Review by Sarah Faulkner

I’ve been a follower of the blog, Go Teen Writers, maintained by the authors of this book for several years. I was worried I’d learned pretty much all they had to teach me. I was very wrong!

Go Teen Writers: How to Turn Your First Draft into a Finished Book is the perfect book for any young writer. If they’re a teen, college student, or just new to the craft, this is a great how-to book and manual.

For someone who has read several grammar books, take a creative class and a grammar class, and been writing for four years, some of the first chapters weren’t as helpful. However, this is because the target of this book is someone who is a little newer to the craft. I think if I’d read this book a year or two ago, I would have had a lot more to learn from the first few chapters.

But after those, I found a gold mine. Chapter 14 had a helpful reminder on formatting, and the whole section on “Editing Issues that don’t happen on the Page,” was wonderful.

And then I got to the section on publishing. I’ve read several books and dozens of articles on publishing, and this still taught me a lot. I’ve read a whole book on book proposals, but that book was written for non-fiction writers and didn’t help me very much. I hadn’t been able to find a good source of information on fiction book proposals until this book. It only has one chapter on proposals, but I learned more in that one chapter than in half a dozen blog posts and a whole book.

I really appreciated how this book was targeted to teens. I read a few books for writing as a child, but I haven’t been able to find one for teens before this. However, I think that any new writer who’s looking for some information about the industry will appreciate this book. I know it will be one of my top recommendations from now on.

I highly recommend this book to any writer, young or old. It’s a great book with a lot of helpful information that I haven’t found elsewhere. I will say, I highly recommend the physical book. This is a book you’ll want to flip through, highlight, and have handy all the time. I originally got the e-book and have since also gotten the hard copy.