Picture Book Dummies

Welcome to my Let’s Talk About It Series! These are super speedy tips written to give you a burst of info that will benefit you: the freelance illustrator. Our goal: To give you the tools to empower your portfolio.

If you are an illustrator, aiming to be an author-illustrator (an overall picture book creator), now is certainly the time to pursue your passion! I am an avid Pub Weekly reader, and as anyone who reads that knows, even during the height of the Pandemic children’s books stayed decent in regards to sales and interest. How else were all these parents and caregivers supposed to keep the little ones entertained all day?!

Becoming an author-illustrator may help set you apart from the crowd of non writer - illustrators. However, you need to know a few things before starting this journey:

1) It can be a long, challenging endeavor. How many author’s do you know who published the first draft of their book? Maybe through self publishing, but that would be a hard find with a legitimate publisher. Re-writes are a standard part of the practice. Once the story idea gets picked up by an agent, editor, or publisher, expect more work and more re-writes. It is worth the struggle in the end and your result should be worth it! Which brings me to #2….

2) Write what you know and love! You don’t have to start with some formula if you don’t want to — you can start by just getting your ideas on paper, and getting past the fear of putting pen to paper. If you have an idea or a character, just jot down notes, don’t expect to be perfect, and have fun! If the idea is FRESH, BOLD, SILLY, BEAUTIFUL, HEARTWARMING, etc….. you may have gold in your hands! The main tip I get from my writer fiancé is: write every day, even if it’s just for a few minutes. Make writing a habit and a part of your daily routine.

3) Keep up with the market. Trends are important and often times editors ask “Do you have any stories about …. xyz….” If your story fills the niche, that helps get earlier access to getting your book published. Know that books you send in now are the books that come out on shelves a couple years from now. Go to bookstores, and your local library, and read this year’s picture books. Reference and education on current picture book trends are helpful and inspirational for the emerging author-illustrator. Try to find emerging trends.

4) Don’t be afraid of critic. If you have author friends, or are a member of SCBWI, find peers and mentors to help keep you encouraged, and guide you through this exciting, and grueling process (I am a member of SCBWI, and I love all the support and resources they give to their authors and illustrators! If you are not yet a member I suggest checking them out)!

5) I suggest getting an agent. An agent can help mold your ideas, and be your right hand man as you prepare your stories for editors and publishers. They know who would like your tone, your style, and your idea. They will help pair your book with the right publisher, and act as an intermediary as you create your contracts, and negotiate your deal. An agent’s #1 agenda is getting you published, so there is no one better to have on your side of the table. Look for agents who have represented people like you, and the types of books you enjoy creating.

6) Take classes. There are writing courses for kids books, and I suggest looking into that, as they can help you learn everything from word count, to composing a story for the current market. My course, Empower Your Picture Book Portfolio does not teach anything to do with writing, but is beneficial for author -illustrators to learn how to illustrate storytelling scenes and create meaning and deeper stories through illustration. If you take a writing course, alongside, or before or after that I suggest taking my course as a way to make sure your illustrations are equally part of your book. If you are an author-illustrator you need to be a strong writer and a strong story illustrator.

Now we get to THE PICTURE BOOK DUMMY:

This is generally a prototype for the actual book. It is presented as a true to size, in print mock up of the book. With a cover, and text and illustrations (mostly sketches) located as you imagine them on each page. These can be sketches pages, they don’t need to be full color. This is to give an idea of your layout, and the text is almost more important to most editors, as long as you show a couple complete pages of illustration - so they know what style you intend for the Final Art in the book. I suggest creating a full color cover just to grab the attention of the agent or editor. Although often the cover art will change when it gets in front of the art director and sales team, it’s still worth putting in that time to create a stand out cover that gets the book in front of the professionals.

Before putting together a Dummy, take a moment to work on these two steps, in any order you choose. Maybe your illustrations inspire the art, or perhaps the art inspires the words. Either way, these two steps are worth working out before creating the life size, in print Dummy.

The two things I suggest you do first are:

1) Create a general layout. This way you won’t get lost in creating full on, complete, detailed illustrations for the book. As I mentioned above, your story will go through so many edits, that often illustrations and sections will be revised or cut in the final version. So even when you get to the Dummy Creation stage: keep it simple and focus on what will go where, and only finalize a couple key pages to show your end vision. Keep the rest in sketch phase.

By general layout I mean little boxes across one piece of paper, and in each box. I found these examples on Pinterest for you, in case you want to see how other people do the layout, pre-dummy:

Layout template ideas And then you sketch layouts (very rough sketch illustrations) of each page and spread.

2) Create a paginated word document of your book with no illustrations. Just the words, with the page numbers listed for each section of text.

Example:

Page 1-2:

The boy walked the snowy path, his friend close behind. 

An arctic breeze swept up, and pushed them up the frosty hill.

Page 3-4

TEXT

Pages 5-6

TEXT

And so on. 

NOTE: ** Picture books usually total around 32 pages. This includes cover, end pages, copyright and title pages, etc…. Like anything in life, there are exceptions to the rule. But this is a good place to start.

Once you have your text

I recommend the following resources:

Highlights Foundation Blog Post:

https://www.highlightsfoundation.org/12445/guest-post-lisa-cinelli-crafting-a-picture-book-dummy/

Technical advice from SCBWI’s Words and Pics:

https://www.wordsandpics.org/2014/05/make-picture-book-dummy.html

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