Hi, we're the good ship illustration. And we run online courses to help illustrators and image makers navigate a creative career. I'm Tania.
Helen:and I'm Helen. We have about 70 years experience between us, each of us working in a different area of illustration.
Katie:This series is a special picture book series of podcast, question and answer sessions. Right now the doors to the picture book course are open. So you can just Google the good ship picture book course. And we should show up. But we'll pop a link in the description as well. We've
Helen:got a special q&a on Wednesday on Instagram Live haven't been seven o'clock Wednesday, turn up, ask all your questions there about the course or pitch books, whatever. And
Katie:if you want to make sure you get all the email reminders and stuff, just make sure you're getting our emails which you can do on our website, the good ship illustration.com. Yellow see you there. Welcome back to a picture book podcast series. This is our fourth of five episodes for this chunk. So we're answering all your brilliant picture book questions. And today's questions are very nitty gritty, details orientated. So it's, it's exciting. I'll just go straight in. The first question is, what's the deal with self publishing or print on demand? Is that a total scam? Hmm,
Tania:Helen, and I've got two different views on it. I'm the downer on it. And you're quite positive. But I think there's two, there are two very different versions. Or maybe I'll give mine first and Yeah, go for it. I have seen people who have gone and self published in a world of enthusiasm. And the books are printed, they arrive back at their house in five boxes, and then they sit in their house forever. Because, you know, maybe they found a cheap print option, but they haven't thought about distribution and marketing and publicity and all the things that a publisher would give you. It can be quite an expensive flop. But there are alternatives to that if you've got an audience.
Helen:Yeah, I think if you've got a, you don't even have to have a big audience. But if you've got a very, I don't want to say committed, committed, what's the word engaged, engaged audience, if you've got an engaged audience who you know, will take the next step and buy your book, then I think that's a good way of doing yourself. But you can you know, have it printed a few at a time, you could even take pre orders. So you know how many you're going to sell us to do that with calendars? Katie? Yes,
Katie:I was in that. So like when I hear self published? I'm like, yeah, it's great, because you just do pre orders, and then you don't have any spare stock, you don't lose any money. You know, you've sold the thing before it exists. But I think the general consensus is that that's not really self publishing, is it that's just making things and selling them, but doing pre orders?
Tania:Yeah, and you're an illustrator, you've got a design awareness, you've got print awareness. And
Katie:I shipped them all myself. In that instance, it was like, I wasn't doing any, like, it was all in house sort of thing. That's
Tania:Yes, you kind of got control over it. There was one of our good shippers asked in the pitch book course. This week, actually, they said, I've been approached by someone who really likes the work they do. And, and the specific subject matter. And they wanted me to work on a book for a charity that she was running. And my my theme and content completely charged with what what she wanted to make the book about. And it would be fundraising for a charity. And I kind of said to her, do you know whether this person has made a book before? Have they ever worked with a printer? Do they know, paper qualities do that? Haven't? Who's going to lay it out? Is there a designer involved? Does she have any money to pay you the obvious one. So that would have been a kind of self publishing collaboration. And quite often, illustrators are approached by other people who have a passion project. And that passion project isn't yours. And you have to remember, because that's going to take time out of your career plans and your projects for yourself, your passion project is what you should follow. Because quite often, people's passion projects don't even have any funds. So if you're looking at 12, illustrations, minimum, you may be looking at 300 pounds, let's compare it to a magazine commission does that person that individual who wants to work with you, I use your skills have 300 times 12 to I mean, that's the 4000 Finance write up on, they can't give you an advance because they haven't got any distribution sales to sell these books onto afterwards. So that's where self publishing gets really sticky and go back to the thing of having a load of boxes of these books with their shiny, low quality, lightweight paper covers, and they don't even look like books, you know, they're just like, some cheap rubbish. That's where it can be really dangerous.
Helen:I think the benefit of having a publisher is that you're part of a team. You've got your designer and you've got your editor. They really know what you're doing. You learn a lot from them as you go. And the cost isn't yours. The cost is theirs. It's their gamble. I was gonna say something else about that. Oh, yeah, there's that other thing where I've got a friend who does print on demand using Amazon so he's up low. Did his book to Amazon. And every time it sells it prints on demand? Which is, which is another way of doing it, which is a nice idea. I don't know if you call that self publishing,
Katie:print on demand be a separate thing, isn't it? Yeah. And that's, again, it's probably different for different books and things. Sometimes the quality isn't maybe how good you'd want it, or would be different to if it was published by a proper publisher. Yeah, yeah.
Tania:That's the I think if you've got a book designer on board, at the very beginning, they've specified proper paperweights proper cover weight, and the thing that actually looks like a book rather than some kind of a cheapskate option to which so many of the self publishing offers look really attractive. But the physical object that comes out at the other end, is not really going to work unless you've had various professionals working on it. And like you said, Helen, a publisher, a publishing company, is made up lots of different moving parts that ensure a book is well made, and it's distributed, and printed and designed and everything in a successful manner, it seems so easy from the outside,
Helen:I also think you need to be really wary of vanity publishers. So any situation where you are paying to have that book made is not a proper publishing deal. We've had emails from people before, thinking they've got a publishing deal, and then asking if it's normal to have to pay 3000 pounds for a book to be published.
Katie:Publishing deals screaming at our emails, like no, it's not real. Don't do it. Of course, if you're paying to create a book, and it's completely you doing it, that's a different thing. But Vanity, vanity publishing, maybe it's good explaining what that actually is.
Tania:Yeah, they're published. They're basically printing companies that masquerade as a publisher, and they do publish, you'll get an ISBN number, and so forth. But they will not distribute or promote or sell your book. They have in house design skills and good print knowledge, but they will provide you with whatever, say 5000 copies of your book, and then it's up to you. So you do have a book but you don't have a publishing deal. That's entirely different. And I think the where people come unstuck is where a budding pitcher bookmakers, Google things like Bloomsbury publishing, and looking to find an art directors name that they can approach or an editor's name to approach. And suddenly they see Bloomsbury limited something or other that looks very like Britain through publishing, but isn't. And so they're using these different, obviously, vanity publishers appear on the search with offers to publish your book and say they're accepting manuscripts now please write in. And of course, they will be offered two or three, you know, a three book deal, a friend of mines, brother was offered a three book deal, and she was so excited for him. And then she told me the name of the publisher. So I would recommend that you Google, if you are offered a deal, and it almost seems to be too good to be true. Google reviews of the name of that publisher to check it's not a vanity publisher. Basically,
Helen:if you're paying for it to be published, yeah, that's not a publishing deal. This giant red
Katie:flag, you should never have to pay basically. Yeah.
Tania:We've covered it all. Well, yes,
Katie:that is. So it's not always a scam, in short, but sometimes it is. The peak. Be careful. So the next question is, I hear some publishers are more picky about eyes to different Yeah,
Helen:this is good. Yeah. So in my experience, publishers want you to they're quite resistant, have a very, very realistic drawing of a face, if you like, try and imagine surely hues, if she went into even more detail. And her eyes and mouth, you know how that kind of drawing can end up quite grotesque when you can see like the veins of the eyeball. And I think if you try and draw a child very realistically, they very quickly become quite scary. So in my experience, publishers usually want you to do a kind of nice, simple version of the eyes and the nose and the mouth. And I can remember, on one of the first books I ever did, I drew the eyes, if you imagine two arms on their sides with dots in the middle, very, very simple. And they said to me, why don't you get an a4 sheet of paper and draw the eyes getting taller and narrower as you go down the sheet of paper. And just as an experiment, and I did that, and then there was when I looked down this sheet of paper, there was an area where all the eyes looks really good. And I realized that the eyes at the top that had started off really Armand de looked kind of unfriendly, and the ones at the bottom looked ridiculous, but there was like a nice warm spot in the middle where they look just right. So yeah, I'm not sure this is the same for the states. I think maybe that kind of realistic way of drawing is more acceptable. I'm not an expert on this, but in the UK, they definitely like you to find a kind of simple way of drawing children. Yeah,
Katie:I've heard some people say that you can almost tell who's represented think someone by what kind of eyes they do really have
Helen:not heard that. So that agent might give them advice on eyes yeah.
Katie:Maybe Kathy who is I'll tell you afterwards Who is it? Yeah there's somebody once said to me oh you can totally tell that they were represented by so and so because the eyes in all of the books look the same and then when I looked right
Helen:they do My goodness
Tania:yeah I yeah eyes are really tricky subject can you do? didn't you mention that you might do a freebie yeah template on how to do how to explore all the different eyes.
Helen:That's it. As soon as we started talking about this exercise that the publisher gave me once I thought this this needs to be in the course. I'm going to do it. This is going to be the course launch. Yeah, totally
Katie:do a good point on axis eyes as well. I'll resist the urge to do that.
Tania:Also do a quick slideshow on eyes around the world in children's polo shirts really
Helen:good. What about Miffy eyes? They're just a dot, aren't they? Yeah, Miffy. As you can see, there's a surprising amount of expression in Miffy character. He was really, Dick Bruner was really, really careful exactly where he would pull the eyes and spend hours getting them in the right place to get just the right expression. And they're just too little kind of oval done. Lots of
Katie:amazing. I went to Dick rulers studio. They recreated it in Utrecht in the Netherlands, and Miffy land, and actually, I bought you both postcards. smithy, please. But I don't know whether
Tania:you gave us today. Yeah, we got him if he gets from your I don't think I got
Katie:graduations. When I find it,
Helen:I'll have it with Edith to the corner. It's probably got like conflicts
Katie:on it.
Tania:Because their eyes get talked about so much. We should definitely do something about this looking at the impact of different eyes
Helen:and nose character noses as well. It's the same, isn't it? You can have a little upside down. You are right way up. You were sideways. You a little tick.
Katie:Did you see that thing on Twitter? And it was like to make somebody older, you just make the nose longer? And I think
Helen:it was job it was John about that? Yeah. Yeah, he was talking about the bigger than No, the longer the nose, the older the character. There's also that thing of the further down the face. The eyes are the younger the character,
Katie:you get so much fun playing with this. We knew what did we even talk about? Are we talking about publishers being picky about it? So maybe, but play around with was making stuff that feels exciting and fun for using it. And it's the publishers happy with? Well,
Tania:it's like kept doing character development, isn't it? And then this is the absolute apex of development. You've got the body. You've got the species, the outfit. Now the face? That would be that'd be a great one to add in as well. Yeah.
Katie:Okay, next question. This is a good, nitty gritty business time question. Do you get 50% of payment at the beginning of the project and another 50? When you finish? Yes. Brilliant. Next question. Hang
Helen:on. I've noticed in contract and contracts recently, in recent years, it's always been the case, you sign your contract, you get half your advance, you finish your book, you hand it in, you get the other half. But I have noticed in a few contracts, and I've always asked them to change it and it's been fine. They try and reserve a bit of money for when it's published. So say like a third when you sign a third, when you finish, and a third when it's published, but because I don't have control of when it's been going to be published. I always make sure they fix that. Yeah. Also, actually, it's not a simple yes, because sometimes it's split into three. So a third on signature, a third on roughs, and a third on handling the final artwork,
Katie:it's good that there's some flexibility as well. So if you see it and you want to tweak things you can ask. Yeah,
Helen:I would never agree to a third on publishing because it's not in your control, no rubber like in five years, we will publish or there might not publish.
Katie:Yeah, that would be brilliant. Okay. This question is about the dimensions. So what canvas size should I use when creating illustrations for a picture book? Is there a standard size ratios hit my head?
Helen:is already Helens favorite question that whenever we roll out the course the first thing everybody wants to know is dimensions and compared to the rest of the stuff that is really important in making the children's but the dimensions are like the least most important aspect of it. Like you know, kind of generally what a picture book size is just roughly draw that on a piece of paper and work kind of that size because if worrying down to the millimeter what size your book is going to be, it's going to make absolutely no difference whatsoever. If your character is ugly, ugly, horrible. Ugly is a bad word. I don't mean it's unappealing or it doesn't grab your attention or make you want to know what's going to happen next. You know, if you're going to see a publisher or an agent, and they love your story idea, they love your illustration. They love your character design, but you drew it a centimeter too small, they're not going to send your pack in. So I'm not even going to name any dimensions. It's so irrelevant, because you might draw it one, you know, one specific dimension. Go to the publisher, they love it, and they want to publish it, but they want to make it five centimeters bigger. Yeah. And so yeah, don't worry about it, as long as it's vaguely picture book size. That's it.
Tania:But wouldn't you say as well, that comes from that thinking where people think I'm going to submit a book. And if they say, Yes, it will be printed, just like the word just the way I submitted it. So really, you should think about your picture book as a sketchbook in a way as a sort of semi finished sketchbook because
Helen:it never ever happens, does it? No, it never happens. You never create your whole book at home, finish the artwork and hand it in and the publisher, say we love it, give you a contract and publish it that never ever happens, you're going to submit an idea for a book with maybe one or two illustrations, how you think they might look, the publisher want to have a hand in it, they're going to be really involved in how that book looks, you're gonna get an editor and a designer, your book is really, it's gonna go through a lot of process before it becomes a finished book. So you really don't need to know the dimensions, you might get to the publisher. And they might only print in three formats. So there's no point even trying to fit a format until you've met your publisher and your editor. And they'll give you a few dummy books. And they'll say which one do you like? So yeah, don't worry about dimensions
Katie:are not allowed. It's like when you're at school, isn't it the comfort of being handed an a4 sheet of paper of being told write your name of the top? I think people want that. I think
Helen:that's it. I think it's such a scary idea to start on your idea that isn't it nice that you could spend ages with a ruler just drawing out the shapes before you
Katie:can start don't have the right size? Exactly.
Tania:It's a self sabotage thing. Isn't that keeping you from committing to making the project? At the very most maybe you just have a gut sense that it's definitely a horizontally landscaped kind of book or you know, it's a bumper book, it's a huge one that you can barely hold in your arms, or it's square, or very vertical. But you know, those are just very rough ideas. That's all you need to know, isn't it? Yeah. Just to get that sense of the what a double page layout looks like to you? Do you need it to be tall or horizontal? Yeah,
Helen:go to the library. Oh, look, yeah, go live, because the bookshop just get a general idea of what they are. If it won't fit on the bookshelf at your bookshop, the chances are the publisher won't publish that. But they'll talk to you before you get to that stage.
Katie:Oh, by the way, sorry to bring this up now, after it's been published.
Tania:That's what the Father to publisher will do. They will only tell you it when you paid for it.
Katie:Thank you for the 3000 pounds your book is unpublished. That would be so sad. If we got any more questions, we haven't. But that's a perfect amount of time. Perfect amount of questions. But I was gonna say Did we miss your question? If so, sorry. It's never ever anything personal? And also does it inside the picturebook? Course we do three live q&a calls, where you can email your question, or you can ask it in the chat live. And we answer as many as we can. If we don't answer them, we like put them onto the next one. Basically, we get through all the questions.
Tania:And we've got an archive of all the live calls that have happened on the three previous courses. So you have access to all of those. Quite often the questions are, honestly the same 15 or 20 questions, because we all have the same concerns about this. So you will find someone has probably asked your question. And you'll find it in one of the previous archives.
Katie:And we also have an incredible online community in the picture book course as well. So you can sort of crowdsource ideas and just share what you're up to and support other people. Because if you have a burning question, you're like, I need an answer right now. I can't wait till a live call, then you can ask it in there.
Helen:In that private Facebook group. We have illustrators who are just starting out who have, you know, barely started on their career right up to people who have been publishing picture books for a really long time. And the beauty of that is that often the more experienced people help out the newbies, which is brilliant. So if we're not there that day answering questions somebody else probably will. And if that's made you worry that you haven't got enough experience to do the course don't worry, because we have massive spectrum of people don't we we have people who never went to art school people who went but then they got you know, life got in the way they had children or got a job. The spectrum of people is huge, isn't
Katie:it? Yeah. And the thing they all have in common is that they want to make a really great picture book. Even if they've already made one they want to make one even better, and if they made one, they want to learn how to make one. So hopefully that helps. clear up some quotes Since you might have been if you're listening to this on the Thursday, tomorrow, the doors closed, so you've got like 24 hours, basically, and we're really strict and lazy. So when the doors closed, that's it. The technology is a bit bamboozling. And once the doors are closed, we can't figure out how to sneak people in other ways. For the
Helen:first time we did a launch we had all these emails from people saying, Oh no, I've missed it please let me in and we said yes to everybody and then spent the whole weekend just frazzled trying to get people past the software to get them in.
Katie:It was it was a disaster. So we just pretend it's really good boundaries, but it's laziness and confusion. No, it's good. It's good boundaries is good. Anyways, thank you for listening. And we'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye.