My First Children’s Book: How I’m Approaching the Process

Let me know if this was a unique experience or not: in grade school, we all wrote how-to essays on how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The teacher then had us read our essays out loud to the class, while she acted out making the sandwich per the student’s instructions—some instructions being completely unhelpful, some being silly, some forgetting a crucial step like opening the lid to the peanut butter jar. The point being to illustrate how detailed one has to be in writing a how-to guide. As I was writing this blog post, it evolved into my new and improved adult version of my 4th grade Peanut Butter and Jelly How-To Guide: my Children’s Book How-to Guide. I am not even half-way through illustrating my first children’s book, but I have found one doesn’t need to be 12 steps ahead to be able to teach a skill. Perhaps only 2 or 3 steps is necessary, and then the act of teaching that skill will help push my own work further. I have found that teaching and helping someone else helps me to make more sense of that skill in my own mind, and actually helps me push my work passed the finish line.

The Stages of Illustrating a Children's Book

All of that being said, there are roughly six stages to publishing a children’s book:

1. Develop a concept: Understand your audience, source a story or write your own, determine the page count, and break the story into spreads
2. Sketching and planning: Storyboard & book dummy, character development, illustration style, color palette, and mood
3. Creating the final illustrations: Illustrating the full spreads, ensuring readability and balance, preparing high-resolution files
4. Book formatting and design: Arrange text and illustration in layout software, choose a font that enhances readability and matches the tone, and create a cover design
5. Publishing: Traditional or self-publishing
6. Marketing and selling: Create a website & shop, show up on social media and blogging, pitch to local bookstores and libraries, consider crowdfunding to fund printing costs through preorders

Sounds simple, right? More or less. The more part: yes, there is a set, tried and true process to go by, with infinite resources out there to help along the journey, with the knowledge that this has been done many, many times in the past by people of all levels of skill and confidence. The less part: the emotionally intuitive and daunting process an artist must go through in order to gain the clarity and confidence needed to put out what they feel called to create in this world. This can be especially taxing if the process to put out their creative prowess is long and arduous, filled with lots of opportunity for forks in the road and nervous, sideways glances—but maybe I’m overcomplicating things.

Develop a Concept

While gaining control of emotions, confidence and mindset is important, so is taking action. I can sit and think and plan until my fingers are numb, but if no action is ever taken, what’s the point? So, to get to the nitty gritty—before jumping straight into painting or drawing, a strong foundation is key: understanding your audience (age 0–3? 3–6? 6–10?) and also starting with a really good story. A developed concept was gifted to me by a combination of my well-written, retired English professor mother, and my very large but well-meaning Great Pyrenees dog, Appa. I mentioned to my mom one day how we like to make fun of Appa for always being right there, in the middle of everything with his hugeness, wanting to help. In reality, he’s always making things a lot harder than they need to be. We call this phenomenon Appa Helps. Next thing I knew, she came back and presented me with a fully-formed children’s story, titled as such, that I knew I would some day illustrate.

Sketch and Plan

After sourcing or writing your perfect story (thanks Mom), it’s time for sketching and planning. Choose the size and orientation, as it plays into every creative decision from here on out: vertical, horizontal, or square. Some common sizes are as follows:

5.5” x 8.5” | 6” x 9” | 6.14 x 9.21” | 7” x 10” | 8” x 10” | 8.5” x 8.5” | 8.5” x 11”

The next logical step would be to create a storyboard and/or a book dummy. This could be in digital format or physical, the physical version involving folding blank sheets of paper together to create the intended number of pages in your book at the correct size. I am more partial to the physical, as I like the idea of being able to have a physical draft of the book that I can draw and erase on. A book dummy helps to decide what to include in each illustration, and how the text will match up with the images. In addition to the book dummy, the sketching and planning phase also includes character development, as well as deciding on an illustration style, color palette, and mood. I am currently working on the book dummy stage + the character development stage together. They are both equally important, but can be worked on in silos until I’m ready to bring all the pieces together.

During the book dummy process, be aware of the practice of including a variety of illustration layouts; aim to set a good rhythm for each page turn. Look for the most impactful scenes for the two-page spreads, and the relatively minor scenes could be a good place for a “page break”—separating the text from the illustration for variety, white space, and breathing room. The most common type of page layout is full-bleed (meaning the image goes all the way to the edges of the page), but having a mixture of full spreads, half spreads, and spot illustrations is a good place to be. Also, please note that the storyboard/book dummy creation process should not be perfect. This is a time to break away from the perfectionism, be expressive, and have fun. In the end, you’ll probably create a few different versions, each being an improvement over the previous one.

As mentioned, I am currently building my repertoire of character skills, and I have to admit that I am feeling a little bit stuck. Fortunately, the act of writing out the full storybook process like this is getting my gears turning again, so thank you for listening, dear reader. I think part of the problem is that I’m drawing too small. I drew portraits back in the day, but I was mainly focusing on the shoulders up, with plenty of space to draw and make mistakes and figure out proportions. In drawing storybook spreads, the characters tend to be smaller and surrounded by lush, beautiful background, with the character and the background needing to speak the same visual language. In other words, the illustration style, color palette, and tone are all still in progress as well.

Final Illustrations

The final illustration phase looks different whether the traditional or self-publishing route is taken. In both versions, creating a book dummy (or a mockup) with the final edited text can be incredibly helpful. In traditional publishing, it is common practice to prepare a query letter and book dummy with only a few finished illustrations to send to agents or publishers. The reason for this is that any publisher will have notes for the illustrations, format, flow, etc. for the book, and by sending only a few finished illustrations along with the full manuscript, it is a sign to the publisher that you are open and willing to collaboration. If going with the self-publishing route, finishing all of the illustrations completely is necessary before moving onto the formatting of your book.

Book Formatting and Design

The concept of formatting applies to combining the text and the final illustrations together. Page count, word count, trim size, bleed, margin, and finally, placing your text and high-resolution images of your illustrations all need to be thought of. When designing your pages and cover, choose a font that enhances readability and matches the tone of the story. Create a cover design, a title page, a dedication page.

Publishing, Marketing and Selling

In the publishing of your book, you have two main options, as mentioned previously: traditional or self-publishing. In traditional publishing, one would need to research publishers who accept submissions, prepare a query letter & book dummy (including a few finished illustrations + the full manuscript), and hopefully, eventually sign a contract. If accepted, the publisher would handle printing, marketing, and distribution. In self-publishing, one would need to choose a printing platform (options include Amazon KDP, IngramSpark, or Blurb), get an ISBN (required for selling through bookstores), order a test print to check color accuracy and quality, and then set up distribution!

Which leads into the last step of marketing and selling your book. If going the self-publishing route, sell through places like your own website, Etsy, Amazon, or bookstores. Leverage marketing through the use of social media and blogging, with behind-the-scenes process videos. Pitch to local bookstores and libraries.

There you have it—the (mostly) complete How to Illustrate a Children’s Book, complete with a personal aside or two. I am excited to come back in a few weeks to update you all on my progress. Cheers until then.