some of these others work, that's how you become a bestseller. So, if you can sell a hundred books in one day and get 30 or 40 or 50 of those people to review that book, then all of a sudden you have a book, you know, a bestselling book on Amazon or on Ingram, which I've had. I've had them there too Not in New York times, that's that I think you have to. So you get that bestselling book and then you try to leverage that bestselling book, but there's no other than after that book launch. It's just like pounding away, it's just like social media. It's Reels, it's Instagram, it's Twitter, it's whatever you're using, it's podcasts, it's the kind of things you're doing and it just is like drip, drip, drip, drip. So it also does come back to the type of books you write.
Speaker 1:I have a new series that's going to be coming out more next spring, which to me, is more of something that's more of a highly marketable kind of thing. At least I'm trying to, I'm seeing it. I'm writing a book called. It's a series of books called Can you Read Nature, and these books are meant to be read outdoors and each book one of the books is Can you Read the Daylight Sky, and another is Can you Read a Pond or a Flower Garden, and there's one Can you Read Archer's National Park, and it's. The idea is to try to get kids off their screens, out of the house, into nature to look at different things, but also fun books, and they're rhyming books and they're fun books to do. But I think, like Can you Read the National Parks is something that could be sold at national parks and you also do, you? And have you worked on getting distribution for your books?
Speaker 2:No. So do you hire a distributor?
Speaker 1:That's something I'm working on. You don't hire you. Um, there are distributors that work with self-publishing. That's one of the things I'm working on now. I mean, ingram spark is a distributor yeah, they're a distributor so you can, you could use, you can use them. It doesn't cost anything, but. But there are other distributors that focus on different types of books depending on the market you're in. Some distributors just focus on books by women authors. Some distributors focus on certain genres or children's books or that kind of thing, or sports or religious books.
Speaker 2:But how do they make money if you don't pay them?
Speaker 1:they make money off they make money when they sell the books they're, so they're actually going to take your books to bookstores, take your books to museums, take your books to galleries, wherever boys, wherever books are sold if they're children's books and they make money by by selling the books, so they're like. They're like your middleman.
Speaker 2:So all I have to do is just email them or contact them and tell them here is my book.
Speaker 1:Yeah, get online. You can get online. You can go to Readsy or you can go to Ingram and you can look up a book of distributors of children's books. If it's children's books you're doing or whatever and I'm working on that I do not have one yet yet, but I have started to reach out to them and I've had some interest. So I'm looking to do that because that can make a big difference for my books. They could they distribute to schools, that that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:So I'm looking and then they take a cut of the sale of each book exactly, but they do everything.
Speaker 1:They do everything, they, they go out and they market, they sell. So you have to make an outlay of some money because you have to send them books. So you'll send them let's say, you'll send them 50 books, and so they have the books and they ship them and they do everything with that, and then they tell you when they need more. So definitely distributors definitely definitely, definitely a way to go, and there are.
Speaker 2:There are quite a lot of them out there, big ones, small ones, definitely worth so, uh, neil, have you been doing your own social media or do you have the higher health?
Speaker 1:no, I have. I, I have uh uh help that I work with a great team that I've worked with for about a year and a half now, or a little more, and they're really good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I looked at your visuals. They're really good like yeah, the design the media kit. You know like it's. It's really like top notch.
Speaker 1:So it is great. They're great and the big thing they do. That's really important because you know you do this. It's like your podcast. You said you were your 50th podcast. Did you keep doing it? It's all about this consistency. If I were to do my own social media, I would do 50 things one day and then wait three months and do 30. Yeah, now it's very consistent, all the time constantly going out with new books and new launches. So you're slow. You slowly build your, your brand recognition and your name recognition and your book recognition. But that's why I hired somebody. It's to make sure it's happening all the time.
Speaker 2:Good for you and what is? What is your next project? I think you mentioned it briefly. If you can tell us, I have two projects.
Speaker 1:Well, I actually have two books that are launching in the next six weeks or so. One is a second book in a series called Skywatch, which is about a team of cloud heroes that solve environmental problems. So the first book was about plastic in the oceans and the second book is about strip mining. And then I have a second book in a series called about Silas, which is a rhyming book and really really more of a romp, and it's called Silas the zoo and a jumbo debut. And it's about a boy, about a boy who goes to the zoo and he watches all the animals and then when he gets to the hippopotamus, he just runs right by without watching him at all. And the hippopotamus gets really mad at him and says you know, you watch the lions, you laugh at the monkeys, but me you just run by. What's the matter with you? Why don't you spend any time watching me? And he goes. Well, you don't do anything, you're just lying there. Why should I sit and watch? They have this great conversation. So it's.
Speaker 2:He offended the hippopotamus, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:That's very cool.
Speaker 1:And the two new books. One is this series called Can you Read Nature, which is, again, it's a rhyming series, but this is nonfiction. This is a nonfiction series Can you Read Nature, where you learn all about flower gardens and ponds and things like that.
Speaker 1:And then I also have a book launching next summer which is a self-help book for parents called Rediscovering the Village and it's a book on education and how to help your children perform better in school and how to develop a lifelong level of learning, and it's all strategies from the 1960s and 70s yeah, and the book was written originally back in the 1960s and 70s. I wrote it with another teacher and we've updated it and we're launching it next summer and I think I think that's going to be a really exciting book for parents to use. There's like 50 different strategies in there to help your kids develop a lifelong level of learning.
Speaker 2:That's fun.
Speaker 1:Because it's hard. You know, most people don't realize it. We didn't even realize it. We were doing it one day and it's like it's amazing how times today are so similar to what they were back then. You think things change so much and then you look at it and they really haven't changed at all. We had the Cold War with Russia and the nuclear war going on and we had computers were just starting, they were just coming out. But back then people were totally freaked out about how much time their kids were spending on television, watching television. They were totally freaked out about how much time their kids were spending on television, watching television. They were totally freaked out about it, as bad as it is today. So you're saying I can't get my kids off the screens. That's exactly what they were saying back then, but it was television screens because that's when television started and the kids wouldn't leave their television. So there was so much back then. That's similar and it's interesting.
Speaker 2:And what about you?
Speaker 1:How many children's books have you written?
Speaker 2:uh, I only have one. Uh, I'm still trying to find a publisher and and all of that, but as I or I might just self-publish, but I have, like I published one book and I have maybe four others that waiting to for them to see, children's books or children's no no, the one that I published is an adult book. It's a murder mystery, uh, set between the us and the middle east, between jordan, where I was born. So it takes it goes back and forth between jordan and the us. So yeah, and you?
Speaker 2:published it, but you, you published it traditionally the first first edition, yeah, with a small press. Then eventually, I decided to take my rights back and I self-published it, and I'm much happier being in charge of it, honestly, yeah, so yeah, I have more control and when you have small press, I feel it you might as well self-publish, right when?
Speaker 1:you have small press.
Speaker 2:I feel it you might as well self-publish. I think yeah, especially for someone like me who's already on social media. I'm already doing my marketing stuff, so I might as well just self-publish. It makes more sense, at least for me sense to having more control and even whatever small financial gain I get from it, you know, I can even be in control of that.
Speaker 1:Do you manage to have you know, you manage to get a continuous small drip of sales through?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do, but that's not where my main income comes. Most of my income comes from writing content to brands. So I'm a writer and I do ghostwriting as well. So like I'm a writer for, and I do ghostwriting as well, so like I'm a writer for, hire, so ghostwriting. I write newsletters, I write blogs.
Speaker 1:I write and publish publications.
Speaker 2:That's where my main income and, like the writing, the creative writing brings some income, but you cannot raise a family on that.
Speaker 1:No, you can't. The other thing to consider, though, is for writers to consider. One thing I have found successful, which I'm doing more of now, is when you write books in a series. That's very helpful.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's actually my knack as well. I have one in the series.
Speaker 1:If you were to write a second murder mystery with the same characters. That really is very helpful, because people who buy the second one if they like it will then buy the first one, and people who have bought the first one will buy the second one. So you build your audience by having a series.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my next book is part of a three book series and I'm talking with an agent now, so wish me luck.
Speaker 1:What kind of series is it? So wish me?
Speaker 2:luck. What kind of series is it? It's speculative fiction which is like urban fantasy, which is, you know, you have a normal suburban setting, but something weird happens in the urban setting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that sounds like fun.
Speaker 2:That's the kind of books I like. So there's not lots of world building, but there's always like a mysterious element to it, like a magical element.
Speaker 1:And what age group Is it for adults?
Speaker 2:Adults, yeah, adults.
Speaker 1:Nice, that sounds great, that sounds like great fun.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll see. So, neil. Any last thoughts or advice or tips for aspiring authors who want to get into the world of publishing, especially publishing children's books?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think they have to go into it with a plan understand, understand what they want to do, why they're writing. You know, like you've said before, and you know, I can write a children's book in a week and it takes me a year to edit it. So it's, you know the work. The work comes in you, you, you, you spit it out and it just comes out and then you gotta, then you gotta really do the work. If you want to write books that are commercial, then you really have to understand the market and learn more about the book market and what's commercial and what publishers are looking for, and then write books specifically to meet those things. If you want to write yourself, make sure you have another job.
Speaker 2:Correct. So, neil, how can people get in touch with you? How can they reach you? How can they get your books? All of that.
Speaker 1:All I have to do is go to my website, which is prof. P-r-o-f Stork S-T-O-R-Kcom. W-w-w dot profstorkcom.
Speaker 2:And on social media as well. The same username on social media?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's at Professor Stork, and there's my blog is up on the website. There's lots of free stuff up on the website. I give like free coloring books with all my books, so people can go on and just get the free coloring pages and things like that and get to see what's coming out. And they can reach out to me there if they'd like to, if they have any questions.
Speaker 2:I'll get it for my six-year-old.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely Do that.
Speaker 2:All right, thank you very much, professor Stock.
Speaker 1:Thank you, natasha, you have a great, great day.
Speaker 2:Enjoy it down there in Maryland. Hope you have beautiful weather you too. Thank you, and, for anyone who is listening or watching, thank you for joining us today and until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Lead Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time. Happy reading, happy writing.
