Book Illustrator FAQ: Where do I start?

Q: My mother has been a professional artist for over 40 years and has recently put together a wonderful portfolio of children's book illustration examples. Her forte is definitely in the area of illustration so she would like to somehow team with a writer to put together a book. She has sent her portfolio to a number of publishers, but has yet to be connected with a writer and ultimately published. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

A: I'm an author. I only restate the obvious to warn you about the questionable value of advice from an author to an aspiring illustrator. That being said, here are some thoughts.

It's good that your Mom has put together a portfolio because, as she has discovered, you must have one to get work. Obviously, a portfolio filled with picture book appropriate art samples would be better to have for this purpose than one of poster art or portraiture. I have heard of writers and illustrators teaming up "on spec," but this seems to be the exception to the rule -- usually husband and wife teams, old friends, etc. Side note: When I first started writing books, I was concerned that I was going to have to find my own illustrator. But a little research quickly revealed that publishers actually prefer it if authors don't come in with their own artwork (unless the illustrations are exceptionally good). Part of the satisfaction that an editor or publisher gets from their job is in the pairing up of the right illustrator with the right author.

So, all that being said, here are some thoughts on getting work as a children's book illustrator...

Your Mom could write and illustrate her own book. Author/Illustrators are a well-respected double threat in the kid's book trade (and get to keep ALL of the money!). If she's not crazy about writing an original story, she might want to think about "re-telling" a classic fairy tale or obscure folk story -- something in the public domain.

There are also agents that handle illustrators but how to find one of them is far outside of my area of expertise, so she’ll have to look into that herself. The links I mention below might prove helpful.

Another approach would be for her to keep slugging away and submitting her portfolio to the various publishing houses. 

Try visiting the FAQs on the Children's Book Council website. They're the trade organization for all the children's book publishers and they provide a great deal of helpful info. Anyway, they're great place to start. The rest of the site has a lot of useful info, too.

I'd also recommend the most recent edition of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Children's Books". It really helped me out on the author side of things with practical "how to" tips and I've read that the latest edition provides a lot of useful info for illustrators, too. 

Tell your Mom "good luck" from me!

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Saturday Question: Getting an Illustration Agent

From Herb:

Q: I recently completed illustrating my first children's book which is due out later this month. Should I begin to look for an agent to represent me for more work in this field?

A:  First, it's good that you're pursuing this kind of work as once an illustrator catches on, the gigs pour in. I once heard of a very talented illustrator who had some 5+ years of book assignments awaiting his attention. Nice problem to have. That said, you may want to wait to see if the book is a success before beating the bushes for an agent. If it is, then it'll be much easier to get an agent's attention. In the meantime, I would suggest building up a portfolio specifically designed to get book illustration work (scout around on the web to find out what would be in this kind of collection as opposed to other fields such as animation). One way to add to such a portfolio would be to find an old public domain fairy tale or the like and illustrate your own version of it -- with a humorous twist or not. If you have a good book illustration portfolio then you'll be in a much better place when the time comes to seek out an agent. They'll ask for one anyway. That's my non-illustrator take on it.

Illustrators:  You folks (obviously) have a lot more experience in this field and I would welcome any corrections or advice for Herb. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

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Got a question for a self/traditionally published author and TV animation writer (who'd be perfect for that show you're staffing)? I thought so. Leave it here in the comments and I'll try to answer it on the following Saturday.

Busy Busy Busy

Well, this has been a very busy week. Commencing info dump in 3, 2, 1...

• Crack agent's assistant, Dustin, has been doing a copy edit on Leonard. He's going over the manuscript with a fine tooth comb in an attempt to weed out my numerous typos and punctuation errors. That's a lot of work and I'm very grateful he agreed to do it. He hopes to get it to me next week. At that point I'll do one more content edit (character stuff and humor, mostly) before shipping it off to Agent S.
• Finished a new picture book and sent it off to Editor Liz. I like it and think it will hit the sweet spot for early readers -- silly characters and age appropriate gross out humor.
• Finished a polish draft on another picture book. Took out every word that absolutely didn't need to be there. I'm very excited about it and, equally as important, so is Agent S.
• I'm about halfway through a very rough outline for my next NaNo novel. I'm doing brief, four or five sentence descriptions separated by chapter headings. After I'm finished, I'll keep going through it until the end of October -- fleshing it out and filling as many holes as I can find. I'm not a slave to the outline, but it helps calm my pre-Nano jitters to have some idea of where I'm going. I became an avid outliner through working in animation (where it's required) and through my own spec screenplays. I tried the "I'll just start writing and see where it goes" approach a few times only to discover that it usually goes to around p.30 and then stops cold. In my experience, some ideas have the juice to drive a full screenplay (or novel) others don't. Pushing an idea through the outline grinder helps me determine which kind I've got on my hands.

End of the Road

Recently got the disappointing news that one of my picture books, Road Trip, will soon be going out of print. Sales, although steady, were not robust enough for my publisher to keep the book in stock. It will be "remaindered" which means that the remaining copies will be sold to volume discounters -- good for you folks who don't like to pay full mark up, bad for us authors who want to earn cash money. ;c)

Thanks to everyone who bought the book while it was still in stock. I really do appreciate your support.