Authoring vs Illustrating a Children's Book - Documenting a Creative Journey

To illustrate or not to illustrate? This is one of the questions that has been haunting me for the last while. In many ways, life would be MUCH simpler for me if I decided not to illustrate my story of The Blue Jackal. When I first thought about writing books for children I pictured myself happily and easily authoring and illustrating books in perfect harmony with understanding publishers who would somehow support me in this venture with money up front.

Man, was I wrong! Maybe if I was already famous, I could arrange a sweet deal, but why would a publishing house, who is likely struggling already in this economy, want to take a gamble on a newbie like me, when I might produce hideous drawings in the end? Basically, I have to do the whole thing - manuscript and illustrations - before I submit. This is not the usual process in making a picture book - usually there is a separate author and illustrator. Now, I'm starting to see why.

Unless you are landed gentry or have a LOT of free time on your hands, good luck trying to author and illustrate your own book as a neophyte and get it published, because you are going to need to have that page-turning story and amazing illustrations in almost finished format on your own to get a publisher to take your bait. Well I'm not independently wealthy, and as a working mom of three, I certainly don't have a lot of time, but colour me crazy, that is what I am doing anyway. Below is some more detail on the different pathways to authoring and illustrating a book for children, and I've chosen the road less traveled on.


When You are Just the Author

What if you just write and don't illustrate? For an author that has a picture book manuscript selected for publication, as mentioned, it can take up to two years to finally see that book in print. Picture books are largely image-driven, so to get your book to sell, a publisher has to match it with the best images to bring out your text, (and don't expect to be consulted much during this process), the images that will help sell your story.

That's when an illustrator would normally come in, an illustrator hired by the publisher, not one chosen by the author (unless you are very persuasive). So, typically, once an author has a manuscript accepted and edited, the bulk of the work then falls into the hands of the publishing house art director and the illustrator of their choice.

When You are Just the Illustrator

Illustrators are usually sought out and hired by publishing houses for a particular story, based on how their style meshes with the story. To get in the eye of a publishing house as a new illustrator, you basically need to make some art work on your own, get a website, and send postcards of your work to a publishing house, but that's a long story in itself that I will not go further into right now. Rather, what if you have been solicited by a publisher to illustrate a story, what then?

As an illustrator, the first step I would take would probably be to make a thumbnail storyboard, and develop that into something that could be submitted to the art director. Once the storyboard is done (usually with a couple of more final looking drawings), I would send it to the art director of the publishing house. This would commence the lengthy back and forth process towards the creation of the final illustrations which includes:

• determining how many large vs. smaller images to make
• figuring out which images to use or not
  
• making changes to existing illustrations
• determining sizing, colour scheme and placement of images
• coming up with cool extras to catch the eye and make the story one-of-a-kind
• working in any gimmicks such as lift-the-flap, pop-ups etc. that would fit the story
  

When You are the Author AND the Illustrator

Inspired by the greats like Dr. Seuss, William Steig, Jan Brett and Maurice Sendak while I was growing up and taking art classes as well as writing, it seemed only natural to me to both author and illustrate a book. I didn't realize (in spite of most books au contraire) how this was certainly not the norm in the real world.

It is important that an author be aware of these steps in the creation of an illustrated children's book, especially if they are the illustrator too! Like my Blue Jackal, Kabou, the creator of a story needs to become skilled at making friends along the way in their publishing journey - working well with others - because publishing a kid's book is bound to be long adventure, one you will likely need help and support with along the way.

In my case, as the author and illustrator of the Blue Jackal, I need to create both the story manuscript AND the illustrations ahead of submitting to a publisher....yes, that means that I pretty much have to write and illustrate the entire book without pay! But not just a rough storyboard either. As a new author and illustrator, a publisher wouldn't just want to take a chance on me procuring the goods. So, I need to clearly demonstrate that I can deliver top finished quality from the start. This means that when I send in my manuscript to a publisher it may even contain what is called a "Dummy Book". This means not only creating roughs and one or two good drawings, but working out some beautiful finalized illustrations as well, and putting them into a mock up of what the final story would actually look like. So, for someone like myself, trying to do the manuscript as well as the illustrations for the first time, and only a rough story board under my belt, I still have a long road before me.

What do you think? Should I bother to try? Or should I just work on my manuscript and forget illustrating for now? Any words of advice you can give me in the comments?

In his journeys, Kabou meets a snow leopard, a wise elephant and an upstart monkey

Click to enlarge.

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