I came across an interesting article, Writing For A Book Packager: How To Cash In On An Often Under-Exploited Market by Rusty Fischer, while looking for sites with information on writers markets to add to my growing writing resource directory. I’ve not heard of a book packager (also known as book producers) before today and had no idea what one did or how one might be a good resource for writers. I love making new discoveries and this was definitely a new discovery and one worth exploring by freelance writers or by new writers that haven’t broken into the freelance market and would like to give freelance writing a try.

Basically a book packager is hired by a publishing company to put together a book or series of books on a specific topic. These book packagers often hire freelance writers that are experts in the specific field that the book series is focused on and in some cases they get their name placed on the cover (not sure if all books include the freelance author’s name). Sounds intriguing so far.

The article offers several freelance authors success stories. The one that grabbed my attention was:

Another project, this one a continuity project of arts and crafts cards for preschoolers, shipped out weekly from a huge New York client, has provided unexpected opportunity for another fortunate freelancer. One day, unsolicited, we received a professional query letter accompanied by several wonderful children’s poems. While we had no use for them at the time, it turned out that, weeks later, our preschool card client wanted to add a new section to its cards: Whimsy!

Our unsolicited poet was the first person we called. Now she earns ten dollars per line. At eight lines a poem, six to eight poems a week, that’s not too shabby!

The article includes several ways to find book packagers and how to query them. I did a search on Google and found another article offering information on book packagers, Why Publishers Use Packagers (this article is on a book packager’s site). Apparently there are a large variety of subjects that book packagers put together for large publishing houses and this seems to be a growing enterprise and a viable resource for freelance writers.

Here is an interview with Dori Butler, a children’s author, on Working With Book Packagers. And here is yet another article on Book Packaging: Under-explored Terrain For Freelancers. Guess I’ll add another category to my resource directory for book packagers. It looks like an exciting avenue for writers to explore.