Book Covers and Children’s Book Illustration
Do you really need me?
I know that's an odd question to ask since presumably I am here to convince you to pay for my services. But the fact is you may NOT need me.
Types of Publishing
- Traditional Book Publisher: They pay for everything and make all the decisions.
- Vanity Press: You pay for everything and they may offer additional services.
- Self-Publishing: You pay for everything and plan everything.
I'll be going into further depth on each on this page.
What are your goals?
Before any of this — there are rules to children's books that most people have never heard of. If you haven't looked into them yet, skip down to this first.
There are no wrong answers here. Just be honest with yourself about why you want to publish a book. It will help you make the right decisions moving forward.
- To be a successful author?
- To be rich?
- To say you wrote a book?
- Make an impact?
- Gifts?
TIP:
With a traditional publisher, money only flows one way. Toward the writer. If your "publisher" is asking for money, they are not a publisher. They are a vanity press.
- Illustrations
- Cover Art
- Book layout
- Proofing
- Editing
- Printing
- Distribution
- Advertisement
Vanity Press
A vanity press is really just a printer, with a few extra services to sell you. They get a bad rap because some will pose as a publisher to the uninitiated. If they print your book, you are still not a "published author" because a vanity press is technically not a publisher. You just paid someone to print 50 books for you to hand out to your friends. However, this can cause problems down the road if the press in question is misrepresenting itself as a proper publisher and the real publisher you decide to try and sell your book to finds the listing on the vanity press's website. No one will accept a manuscript that has any appearance of having already been sold.
Side note to the above, be extremely leery about signing contracts with vanity presses. While they will not print any books you don't directly pay for, some presses have a side hustle of collecting your publication rights and then suing authors who find an actual avenue for publication.
A traditional publisher will never ask you for money. If they do, they aren't a traditional publisher. They are a vanity press.
That being said, vanity press has a place. If your goal is not to become a "successful author" and you just want to have copies of your books printed to sell a few to friends or give them away, it may be a perfect solution for you. Some vanity presses will offer additional paid services for editing, illustrating, layout, advertising, etc. Do your homework and make sure you are dealing with someone on the up-and-up.
Self-Publishing
If you want to self-publish you will need to make plans from the outset to create a good product. You'll need to take care of the following items yourself.
Artwork and Layout:
Layout: Now that you have the story written, it's time to think about what the book will look like. What size will it be? What is standard for your industry? Will it be hardback or softcover? What kind of paper will it printed on? How many pages should it be? A printer can help with these questions.
A graphic designer will combine your manuscript, illustrations, cover art, ISBN, dedication, copyright, etc. into print-ready files to give to your printer.
Cover Art: All books need a cover, spine art, and back cover. You need to have the layout established to get cover art created. You'll need to know the size of the book and whether the book is hardback or softcover. You will also need to have an idea of page count, book size, and paper type so the spine width can be calculated. When calculating the spine width, don't forget to include the "other" pages of your book you might have like the copyright, title, dedication page, etc.
Illustration: Some books will require illustrations. If it is a children's book, you'll probably have illustrations on every page, the cover, back cover, inside covers, etc.
Again, you'll need to have the specs to give to your illustrator and at this point, you should have already been in touch with your printer to figure out the size and type.
Editing: While this is the most commonly skipped step, the truth is that if your manuscript is unedited, it isn't finished. A writer—any writer—is too close to their own work to see the flaws. Reputable freelance editors are out there, and a good one will have exactly one goal, to make your manuscript as good and as marketable as it possibly can be. Use an editor, and listen to them.
The Manuscript
Proofing and Editing: While writing your book doesn't cost you anything but time, you'll need to invest in people to proof and edit your book, and these may not be the same person. At last count, my author husband had three different people proofing and editing his work before each book was ready for publishing. There are different types of editors (content, story, grammatical, etc.) and they all have their speciality. Get familiar with each and choose accordingly. Nothing is quite so embarrassing as discovering major plot holes on your Amazon review page.
Other content: Don't forget to include the "other" pages of your book you might have like the copyright, title, dedication page, etc.
Distribution
Distribution is your plan to get your books out to the masses. If you have a publisher, they will put you in professional industry catalogs for book sellers to order from. If you are self-publishing, you can't get into these catalogs. But, all is not lost, you can do your own legwork by going to small bookstores, trade shows, churches, and other businesses to ask if they will buy your books to resell. (Yes, this is hard, but on the upside, it is also slow!)
- 50% of the retail price is standard payment from a reseller, which means you need to be able to produce that book as inexpensively as possible.
- Resellers will be more likely to sell your book if you add a barcode with the ISBN to the back cover, and may refuse it outright if you don't.
Printing
To get your book printed you have a couple of routes: your local copy shop, POD (Print on Demand), or traditional printing.
A traditional printer prints with ink on paper. You'll want to contact a few to discuss the best sizes for their press (This translates into cost savings). Get at least 3 estimates to compare. The more books you print the better your price-per-book will be. Look for printers that specialize in printing books. Some of the best prices are ones that are located overseas, but have sales-people in the U.S. If you plan on selling your books you'll need a barcode.
POD is printing a book one-at-a-time though a place specifically set up for that. Barnes and Noble, Lulu, and Amazon all have POD programs. As a bonus you can also sell your books on their platform. Whenever someone purchases a book they print one and mail it to them. You are able to mark up the sales price of the book to any rate you like. The downside is you won't be able to mark up the book very much to be sellable, and these services can penalize extreme prices, high or low. While POD can be a good business model, it takes years of dedication to promotion and publishing books several times a year to build your market.
One thing that is important to note is that traditional publishers are not really any better about selling your books than any other avenue is. They operate on a "throw everything at the wall and we'll see what sticks" model, and the marketing is typically on the writer. It is not unusual for traditional publishers to require certain numbers of social media followers, and to demand contracts stipulating that the writer pay back any portion of their advance that doesn't earn out in a year… something which is unfortunately very common.
Your local copy shop can offer a number of solutions that will get books in your hands. These options are good if you do not require many copies and are not too particular about appearance. If you need more than a dozen or so books, the prices quickly become uncompetitive.
Advertisement
Advertisement is "getting the word out" to drum up business. This will cost you time and money (to varying degrees, more money can buy you less time) by way of working your social media accounts or paying for advertisements online or publications.
- Social Media: A quick google search will reveal lots of articles or courses on how to set up your pages on the various platforms, as well as which sites will work best for you.
- Website: You may decide to have a dedicated website to sell your books and provide information to potential readers.
- In-Person Events: Possible examples could include selling at a tradeshow, or speaking at a local venue.
- Online Advertisement: Ads on relevant websites, Facebook Ads or Google Ads.
- Print Advertisement: Print ads in relevant publications.
TIP: Advertising is a numbers game. You will only get action from 2% of the people who actually see your ad on average. This means if you buy a Facebook ad and 100 people see it, only 2 of those people will stop to read or click on it. If they do click through, count on 2-5% of those individuals to take the secondary action (i.e. buy your book).
Is what you wrote a children's book?
Maybe! But "children's book" isn't a vibe. It's a handful of specific categories with rules attached, and most of what gets sent to me doesn't fit into any of them.
That's not me being mean. Nobody tells you this stuff. There's no reason you'd know it unless you went digging, and the friend who told you to write the book didn't know it either.
Pick an age group. This is the first question anyone in the industry will ask you, and everything else follows from the answer — length, vocabulary, format, page count, who buys it.
- Board books run 0–3 and under 100 words.
- Picture books are 3–8 and usually 500 words or less.
- Early readers are 5–8 with controlled vocabulary.
- Chapter books are 6–10.
- Middle grade is 8–12 and runs 25,000 words and up.
"For kids" is not an age group. If you can't name yours, what you have is a draft.
Thirty-two pages is not a suggestion. Books print on big folded sheets, so page counts come in multiples of eight. Thirty-two is standard for a picture book. Take out the title page, the copyright page, and the dedication, and you have about fourteen spreads to tell your whole story. If your story needs thirty scenes, it isn't a picture book yet. (It might be a chapter book. That's fine! It's just a different thing with different rules.)
It's shorter than you remember. Most people write toward the picture books they had as a kid, and those ran a thousand words or more. The market moved. Under 500 is normal now.
The pictures aren't there to repeat the words. This is the one I care about most, because it's my end of the job. If your text says "Sam was sad" and I draw a sad Sam, we just spent one of your fourteen spreads saying the same thing twice. In a good picture book the words and the art are each carrying something the other one isn't. That's the actual difference between a picture book and a short story with drawings on it.
Don't write art notes. I get manuscripts with bracketed instructions to the illustrator on every single page. Editors get them too, and it tells them immediately that you're new. Let the art do its job — that's what it's for.
Rhyme is a trap. It's the first thing new writers reach for and the hardest thing in the world to sell. The meter has to be perfect, you can't bend a word to make a rhyme fit, and rhyming books are miserable to translate, which kills your foreign rights. Ask any editor.
The kid has to solve the problem. Not the mom, not the teacher, not a wise old owl who turns up on page 28 to explain the situation.
Skip the lesson. Books written to teach a message are the most-rejected category there is. Kids can smell it from across the room. If there's a moral in your book, it should be something the reader gets to on their own.
TIP: You have two audiences: the kid listening and the adult reading it out loud every night for a year. The adult is the one with the credit card. Read your book out loud twenty times in a row and see how you feel about it on the twentieth. (My husband says this works for grown-up books too.)
And read it to actual children in your age group — not your friends. The person who told you to write this book is not qualified to tell you whether it worked. Watch where the kids stop paying attention. That's your revision.
None of this means your book is bad. It means it's a draft, and every book is a draft for a long time. Work through this list first. If you come out the other side still wanting illustrations, we'll have a much better conversation — and you'll know what to ask me for.
