How to get my book taken seriously as a teenager? [closed]
Closed by System on Feb 20, 2018 at 21:31
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I have been working on a book for a while, and I probably will be done with it soon. My work is very original in my mind and in the end, this book will be very high quality. But I have been wondering about one important aspect of publishing.
I am only 13 years old. I really want my work to be taken seriously, and people to see my book as something that is good because it is a good book, not because I am young. How can I successfully get this published as a book that people enjoy without caring about my age?
(Edit: I know that other people have asked this before, and the one I was directed to is about where and how to publish as a minor, but this question is about how to be taken seriously as a minor.)
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You don't have to do anything special at all. First you will seek an agent, with a query letter. Look up on the Internet or in writing books on Amazon how to write a query letter.
Do not mention your age. If you get a response of somebody willing to read a sample, send it. Before you sign any contract or agreement, you will need to tell the other party you are a minor (and cannot enter into a contract), so your parent (or guardian) will sign on your behalf. Other than "minor", you don't have to mention your age.
If your agent sells your book, it can be published without anybody knowing your age, seeing your picture, or anything else. People publish books under pseudonyms (made up names) all the time, to conceal their true identity.
If you want to prevent being googled (or revealing your gender) you can publish under initials; e.g. "J.K. Rowling".
I won't prejudge the quality of your work based on your age. I would just say, do not LIE about it, and do not sign any kind of agreement without your legal guardian (probably a parent).
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The age does matter. It matters so much that even the author has to worry about it before their audience. This is not the time where discrimination is proudly accepted. This is the time where everyone acknowledges their implicit discrimination, and try their best to minimize this as much as possible. So yes, if you have to worry about your age, then it's a good sign that your book does not meet your expectations. Try harder. When you start feeling exhausted for the effort you spend, and when your every single expectation is fulfilled, then you will be 100% confident that your audience will like the book, no matter how young you are.
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If you write a serious book, people will take it seriously. If you write a book that people take seriously at age 13, people will consider you a phenom.
But it almost never happens, and the reason is that a book is a highly complex piece of art that depends both on an in-depth grasp of storytelling and the conventions of the novel and on a keen eye for the experiences of human life that make for interesting reading. These things take a lot of reading and a lot of highly observed living to accumulate and it is difficult to do enough of both by the age of 13 to produce a book that people will take seriously.
This says nothing about your talent, anymore than saying that a 13 year old cyclist is not ready to enter the Tour du France says anything about their talent, determination, or future potential. It simply takes more time to develop body and mind to perform at that level.
Not that this should stop you from trying. Maybe you are a phenom, and you only get better by trying. But having realistic expectations can help you measure your success and your prospects more realistically, which can help you avoid burnout and disappointment as you develop.
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Your readers won't care about your age
Sometimes an author will write a little autobiographic blurb that is printed at the end of the book. If you do this and you mention your age in there your readers might realize how old you were when you wrote your book. At least those readers that care about the author biography.
Your readers will care about the quality of the book.
A publisher might want to promote a book a book that was written by a teenager to get the people who take that into consideration to buy the book. If you don't like that you should look into self-publishing.
You might also want to use a pseudonym when publishing your book to make it harder to find out who you are and thereby how old you were when you published the book.
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