Overall Concept & Design of a Children's Book

Series Summary

Children’s picture books represent some of the most elegant combinations of storytelling and artwork to be found in literature. Writing and illustrating one can be both a joy and a struggle. The process involves a great deal of research and refining to get just the right combination of words and pictures, written at the appropriate reading level and important enough to be memorable.

Once you’ve written your book, publishing it can be a daunting task. In traditional publishing, there are many factors to consider when choosing a book to accept for publication. Much of the deliberation is over the marketability of any given title…in other words, how well it will sell. Once a book is chosen, a team of people is usually assigned to design and edit it, send it to the printer, and then get it into readers’ hands.

As both the author and publisher of the book, you’ll have to learn how to wear many different hats. In this free video guide to self-publishing, discover how to do just that from an author who has already successfully published her own picture book. Learn important tips and techniques for writing, illustrating, editing, printing, marketing, and selling your very own children’s picture book.

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Angela Sage Larsen. On behalf of expertvillage.com, today, we’re going to talk about publishing your own children’s story. Please visit my web site at petalwinkthefairy.com. So, you want to write a children’s book. Let’s talk about the overall concept and design of your book. This is your vision for the story that you’re going to tell. You’ll want to think about things like the size of your book; whether the book is going to be hardback book, and of course the feel of the book. Is it going to be lively with a lot of bold colors? Is it going to be a counting book or an alphabet book? See all the bright colors. You can also see how that would affect the text of the story. Is it going to be worked right into the design? You can also think about if you want the text to be on its own and then the illustrations separately, or if they are worked in together. This will affect the whole look and feel of your book, and this will dictate the direction you take in designing it."