Fiz Osborne is an agent, award-winning and number one bestselling author, editor and former-Publisher with over 20 years of publishing experience.
As an agent, Fiz represents a boutique list of creatives at Creative Roots Studio, the literary agency and creative studio she co-founded with author Rachael Davis-Featherstone. As an author, Fiz writes novelty books, picture books and young non-fiction under her own name as well as her pseudonym, Emma Adams, including the Hello novelty book series (Simon & Schuster), the Move with Me picture book series (Simon & Schuster) and books in the Little Myths series (Hachette).
When she was a picture book Publisher, Fiz edited and art directed stellar picture book talent such as Alice Hemming, Nicola Slater, Michelle Robinson, David Litchfield, Tim Budgen, Lucy Fleming and Lucy Rowland.
I’m looking for:
- Unique ideas, distinctive written voices and fun approaches to the medium.
- Child-friendly stories that will capture imagination, inspire emotion and grab attention (and hold it).
- Read-aloud-ability. Picture books are made to be read aloud. They can be fun, silly, serious, dramatic–and a performance of sorts. So, dramatic pauses, loud moments, quiet moments, question-asking, interactivity and changing moods within the story are all devices that can be utilised by storytellers.
- Originality. The picture book market is a saturated one and picture books face stiff competition when fighting for a child’s time. Originality is a key part of what will encourage a child to pick up a picture book rather than gravitate towards another type of entertainment.
- An awareness of the current picture book market – especially in terms of what has published in the past ten years – and the points of difference displayed in a new picture book text compared with what’s already out there.