Eccentric Intro

To make weird books, you need weird book production pipeline! And that’s what this week was all about, and finally getting “The Monster” to press. I touched on so many different areas this week, less than half of which I cover below!

Also, click on the polls below. Takes literally <1 second, and makes the newsletter better for you. It’s about you, not me!

I can’t deliver what you don’t order :)

Let’s get into it, shall we?

** NOTE: Email me any time about anything bookish or illustrationish, or just say hi.

In this Issue

• The Big Illustration

• Week in Review

• Reader Polls

• Story Writing

• Illustration in Action

• Next Week

• Bonus!

The Big Illustration

Here are some wacky snippets from inside my brain, as I work to bring you 1) eccentric books in development and 2) how they are made. No holds barred!

How scary is too scary for little kids?

The first story drafts for the first new series started specifically for this newsletter are taking shape. The entire process will be a big fat spoiler alert, since I’m taking you on this journey with me. Nothing is secret, or sacred. Or too scary.

Or maybe not scary enough? My main intent, in fact the only reason I’m doing what I’m doing here at all, is to make the books I wanted to read to my boys when they were little. Very few were scary enough, or weird enough. The best books were (and still are) the classics. Almost nothing new, and I look at a lot of books, is visceral or all that exciting.

I want books that get as scary as possible, or exciting, but then bring the reader (you) and the little listener, to a reasonably safe resolution.

So many kids picture books, honestly, are so namby-pamby, pastelized, pasturized, sanitized, that they do young minds a disservice. What's really going on is that publishers are afraid to take risks with the books that they can get onto the shelves in places like Barnes & Noble or online at Amazon.

Many of the great fairy tales and bedtime stories do not go this route. And this is why we remember them today. They resolve plot points but sometimes leave unresolved mysteries in the stories.

I can’t quite explain what it is about stories like The Tinder Box from H.C. Andersen, but I was captivated by this one in particular at age 6 and I still think vividly about it today. That’s what I want to create.

The answer to “how scary”, for me on this project, is: “scary enough to remember forever and talk about with excitement with an insatiable desire to share it.”

Nobody is going to remember a banal book, but they will remember an eccentric one.

Don’t talk to the librarian unless…

Don’t talk to the children’s section librarian unless you want to talk for an hour. I had an incredible spontaneous conversation at my local library this past week that sprung out of a few simple questions. I learned far more in that hour than I ever would have guessed, and will have to drip some of that knowledge to you here over time. It was too much! But here are some tidbits:

• Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel inadvertently helped establish the “early reader” format 50 years ago. Readers today are scientifically crafted to match certain reader levels, but Lobel “got lucky” through sheer creativity.

• Book size is a factor in how often a book get checked out of the library. Kids love the tiny 6 × 6 size, but they get lost on the shelf! Books that are too tall and skinny have their spine deeper in the shelves and people can’t see the titles! Books that are landscape stick way out and get more checkouts than other books, at times for no other reason than they stick out and you can see the title!

• Books with art that looks like modern 3D animated cartoons are big. But she can’t get enough books specifically about…trucks! She can’t keep those on the shelves. (Hmmmm…OK, I’ll do it…but in a scary way)

She said so many other things that blew my mind. I got her card. I’m going back for more! I’ll report back!

What is an imprint?

I had to do this, this week.

When you create your publishing company and sign up on KDP with it, you have to have a formal name and a tax ID, etc. But publisher imprints, however, are not legal entities; you can basically have as many as you want.

I needed a new imprint for my new series, which you’ll hear more about, “The Dangerous Boys”.

You’ll likely have a functional name for your publishing company that you don't ever expose to the public. In my case, it's Bon Communications. Not an inspiring name for kids’ books! Hence, “Boncraft Classics” is born, this week!

Now, I have various imprints that match the content of the books that I'll be making. But inside of Bowker where you get ISBNs or Amazon KDP, or Ingram Spark, it's all under your main company, and they all support the imprints you could ever want. There is no cap, really, not that you need that many.

So if you're just getting started, don't think too hard about the company name. Get to work on your book, and if you need to create an imprint to match the branding of the book, then you can do that as you get close to going to press.

But don't lose any time fretting over it now! Get going on your book!

Why are so many picture books 8.5 × 8.5?

The industry has standardized on picture books at 8.5 x 8.5 and 32 pages. This is because in the printing world for offset printing (which is the way big runs of books are published) and the way anything is printed in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black), they have to fit pages onto a giant sheets of paper and fold and cut them. So the most efficient way to do this is to get pages that are 8.5 x 8.5" and the sheet of paper gives you 32 pages or 16 spreads.

If you go over 32 pages, your cost can jump because now they have to print another sheet of paper but throw a lot of it away. In the end, you just need to work with multiples of 8, and you can do whatever you want with pages you don't need (like put your website or other titles or other information, or you can leave them blank).

Weekly Eccentric Poll

[NOTE: Take this poll every week to get the most out of me, for your best interest. You drive this newsletter, not me.]

Eccentric Story Writing

You’ll see more in this slot next week as the first stories in the series start to come to life. The first series is code named “The Dangerous Boys”, with a working title of “Dangerous Boys for Bedtime Stories”. That title works for a compilation, but the first 3 stories will come out as independent books. At least that is the plan. Stories like “The Dangerous Boys vs The Crimplemire” or “The Dangerous Boys and the Super Truck”

As mentioned earlier, if you don’t like spoilers, this section but also the whole newsletter, is not for you 🙂 

But if you are here to get stories that go way off track, and if you want to see how it all comes together, you are in the right place.

I’m glad you are here with me for the journey.

Week In Review

“The Hideous Very Bad Alphabet”

I had the art for this done for ages, and the verses typeset in Affinity Publisher as well, but I needed the front matter, and the paperback cover to complete. Got those done this week. I got into my Amazon KDP bookshelf and created a new book, and got the files uploaded, metadata all filled in, price and royalty set (do NOT use “Extended Distribution”), passed the KDP virtual book test where it takes your cover and body files and combines them.

Finally, ordered a test copy for $9 that will be here in a couple days!

Amazon gives you a PDF template to fill in your cover artwork on top of, based on the final trim size and page count. They make it as easy as possible, but it’s all still a little tricky even after doing it dozens of times.

Affinity Publisher is the best tool to be using to put together your book. Yeah, yeah, you caaaannnnnn use Canva. But I warn against it for so many reason we’ll cover another time.

Get Affinity Studio. It matches or beats the classic Adobe Suite, but for a one time price and you never have to buy again, at least for years between major upgrades which they are very slow about. You need creative and technical control, and this is how you get it.

I made a couple sample covers between ChatGPT and Affinity Photo, using the design I already drew and typeset in Affinity Designer and Publisher.

My first prompt using the book cover was a good concept but it messed up the art. It looks like my book, but it is not. You can see it’s goofy, wonky:

The next prompt was to give me a white book so I could edit the cover myself:

I took the book cover I already designed, imported it, and distorted it with the perspective tool and dragged it into place. Voila! Fake real book photo using traditional design tools plus AI!

Tradition plus AI? I assure you, this is the way. I have a lot more to say on that, for you, in future issues!

Fake it until you make it, which I did! And you can too!

Illustration in Action

I thought I’d give you a quick view of how illustration layers work. In this case, I drew on my iPad in Clip Studio Paint, but I usually use Procreate:

• Imported pencil sketch layer

• Ink layer drawn on top of pencil sketch layer

• Sepia watercolor layer (pencil layer turned off now)

• Red layer

It’s essential to understand that the ink layer is basically “tracing” the pencil layer and doing a lot of minor correction and detail fill in spontaneously. It’s all “improv”!

What’s the difference between tracing your own sketch with ink…or someone else’s?

“Monster G” from The Hideous Very Bad Monster Alphabet.

And finally it’s spread in the book with verse:

Eccentric Community

I’ve had 4 conversations in the past week about The Eccentric Picture Book Community. Several were about the free Founding Member seats.

This tells me I’m over the target, but didn’t have something dialed in totally to help some of you join in.

Take a look at the offer again, and tell me what you need from it. You can email me directly, and we can chat about it. I want to help you succeed!

Or take another look. Of the 3 inquiries for a free seat, nobody has officially nabbed them though we have emails going back and forth (ahem, you know who you are).

Next Week’s To Do List

• eBook for Amazon: Free, Kindle Unlimited, and easy for YOU to REVIEW.

• Monster alphabet covers for BN, IngramSpark, etc.

• First drafts of Dangerous Boys stories. Louis & Henry are waiting to be called into existence.

• Illustration: preliminary Louis & Henry in a few styles.

• Nonsense stories? I might work on some even more crazier ideas, like Alice in Wonderland for little kids, but not too far off from Harold and the Purple Crayon.

• A new ad or two on Meta, to bring more readers like you to us here together!

BONUS!

sEe yOU nExT WeEk!