Meegenius Author Challenge

Blog & website of children's book author Tara Lazar MeeGenius Author Challenge by Ashley Fedor, Editor and Director of Content at MeeGenius In the next few  weeks MeeGenius, the #1 app with over 700 e-books, will be kicking off our Author Challengeâ€"an open challenge  for aspiring authors. I wanted to let you know about it in advance and invite all aspiring authors to participate. I exchanged some emails with Tara prior to writing this post and we thought it would be a great opportunity to share some aspects of our publishing process. At MeeGenius, the publishing process beginsâ€"where else?â€"in the slush pile! As the editor, I read through hundreds of submissions, looking for stories that I know will resonate with our readers. This could mean unique characters, an engaging voice, a topic that will be particularly powerful to parents, or simply great writing. Once I decide to acquire a manuscript and the contract is signed, then the fun part begins! I work with the author on 1-3 editorial passes. We collaborate to take the manuscript from something good to something great. This can take anywhere from one week to several, depending on our timelines. Once we have a finished manuscript, I assign it to an illustrator and provide art direction. The illustrator sends a round of sketches, which I review with an eye for editorial accuracy (if a character is supposed to be wearing a dress but she’s wearing snow pants, we need to fix it!) as well as layout (if it’s a landscape picture, will the text fit on the page?). At the same time, the manuscript is sent out for narration and cues (word highlighting). Once all assets are completed, it’s time to build the book! Our production team works tirelessly to create beautiful e-books, QA them across platforms to catch any issues, and finally, to send the book out into the world. Previous Winner: The Secret Police Dog Thank you so much Tara for giving us the stage here to share this exciting  opportunity with your audience. Here’s a post by our CEO Wandy Hoh that shares what we’re looking for in “MeeGenius authors”. All other challenge details can be found here. The challenge kicks off next Monday, June 16th! Good luck!