Children's Book From Start to Finish

The beginning of the book On Top Of the World.

So after a long summer of tweaking the children's book, I am happy to say I have sent it off to the printers.  Doing a children's book is a much longer experience then I ever thought it would be, and yes, it is a lot of work!  So on today's post I thought I would share with you the whole process that I have gone through to put this book into reality.

For the past few years I have been saying I am going to write  a children's book but thought I would never have to time to do it, and like anything else you won't have the time unless you make it.  So that is what I realized I had to do, and why not now when I have small children to enjoy it.  So it all began  with a doodle. For those of you who don't know, doodling has become an essential part of my art.  I doodle daily for about 15 mins and from that I create my art.  So I did a doodle and really liked it and a little story was coming to mind about living on top of the world.  That was my starting place.  I then took the concept and began to write a story.  For me I find I write much better to music (instrumental is best).  So I got in a quiet place (kid free) and began to write.  It didn't take long to come up with a story and I thought to myself, "I will be done this book in no time!" (HA!)  I then began to draw illustrations with the story and section off the story page by page and that is when the story changed again.  I had a hard time coming up with some of the illustrations and felt a bit stumped.  That is when I went back to my doodle book and began to look for inspiration.  I found things in my doodles that would fit with my story.  It just meant me changing up the story to fit the illustrations instead of the illustrations fitting the text.  I found that this brought even more creativity and imagination to my story and things seemed to flow much better.  (goodbye striving!)

After doing rough drafts of all the illustrations, I then chose my colour scheme.  I wanted something bright and uplifting.  I did the whole book using marker.  I then re-did the illustrations again as some didn't look quite right and got good quality marker paper to work on so the marker colours would be at their best.  I outlined all the illustrations in my black felt tip markers. which made the illustrations stand out even more.

Bits and pieces of the book.

The next step was to begin laying the book out on the computer.  We got scans taken of all the illustrations and loaded them onto our Mac.  We worked in Adobe Indesign to figure out the layout process (Steve spent many hours doing this).  We also then went through numerous fonts to find one that would fit my story and would be easy enough for children to read.  I had to change the first one because it was a little too whimsical to read.

After putting the book together I realized I need more or less pages.  Children's books are printed in increments of 8 so 32 pages is typical.  However mine was at 34 pages so I had to then bump it up to 40 (which meant more illustrations!!)

Adding extra fun pages.

After reading the whole book I realized if I could convince my musical husband to rhyme the whole thing it would be even better.  So without any complaining and in very little time he did.  I loved it even more!  This again required more tweaking and after adding a few more pages such as a dedication page, an about the authors page, and some fun doodles I finally had my book.  The last step was to edit, which I got a good and very talented friend (Becky) to do.

So where are we now? We have sent the book off to the printers (which by the way was more work as we had no idea were to print a children's book).  We spent much time researching printers and whether to do hard cover vs. soft cover.  I found a printer that is very reasonable and prints hardcover!  YAH!  Out of province but still in Canada.  I am waiting for a proof of my book and then I can begin the printing!  Wow, lots to learn.  I am in the process of starting a kickstarter program to help raise some funds for printing.  So please be watching for that soon.  Another whole new thing for me as well.  Then comes my least favourite part of all this: marketing!  It feels good to see something through and I can't wait to have a copy in my hands.  Lots of work but well worth it!  I encourage anyone who is wanting to do a children's book to go for it!  Just be prepared to put some time and work into it!