How I got a Book Deal from Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers.
Mad Libs are stories with blank spaces for some of the words...
You go around the room asking for a noun, adjective, verb etc. without knowing the story it can get funny. I played it with my daughter a lot. One Christmas I was trying to think of a fun gift I could make that wouldn’t be boring. I made Musical Mad Libs! First a Patriotic one and then a Christmas edition. I Printed out 20 books on my inkjet printer. and stuck them together with book-binding tape and glue. They were a big hit so I thought maybe the makers of real Mad Libs would be interested in this idea. It was a long shot, so to get their attention, I sent this:
Despite the typos and everything, they called me 6 months later and said, “We like it, let’s do it.” I said, “Who’s this?” I totally forgot about it, not thinking I’d get a response. They said the letter was what sold them.
They used their own artist for the cover but paid me for the idea and production of the contents. I know it’s not a real book deal like others have been talking about lately but I thought it would be funny to chime in that I got a book deal too. What I mean is I did get the job but it’s not like a serious book, just a kid’s book, Haha, aha, ha…ahem.