How to earn money with writing fairy tales for kids?

They write too long dialogues, don't change enough scenes, can't level descriptions with action etc. Yet, if they are willing to adapt the story a bit, this can be a great opportunity for building a name and have some great time along the way.

This is much easier than the first two options. Why? There is much greater demand for stories among magazines. They have to publish an edition every month and they need fresh material all the time. The editors are not so demanding than editors of books because the expense for your story is significantly lower. The story can be written in freer form than at picture books, because there is typically only one illustration accompanying your part.

You can still earn good money if you regularly publish fairy tales in magazines. If you are good, your name will become popular and editors of books or picture books will look at your offers much more favorably.

But! It's still not easy to publish a fairy tale in a magazine. Some of them have still very high standards, almost impossible to reach for beginners. And some of them are pretty closed companies with a selected circle of writers and illustrators where a new name can enter only one in a couple of years. So - you need to try and try and - try again.

A fairy tale is made for being told, but most of the new authors too often forget this simple fact. Not every radio station needs fairy tales but our nation station, for instance, broadcast a fairy tale every single day for more than 60 years! You can imagine it's a lot of fairy tales. Not everyone if a premier, because in so many decades their archive grew already pretty big. I managed to publish several hundred (!) fairy tales in national radio and by the way, wrote several dozens radio plays as well.

What's the difference?

A simply told fairy tale is written and read by an actor.

A radio play, on the other hand, is a dramatized text with dialogues, ambiences etc., what is much harder to make, yet it can be done. I love creating both.

If you are more of a visual than audio type, a dramatized fairy tale for a stage can be your next best bet. You have two major in this area too: with real actors or with marionettes. Each one of them has its pros and cons and most of the fairy tales can be adapted for both. If you are willing to learn and work on your own texts, of course.

Images credit: https://tolovaj.com/trgovina/

It's a major media with a huge demand for all kinds of texts, including fairy tales for children of all ages. If you find your way into production circles with a winning combination of good scenarios and healthy connections among producers and directors, you can write for a television as well. Here are two major options: shooting fairy tales with real people or making animated versions. Again, there's a learning curve, but a lot of possible rewards. Definitely worth considering!

Some authors prefer reading their own fairy tales in front of live audience. Schools, libraries, and literary festivals are only a few of possibilities to present your original fairy tales, make some money and meet a lot of new interesting people at the same time. This kind of earning can be pretty time consuming but if you are in demand, you can get relatively good money.

Copyright law is not the same in all countries yet, in general, every reprint, replay or another kind of reproduction demands payment of the author. It's not a full payment like at premieres, but it adds up if you have a lot of already published works, a lot of books in libraries etc. Several agencies are taking care of your earning (for a fee of course), so you can still focus on creating new works, but money from your old fairy tales can still come to your account. Every author in European Union, for instance, gets a few cents for every borrowed book written, illustrated or translated by him. The most popular authors get several thousand Euros every year just for that. Again, it's not money you can count on from the beginning, but definitely an important part of an income for serious authors of fairy tales.

What are you waiting for?

Go and write your own fairy tale!