Welcome! Thanks for joining us on The Eccentric Picture Book newsletter! 

Here’s how this newsletter is broken down with a strict scientific method:

• Intro

• Bunch of Stuff

• What to Expect Next Week

If you want to write, illustrate, and publish not just any children’s picture book, but a crazy cool one, you are in the right place!

If the state of children’s picture book publishing leaves you underwhelmed, and maybe a bit disturbed at some of what publishers are choosing to make available these days, we might become good friends!

We have several brand new weird book ideas in the queue to start working on right away, and handful of existing projects close to completion we will get over the finish line, which will be of interest.

Children’s picture books in the past had an “edge” to them that made them deeply engaging, memorable, and entertaining. That edge, at least in mainstream publishing, has been erased.

I’m doing my part to bring that edge back, and I hope you’ll come along on the journey.

We’ll be covering all of this right here, step by step.

And when the time is right, we’ll open the doors to the community where we have deep dives, masterclasses, templates, office hours, and much more!

Quick Background, If You Missed It

I’m Douglas Bonneville. I’ve been an artist, illustrator, designer, and web developer since forever (by which I mean “since the 90s”).

I owned a small custom academic publishing business in the late 90s which led to designing and publishing websites, blogging, and later my first design book, “The Big Book of Font Combinations” which has sold over 10K copies.

My love of web development led to a similar love of email newsletter development. All of these loves have coalesced into “The Eccentric Picture Book” newsletter, where we are going to document ALL the steps of children’s picture book creation, from ideation, illustration, writing, production, to publishing and digital marketing.

I’m very glad you’ve signed up! I promise you’ll get more weirdness than you ever bargained for in a newsletter like this. Hold on to your hats, and keep reading–weirdness dead ahead!

Let’s get right to our very very first project update!

A Hideous ABC Update

How bad can it be? As bad as “The Hideous Very Bad Monster Alphabet” can be! I told you we were going to get weird, right off.

I started The Hideous Very Bad Monster Alphabet few years ago, quickly got the all the artwork and text done, but the final book only to 95% complete. I had plans, but life had other plans!

I posted all the artwork on Instagram back in 2021, but not out of a sense of strategy or destiny. It was more of stake in the ground about intention…to build a publishing empire (and does this sentiment jive with why you’ve signed up?). Here are a few samples, but the ENTIRE alphabet is there for your viewing pleasure. (Follow me on Instagram, and leave a like / comment on your favorite images!):

And for fun I created some “text” pieces from all the letters:

After that, I created individual listings for all the letters, and one huge master poster, for sale on Etsy:

None of this went very far. I got them up on Etsy, again, as a symbolic but not strategic victory. I had the vision and the ability to execute on a idea, but very little marketing savvy or knowledge.

But all of these were just “stuff” to do with the artwork. I had a poem written for each letter, like this!:

The Actual Book

More, much more, times goes by. Last year I got the entire book put together in Affinity Publisher, and the front cover:

And here are a few spread shots from Affinity Publisher:

What’s Left?

My punch list is:

• Inside cover front matter

• End matter

• Final production ready cover art templates for

  • Amazon paperback

  • Amazon hardback

  • IngramSpark paperback

  • IngramSpark hardback

• Choose a pen name?

The covers can be tedious, but they all need to be done. I’ll be documenting how I work through each platform and book type.

So, What’s the Sales Intention?

Back catalog! There is very little hope for a one-off title to do much by itself on Amazon. There are 60 million books on Amazon. Ads on Amazon only work FOR BOOKS THAT ARE ALREADY SELLING. And we will uncover how to deal with this (by going AROUND Amazon) in the coming issues and community (when we open the doors)!

I’ll have much more to say about sales in coming newsletters. Too much to cram in this issue!

What to Expect Next Week (or Any Week)

We are going to find out together what the content of this newsletter will be but it will include at some point, in no particular order, all of the following and more:

• Weekly (or more, or less) progress updates on the books I’m creating in real time

• Roadmaps

• LIVE To Do Lists for all aspects of book creation including

  • Writing

  • Drawing

  • Producing

  • Publishing

  • Marketing

    • Speaking of which I need to get the welcome letter done for this newsletter!

• Templates

• Office Hours notifications

• Best Practices

• Dangerous Warnings

  • Potholes

  • Bridge Out

  • Low Clearance Monsters

That’s All Folks!

See you in the next issue