Writers can spend years taking writing classes and attending conferences, and never land a book deal. Often the problem is that writers want to be published with one of the Big Five, and forget there are other ways of birthing a book. For instance, have you heard of graded readers?
Graded readers are books to teach language learners how to read and enjoy the language they’re learning. Reading at the appropriate level helps revise and reinforce grammar, and teaches new vocabulary in context. These readers are written at different levels from beginner to advanced, and put a lot of emphasis on the pleasure of reading, rather than on the study of language, like the books you read in your native language.
Graded readers can be about original stories covering many fiction genres such as romance like A New Song for Nina by National Geographic Learning or comedy like What is Brian? by Paper Planes Teens. Whatever your genre, there’ll be a learner who’ll want to read it. Readers can also be adapted from classics like Dracula by Macmillan or from contemporary books written by authors like Stephen King. There are also nonfiction graded readers focusing on biographies of famous people or interesting topics like Great Mysteries in Our World by Black Cat.
Although the aim of graded readers is to give language learners interesting books to read at their level, many include comprehension exercises, or glossaries explaining difficult vocabulary. Teachers use graded readers in the classroom, and a lot of school libraries stock them. If you have a background in education, you can write these additional activities. Otherwise, publishers have writers they use for this purpose.
I worked as a foreign language English teacher for two decades and often used graded readers in class. My students enjoyed them so much that I was inspired to write one. Fortunately, my pitch for Save the Titanic! was picked up immediately by Burlington Books, and I’ve now written two other readers for them called Tunnel to the Unknown and Pompeii, and am currently writing a fourth. Lake Eerie is my fifth reader and was published by Delta Publishing in December 2022. I also contribute graded articles monthly to Editions Entrefilet’s three nonfiction language learning magazines in France since 2014. These magazines are called GO English for adults, English Now for teenagers and GO English Kids for children. I often joke that although writing is never easy, writing graded literature is especially challenging as you have to craft an engaging narrative with limited vocabulary. Publishers will expect you to be able to write to level.
Writing graded readers is a specialized skill with its own challenges, but I find it rewarding. There aren’t a lot of writers of graded material, so if you have a background in teaching foreign languages, you may be the perfect candidate for writing a graded reader. Combine that experience with skills like patience, ingenuity and attention to detail and publishers will keep you on their list of authors to contact for a new series instead of looking for new authors.
You won’t win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature writing graded readers, but they have their own prestigious award for excellence in writing called the Language Learner Literature Awards. That’s one to hang on your website! Pay varies from several hundred dollars to several thousand, depending on the publisher.
How do you find work writing graded readers? They technically fall under the work-for-hire category, so there won’t be calls for submissions. You must contact educational publishers with samples of your writing or pitch your own ideas, which is actually great because, at the end, you’ll have a book about your original idea and your name on it in libraries and bookshops. That’s the dream, after all, isn’t it?
Bio – Lou Piccolo is the author of several graded readers through Burlington Books and writers monthly for language learning magazines published by Editions Entrefilet in France. Lou is also a freelance developmental editor of children’s literature and runs two editing courses for the Editorial Freelancers Association on editing picture books and YA. You can find her hiking through the French Alps where she lives with her Golden Retriever and two sons or on Instagram @lou.piccolo_editor, on Twitter @LouPiccoloEdits and at www.loupiccolo.com
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