About Meg Cabot
In Bloomington, Indiana, on February 1, 1967.
Not very much.
Because a random guy I met at a party I went to in high school told me not to study creative writing because in his opinion studying creative writing as a major sucks the love of writing out of you (he was a creative writing major, so he said he would know). I did not want the love of writing sucked out of me, so I followed his advice (however, I did take a few creative writing workshops at IU and I enjoyed them very much). Instead, I had the love of art sucked out of me. Years later I met that guy from the party again in New York City where I moved after college to be an illustrator, and we got married.
It took me three years of sending out query letters every day to get an agent, and a year for her to find me a publisher.
Where Roses Grow Wild, written as Patricia Cabot.
About Meg's Books
The 5th book, The Bride Wore Size 12, is in stores now. I haven’t ruled out writing more books in the series.
Six books featuring Allie are currently available for sale in the US. There are three more books about her that have been published in France, but are not available for purchase in English OR French in the US because Allie’s publisher in the US has moved on to new projects. I’ll be sure to add the missing Allie books to her page here if they ever become available in English.
There are currently four books in this loosely connected collection, which revolves around current and former employees of a fictional newspaper, The New York Journal. The books are told entirely in emails, journal entries, letters, text messages, etc. No more stories in this series are currently in the works, but it’s a story-telling format I love, so you never know.
Yes! Look for a graphic novel edition of the first book in the series coming in April 2026. Beautifully illustrated by Bethany Crandall, the book contains all of the pivotal scenes from the first volume of the series, includes many references to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and will no doubt baffle younger readers not familiar with the struggle so many millennials had of using dial-up.
Apart from REMEMBRANCE, the 7th book in the series, is in stores now, and the Mediator e-novella, Proposal (book 6 1/2 in the series), no new books in this series are planned at this time, but you never know!
As of August 2025, this series is currently under option with a major film and television studio, where some very talented writers have spun the first book into an 8-episode streaming series. Will it get greenlit? Only time will time. The Mediator series has been optioned for television and film almost continuously since it was first published in the year 2000 by many extremely talented, caring, and successful producers. But because this series contains such a delicate mix of romance, horror, humor, and mystery, AND is for teens, it’s been difficult to find the right fit for it. I do not want to have to watch a cringey version of this series, and I know you don’t either. Thank you for your patience.
The 5th book in the 1-800-Where-R-You series, MISSING YOU, is the final book in that series for now.
No, I’m happy with where the sequel, Ready or Not, ended. Look for a short story about Sam and her experience in the White House in Our White House: Looking In, Looking Out
No, these were all meant to be stand-alone novels.
There is a script for a 3rd movie. I read it, and it’s a delight. Filming is expected to begin in 2026. I can tell you no more, by order of the Genovian National Guard.
Nothing that I’m allowed to discuss! Sorry 🙁
Shhh! It’s a secret! But as soon as I can tell you, I’ll let you know via my blog, Instagram, or Facebook page.
My book covers, titles, and even some of the book content vary from country to country because they’re put out from different publishers. Find yours here.
If you have to ask, then no, you’re not 😉
If you would like to purchase personalized, autographed books by Meg (especially as gifts for the holidays!), you can contact Books & Books Key West (Judy Blume’s bookstore!). They’ll be happy to order and ship whichever books by Meg you’d like. Be sure to contact them in time for them to order the books AND get them to Meg for her to sign!
If you’d like free bookmarks and autographed bookplates to stick in your copies of the books you already own, send your request with a SELF-ADDRESSED STAMPED REGULAR BUSINESS SIZED ENVELOPE (stamps should total 64 cents) to:
Meg Cabot, P.O. Box 4904, Key West, FL 33041-4904.
Overseas residents, please enclose a self addressed regular business sized envelope along with an International Reply Coupon (IRC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reply_coupon — available at your local post office (though not every country offers this coupon). And you can always email me here https://megcabot.com/about-meg-cabot/connect-with-meg-cabot/
Writing a Report About Meg
So you’re doing a report on Meg. That’s great! But we have a feeling your teacher assigned this project because he or she wanted you to do this work yourself. Please do not email Meg and ask for her help. If Meg had to help all the people who had reports due about her, she’d be up all night.
All the information you need to write a detailed report on Meg is available right on this site. You just have to be clever, and know where to look. Start here (Meg’s Bio) and the below FAQ.
By reading all of these pages, you should find everything you need to know.
Still don’t have what you’re looking for? Try Google or Wikipedia! Just put in Meg’s name. Or try your local library. Your librarian should be happy to help you.
Thanks for your interest in Meg Cabot and her books! Good luck on your report!
My books have won numerous awards. Including being number one New York Times bestsellers, they are frequently chosen as New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, ALA Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, IRA/CBC Young Adults’ Choice, Book Sense Picks, and have also been on the Texas Lone Star Reading List. All American Girl won the Evergreen Young Adult Book Award (Washington), and The Princess Diaries won that one also, along with the TASL Tennessee Volunteer State Book Award. But the award I like the best is the one you give me every time you read one of my books.
I hope readers will realize that they are not alone in feeling the way I did when I was in middle and high school-like a great big freak! Also that “normal” is not what you see on TV. Being true to yourself, and to your friends, is way more important than being part of the “in crowd.” I am living proof that it is possible to profit from being a middle and high school freak.
I read far too many books for me to list here, but some of what I read included a lot of fantasy, such as Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series, Nancy Springer’s Book of Isle tetrology (including The Sable Moon), and the Lloyd Alexander books. I also liked STAR WARS and SPIDERMAN comic books. I really loved some classics, too, like Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Lorna Doone, and the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. And I am a big fan of Mary Stewart, especially Nine Coaches Waiting, Madame, Will You Talk? and Thornyhold. For more books, read my blog.
On Writing and Getting Published
I just love to write, the same way other people love to play golf. Although, just like Tiger Woods, I have my good days and bad days. The challenge is what makes it fun!
Ideas come from everywhere…my own experiences, my imagination, newspapers, television. That’s why if you want to be a writer, it’s a good idea to carry around something to write with, so you can jot ideas down as they occur to you! Much of what is in my books is taken directly from my own diaries that I kept when I was in high school…I still have them, though I am the only one who will ever be allowed to read them. I just use the selective bits that won’t incriminate me.
Titles are tricky! I don’t usually think of a book’s title until the book is almost finished. Sometimes I can’t think of a title at all, and the publisher will have to come up with one. Sometimes my publisher won’t like my title, or there will already be a book with that same title published recently. Often, my publishers in other countries will come up with their own titles, because the American title doesn’t translate correctly. Even though titles are important, authors can’t be too picky about them. I’ve had book titles change two months before the publication date! I would say of all my book titles, 50% are ones I’ve come up with, and 50% are ones my publishers have come up with. Of my non-US editions, almost 100% of my titles are made up by the publisher!
The writing market has changed a lot since I first got published! There are many different different paths to getting published. I can only tell you the one I took: I wrote a book (actually, many books), then found a guide called Jeff Herman’s Guide to Agents, Editors, and Publishers. I wrote to the agents in the guide what’s called a query letter. This is a one page letter describing you, your book, and why a publisher/agent would want to buy this book from you. Just to let you know, I sent out several hundred of these letters before a single person ever asked to see the book I was trying to sell.
Some of the people who wrote back asked me to give them money in order to sell my book. I personally didn’t want to take that route, as I didn’t believe it was the right path for me (especially since I didn’t have any money)! Finally one person said she would represent me for 15% of whatever my book earned if she could sell it. That person is still my agent today.
You can get a publisher’s attention a lot more quickly—and some people believe you can get a much better deal—if you have a literary agent. A literary agent is someone whose job it is to take people’s manuscripts and try to place them with the appropriate publisher.
A good agent will never charge a fee for her work on your behalf. However, if an agent agrees to take on your work, when she places it, she will earn a 10-15% cut of whatever money you make from the sale. So if a publisher offers you $10,000 for your book, your agent will get $1,500 of that money. You will get the rest.
You can get an agent the same way you get a publisher: by finding a book on how to get them (such as the one by Jeff Herman) and sending them query letters, or by signing up for any of the many agent tracking websites on the Internet, such as https://querytracker.net.
Remember: no agent should be asking you for money. If they do, move on.
It is always more fun to start a new story than it is to work on the one you’ve been working on for months. This is why publishers don’t pay writers their whole advance until they turn in the completed manuscript. Every writer feels this way. Just power through it, and remember that if you write a page a day—just ONE page—in three months you’ll have a hundred page story. And in six months you’ll have a two hundred page story. That’s almost a whole book. So don’t think about it like: “Oh my gosh, I have to write two hundred pages.” Think of it like, “Today, I have to write a page.” Trust me. It works.
The solution to this problem is very simple: Sit down. Start a story. Finish it. Put it aside. Start another story. There. Now you’re a writer.
How about this: Who do you hate and why? Who do you love and why? What’s happened to you that you wish hadn’t happened? What hasn’t happened to you that you wish WOULD happen?
Write these things down. There’s your story.
Obviously you’ve got to create a plot and change your characters names so your friends and family won’t sue you. But that’s the fun part.
Publishers go by words, not pages. Most adult books are about 90,000 words, and no longer than 100,000 words (unless you’re JK Rowling). Teen books are about 55,000 words.
How many words are there to a page? It depends on the font you are using, of course, but in general, 250-300 words per page. Therefore, a 55,000 word book should be about 200 manuscript pages. A 100,000 word book would be about 400. Editors like 12 point font.
Whichever one you like. I like Word, but some writers I know use Scrivener, Pages, and even Google Docs.
I like chapters to be no longer than 10 pages each, with one scene per chapter. But you can have as long or as short a chapter as you want, with as many scenes in each that you want. You can have no chapters, if you want. But remember, readers have busy lives, and at some point they will have to put your book down to go the grocery store. It would be nice if you have chapter breaks so they could do this easily.
Some authors make an outline plotting out what will happen in each chapter, before they sit down to write the book. While I do think it’s important when you’re writing a book to know where you are going (what the end will be) and how to get there, that kind of detailed plotting pretty much kills the fun of writing for me, so I don’t do it. But see what works best for you.
From my lawyers: “When an AI program produces a complex written, visual, or musical work in response to a prompt from a human, the "traditional elements of authorship" are determined and executed by the technology—not the human user—and, thus, the resulting work is not copyrightable.” This means, works written with AI cannot be copyrighted, and therefore, no legitimate publisher is going to publish them. Are there publishers who will print books written with AI? Yes! Would I ever knowingly buy or read a book from them? No. I want to support art made by artists, not technology. That being said: people want to read what YOU have to say, not some computer. Please give us your story in your voice ONLY.
That is the difference between someone who WANTS to write, and someone who DOES write. The person who FINDS the time is the one who is going to become a writer. The person who doesn’t, won’t. You have to decide what’s important to you. I didn’t write very much while I was in school because I had too much homework/social life. There is no shame in waiting on the writing thing until you have more time. I did.
My advice to young writers is:
- Write the kinds of stories you like to read, but make the story your own. Don’t write what you think is going to sell. If you love what you’re writing, chances are that others will, as well.
- Only tell trusted friends that you want to be a writer. Everyone else will try to talk you out of choosing a job with so little security, so it is better just to keep it to yourself, and prove them all wrong later.
- Traditional publishing versus self-publishing: Traditional publishers pay the author for their work. Self-publishing (also known as “indie” publishing) is when the author pays a company to publish their work. I am traditionally published. That was the right choice for me, but I know others have different experiences/priorities. Just make sure that if you choose the self-pub/indie route, you put a limit on how much you’re willing to spend. I know self-pubbed authors who have lost their homes because they refinanced them in order to pay to be published. Do. Not. Be. This. Person.
- It is nearly impossible to get traditionally published these days without an agent. To find one, visit sights like https://querytracker.net. Remember that you should only be giving money to an agent if/when they sell your work. They should get no more than 10%-15% of the sale (15% is standard in the US).
- Don’t use AI to write your book. To quote from AI itself on this topic: “Using AI in your book can help with brainstorming, outlining, and drafting, but it's important to ensure that the final work reflects your own voice and creativity. Additionally, be aware of ethical considerations, such as copyright issues and the need to disclose AI assistance to publishers and readers.” Legally, you cannot apply for a copyright to that work, because the rights to that work do not belong to you. They belong to the many published authors (like myself) whose work was used WITHOUT CONSENT OR COMPENSATION to teach the AI to write. (Am I mad about it? Hell, yes. No one likes having their words stolen.)
- Unless you have a wealthy family or trust fund, plan on getting a “day job” that will pay your bills while you’re trying to get published. It took me years to make enough money writing books to support myself, so having a job (with benefits) and many sympathetic, kind bosses helped enormously.
- You are not a hundred dollar bill. Not everyone is going to like you … or your story. Do not take rejection personally. The Princess Diaries got rejected dozens of times before a publisher bought it. Where would I be if I just quit after that first rejection?
- If you are blocked on a story, it’s probably because something is a little wrong with it. Take a few days off and put the story on a back burner for a while. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you.
- Read—and write—all the time. Never stop sending out your stuff. Don’t wait for a response after sending a story out…start a new story right away, and then send that one out! If you are constantly writing and sending stuff out (don’t forget to live your life, too, while you are doing this) eventually someone will bite.
- And above all, become a good listener. In order to write believable dialogue, you need to listen to the conversations of the people around you—then try to imitate them! So my advice is always to try to keeping quiet, listen only, and let other people to do the talking for a change. You’ll be surprised how much this will improve your writing skills (and how many people will think you’re a really wise person, when all you’re basically doing is spying on them).
Good luck, and keep writing! If I can do it, so can you!