Category: GKP Writing News

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GKP Writing News

Publishing Your Picture Book

You have worked hard writing and illustrating your picture book. There are a few things left to do before publishing your picture book.

First is a decision as to whether what you have is really a picture book or should be an illustrated short story or easy reader. There is an excellent article about this in the November/December issue of Writer’s Digest.

Proofread Your Book

This is not a hasty scan. Yes, you know what each and every page should be. That’s the problem. You see what you expect to see, not what’s there.

Go over every word on every page. Go over every illustration. It’s a good idea to have someone else look over these too. Beta readers aren’t just for novels.

Make sure the illustrations are on the correct page. Right side pages have odd numbers. Left side pages have even numbers.

This is why I urged you to save every illustration and the covers in the original layers as well as the final illustration. If you want to make changes, you can do so on the layered image and not have to start over again.

cover for "At the Laundromat" by Karen GoatKeeper
This book is different because it is a paperback instead of hardcover. It was also published through Kindle. It is adequate.

Back Up Your Book

Although you should do this regularly, it’s easy to let things slide. And I have a special key devoted to my books.

Each book has a folder with the original final draft, the formatted drafts for the different places I publish it, all illustrations in both layered and final forms. For my science activity books this includes all of the puzzles with answers, the stories with illustrations and trivia lists.

This picture book was published by IngramSpark. It is hardcover. I think the color richness is superior to that of Kindle.

Publishing Your Picture Book

Decide if you want a hardcover or paper cover or both. It’s a good idea to purchase your own ISBN numbers from Bowkers at myidentifiers.com. That way you can move to a different publisher, if you decide to, without major changes to your book.

Don’t skimp on the paper weight. Use the heavier paper so images don’t bleed through and the pages are easier to handle for young people.

There are many publishers out there. Check them out. I’ve used both Kindle and IngramSpark. I prefer IngramSpark for the color quality, but must maintain a seller account on Amazon for them. Kindle makes it easier to list on Amazon.

Once this book is published, start another one.

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Major Flood!

While considering which book to offer in November, nature made the decision for me. The big event setting the “Hopes, Dreams and Reality” story in motion is a major flood and nature decided we needed just that this month.

Hopes, Dreams and Reality cover
The flood I made up in this novel tried hard to become reality this week.

In the Novel

My hypothetical flood is the result of a large hurricane turned tropical storm slowly moving north. It drops unbelievable amounts of rain over four days resulting in widespread flooding.

Such a flood, in rural areas, destroys roads isolating rural homes. It usually takes down the electric lines. In the novel it takes out the phone line as well and Mindy’s place has no cell service.

After talking to my road grader operator, I found out many of these people live out of town. If their roads are washed out, they can’t get into town to take the graders out to fix the roads. It would take weeks to clear the roads of fallen trees and grade the gravel roads.

creek in major flood
The water level had already dropped three feet when this picture was taken. The creek bank had moved over about four feet washing out pasture. Once the water dropped to closer to normal, the creek bank had changed from a gradual drop from the pasture to the bed to a sheer drop of four feet or more.

This November’s Major Flood

The Ozarks has been in drought for several months. Rain had just started back when this storm came in. After 30 years living here, a big rainfall total is six or seven inches.

This storm dropped six inches over one day. Then it kept on raining all night. Water filled a five-gallon bucket, seventeen inches tall, and flowed over the top.

By the time we walked out in the morning, the water level in the creek had already dropped two or three feet. Debris out in the pastures marked the high water extent over the creek roaring past.

One end of the bridge over the creek had shifted several feet downstream. This was anchored with a cement pillar two feet by four feet with a cement footing and large rocks. Two I-beams topped this. The top, we saw later, was cracked.

It will take weeks to fix the damage left by this major flood. The novel shortens that time as the drudgery of fixing fence and cleaning up debris does not make interesting reading.

For the month of November, you can get a free digital copy of “Hopes, Dreams and Reality” from Smashwords using coupon code BSPJ7.

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Picture Book Covers

Just as for regular books, picture book covers do more than hold the book together. A good cover attracts interest so a potential reader will stop and look. It showcases the title and author of the book.

eBook and Print differences

An eBook has only the front cover. This is the same size as the interior pages. It needs to be bold, easy to see as many people look at it on their phones.

A print cover has three parts. One is the front with the title, author, illustrator and image on it.

The back of a picture book varies. It can have text to create interest in the book. Or it can be an image that is either new or a continuation of the front image.

Between the front and back is the spine. Picture books are thin. The spine must be a quarter of an inch or bigger before the title and author can be printed on it. Only hardback books have a spine.

Creating Picture Book Covers

Although there are templates and places to purchase a cover, I prefer to create my own. I use paint shop to do this.

The size is important. Whoever is going to print your picture book will tell you the size for the cover plus bleed or small margin around the cover. Sizes for front, back and spine are given too.

The front, back and spine are created separately. Each is saved separately.

back picture book covers
This isn’t the real back cover for “Waiting for Fairies”. It has been cropped on both sides to fit into a good web image. This highlights the need to have wide margins around your front and back covers so they can be cropped as needed to suit different formats.

My Method

I create a blank page 300 dpi – 600 dpi the right size for the front and add a background color. This may or may not show very much, but, unless your cover will have lots of white, you want to make sure the page is not white.

The selected front image is resized, same dpi, to fit on the page. Copy and paste as a new layer. Position it. Save it so the layers are left intact, not merged.

Add the title. Experiment with fonts, size, colors, orientation until it’s what you want. Position and save this.

Add the author’s name. This is much the same as for the title. Save this.

Creating the back cover starts with a new page. Add the images and text and save this so the layers are left intact.

The spine is tricky because it is so narrow. I create a page so the spine is horizontal to work with. Put the title and author on it making sure the text is smaller than the spine. Save.

The Final cover

Create a page the size of the full cover including bleed margin. Add the background color.

Go to the front page and merge the layers. Copy and paste it as a new layer on the final cover. Move it into position. (If you save the merged image, do it as a new image.

Repeat to put the back page on the final cover. Rotate the spine to vertical, copy and paste as a new layer. It must be positioned in the exact center of the cover.

I save the final cover with the layers. Then I merge the layers and save it as a merged version. Printing the picture book is the next step.

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Formatting Your Picture Book

The illustrations are done. Text is on the illustrations. Everything is ready for formatting your picture book, you hope.

Front Pages

Just like in a regular book, picture books have title pages. There is a copyright page as well.

(Although I am focusing on a printed book, if you are doing an eBook version, you can ignore the page count. An eBook requires a Table of Contents page added right after the copyright page which should be right after the title page in this format. Don’t forget to resize your images to 8” by 11”. Put them on that size pages using the 0.01” margins using In Line with Text.)

Title pages usually have some cute image taken from the book. If your book is about rabbits, the title page should have a rabbit image along with the title and author.

Copyright pages aren’t always in the front of picture books. Sometimes this information is put on the last page. If it is in the front, often the image on the page makes a two page spread with the first page. Other times it is an introductory image for the book.

Back Pages

In some picture books about animals or history, there is a last page or pages giving more information. I did this in “Waiting For Fairies” with a Nature’s Cast about the night creatures appearing in the book. In “Redcoats and Petticoats” the last page is about the spy network in New England during the Revolutionary War.

formatting your picture book starts with the pictures
This is one of two pages at the end of “Waiting for Fairies” telling about the creatures appearing in the story. I did have to crop the edges to get the right fit for the website. That brings up another issue with picture books. The edge of a page descends into the spine on one side. When you create your images, be sure you keep the main images a good half inch from the edges of the page.

Counting Pages

Traditionally printed picture books have a number of pages evenly divisible by four, usually 32. The reason goes back to how the books are printed. Each print page sheet has four book pages on it. You can see how this works if you take a calendar apart.

Count your pages. Is the number a multiple of four? If not, perhaps you can add or delete a page. Or you can add a blank page. Another way is to use a page for cute images related to your book as is done “For Love of Goats” or “Diary of a Spider”.

Remember your title and first page have an odd number to put them on the right side.

Creating the Pages

I work in Word so my pages must have a margin. If you also work in Word, formatting your picture book needs the margins set at 0.01”.

Resize your images to fit the page size you are using using your paint shop. Do not resize or crop them after putting them on the book pages.

Each image is placed on a page using In Line With Text to lock it into position. Even if your title page has lots of blank space on it, create an image of it the same size as your other images. All of these images should be JPEGs so all layers are merged.

Once all the images are on your pages, you have finished formatting your picture book interior. Now you need a cover.

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Adding Picture Book Text

Adding picture book text is part of the illustrating. The text must fit into the illustrations, be a part of them, yet be separate.

How much text will be included depends on the book. Those for older readers often have lots of text telling a story. Examples include “Redcoats and Petticoats” and “The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship”.

Those for younger readers have none to only a few lines. An example would be “Wolf in the Snow” where the text is only names of sounds like howl. “Waiting For Fairies” has a couple of lines of text on each page.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
In this picture book the text usually fit in two lines along the bottom of the page. When doing the illustrations, I left enough room to fit in the text.

Choosing a Font

There are lots of fonts to choose from. In picture books the aim is to be simple and easy to read.

My preference is Georgia as I find it easy to read and pretty with the serifs. Since I use it on my website and for writing, it was a natural choice for my picture books.

Another aspect is the color of the font. Black is the most common.

Picture book text doesn’t have to be in straight lines. It can be curved or in a column. In this book it is tiered up and down.

Placing the Text

Adding picture book text is part of doing the illustrations. The illustration must leave space for the text. It is often placed at the bottom of the pages.

When I did “The Little Spider” the text became part of the illustrations. This spider is trying to get to a high perch. When the spider goes up, the text goes up. When the spider goes down, so does the text.

Making Text Readable

Black is popular as it shows up well against most backgrounds. There are times when black does not show up well.

On a few pages of “The Little Spider”, this was the case. The text was against brown and disappeared into the background. I created a light yellow oblong and used brown text preserving the ground effect, but making the text readable.

Adding picture book text takes time and thought. The font must reflect the purpose of the book and be readable. The text must fit into the illustrations. Then the picture book becomes a picture book.

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Formatting Picture Book Illustrations

Formatting picture book illustrations is the last step. The illustrations must be finished first.

“For Love of Goats” taught me a lot about doing illustrations. Watercolor may be beautiful, but mistakes are forever. Or are they?

Creating the Pictures

Each drawing takes hours. The sketch is drawn, redrawn, corrected. Watercolor is put on after that.

Pencil lines show through watercolor, so they must be very light. If they are too light, you can’t see them.

formatting picture book illustrations example
This picture book image from “For Love of Goats” was created using watercolor and the computer. The kidding pen with the straw was one watercolor picture. Each of the three goats was done separately in watercolor. The goats were placed in the pen using a computer.

Computer ‘Magic’

Formatting picture book illustrations requires scanning them into a computer as JPEG images. My paint shop creates and works with these images. It let me trim down lines that were too thick with paint.

In “For Love of Goats” I have a series of short fiction much of which is set in a stall created with bales of hay. Painting identical stalls for each picture was beyond my skill. I painted one stall.

Then I drew and painted the goats to go into the stall. Duplicating the stall, I had it for all of my drawings. Using my paint shop, I placed the goats into the stall. This worked so well, I used the same method for several of the illustrations.

Doing these things does mean using multiple layers. The first time or two, using layers can be intimidating. Practice helps.

One important practice is to save all of your original drawings in their original form. When I work on one, I save this one as a duplicate in case I have to start over. This is a good habit to have for any illustration work: drawings, paintings, photographs. It is also a good idea with the text for a picture book or a novel.

Final Images

Many picture books are done in letter size. That is the size I create my drawings in.

However, eBooks are usually sized for 6” by 9” ratios. That distorts the letter size image. When formatting picture book illustrations for a digital version, it’s important to crop and resize them for this so they look right in digital format. That is 8” by 11” instead of 8 ½” by 11”.

image from Waiting for Fairies
All of the illustrations for “Waiting For Fairies” were done a complete pictures. There is the infamous bush that appears in many of the illustrations. It is hard to redo the same bush or fence or mushrooms over and over so they look the same each time. Formatting these images was mostly doing some cleaning of sloppy lines and fitting the images together for the two page spreads.

“Waiting For Fairies”

Although I created many of the images using layers for some picture books, this picture book was done with all complete pictures. That bush was a challenge and, if each image is looked over carefully, it isn’t exactly the same in all of them.

As I look over different picture books, my painting and computer method is not the norm. However, each book is different and each illustrator uses a method they are comfortable with.

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Picture Book Illustrations

Traditional publishing companies often control picture book illustrations assigning the text to an artist. Indie picture book authors have two choices: 1) Find and hire an illustrator; or 2) Do their own illustrations.

I am an indie author. That leaves me with the two choices.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper
What I found out doing this book was to start with illustrating something you are familiar with and enjoy drawing. After that, other projects aren’t so intimidating.

Hiring an Illustrator

For years I did try to find an illustrator. Good ones are expensive. The amount of work that must be put into the illustrations makes them worth their cost.

My first illustrated book was “For Love of Goats” which presented several problems. Goats are not easy to draw. The book includes several breeds of goats and each one is different.

Additionally, goats have attitudes and behaviors. Someone unfamiliar with goats, working only from photographs, will miss these. And these were reflected in the text.

Goats have been an important part of my life for fifty years. I’ve watched them. That didn’t mean I could draw them. I wanted to finish this book I’d worked so hard on, so I learned.

Picture Book Illustrations

If you’ve been looking at picture books, you know illustrations are done in many mediums. They are done in many styles.

Once the decision is made to illustrate a book, the medium is chosen. It must be one the illustrator is comfortable with.

My medium is watercolor. Why? Because I like the way it looks, the way it is done and the challenge of it. Watercolor is a most unforgiving medium as mistakes never go away.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
People are hard to draw for me. The mushrooms and creatures were done using photographs of the real ones as models. One of the difficult parts was drawing the same mushroom ring for each of may pages.

Waiting for Fairies

After completing “For Love of Goats”, I had the confidence to illustrate the two picture books I had written text for. The next one I tackled was “Waiting for Fairies”.

People are incredibly hard for me to draw. Even now, I look at my illustrations and wish I had done better.

The fun part of doing these illustrations was the opportunity it gave me to add an additional layer to the story told in the text. Since the child was waiting for fairies, there should be fairies somewhere.

Doing picture book illustrations isn’t for every author. I’ve found it is for me.

“Waiting for Fairies” eBook version is free through Smashwords for the month of November. The coupon code is LXLLT.

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Creating Picture Books

A homeschool group has approached me about teaching a short course on creating picture books. The idea is intriguing.

What Is a Picture Book?

This is the first question to answer. The obvious answer is a book of pictures with a story. In reviewing many picture books, this is far too simple.

B.J. Novak’s “The Book With No Pictures” is a picture book with no pictures, all text. Matthew Cordell’s “Wolf In the Snow” is all pictures with no story text. Both are great picture books.

Many picture books, like “The Little Spider”, include a page about the animal or animals shown in the text. The page in this book is about spider ballooning, the method used by spiders to move to new places.

The amount of text depends on the age the picture book is for. Those for very young children like Kate Duke’s “The Guinea Pig ABC” and many of the “Pete the Cat” books have very few words. Another way to appeal to children is with repetitive text as in my “The Little Spider”.

Picture books for older children have lots of text. In these the pictures augment the story, not tell it. Tiffany Hammond’s “A Day With No Words” and Katherine Kirkpatrick’s “Redcoats and Petticoats” are this way.

Another approach is seen in Jim Arnosky’s “All About Turkeys”. There is a story and pictures. Facts about turkeys are on streamers by the pictures.

The obvious answer is right, a picture book is pictures with text. However, there is a lot of leeway in how these are used depending on the age the book is for.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper
Although the text and illustrations in this book are about Ozark night creatures the child sees, the illustrations tell another story about fairies.

Creating Picture Books

I would start by writing down my idea, maybe even some illustration ideas. Then I would look at lots of picture books especially those for the age of the children I wanted to write for. This is not to copy these books, but to get a feel for the type of book that appeals to that age.

Afterwards I can look at my idea again. It’s time for a rewrite because creating picture books is as hard or maybe harder than writing a novel.

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Cheating With AI

AI seems to be everywhere lately. Search engines, word platforms and more beg you to use it. There are legitimate uses for it, but some I consider to be cheating with AI.

Writing and research are two of these. There are many who will disagree, but I stand firm.

AI and Writing

At home I am not online. In town every time I try to write an email, a search entry, check over a blog post, this AI pops up trying to tell me what I should write. This is very annoying as the stupid program starts guessing at what the word is by the time I have two letters typed.

Admittedly my spelling is not always right. However, spell check catches mistakes most of the time. And that doesn’t keep covering over my document or page with lists of words and phrases.

cover for "Capri Capers" by Karen GoatKeeper
This wild romp let my imagination fly. Every chapter ended with a cliffhanger. Every name was devised for fun and fit into the character. For me, this is what makes writing special.

Then, too, my novels come from my imagination. If AI writes my novel for me to edit, it is no longer my novel. It is AI’s novel and probably far from my idea of what it should be.

My present novel looks at getting old, relationships to family and friends, immigration and reinventing oneself. The main character has been a recluse for decades for medical reasons, has an abusive background. I have come to know her and those around her. AI would only guess at these pulling from whatever learning material it used.

Stephanie comes from a lifetime of people and experiences. I know what is happening and will happen to a large extent. AI won’t know ant of this and might well distort it if I explained.

If I were to use AI to write my novel, edit the result and publish it, I would consider it cheating with AI.

Research

When I start doing research, I have an idea what to look for. Often it is a bit vague. As I go exploring the topic, I can check out different parameters, fine tune, go off on tangents.

By cheating with AI, I end up looking at only what the program thinks I am looking for. It’s something like the difference between browsing the shelves at a bookstore or library and searching on Amazon. You miss so much.

Perhaps I am just old-fashioned, but I will continue to use my own imagination for my writing.

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October Is Pumpkin Month

Yes, this is September. However, now is the time to get ready for Pumpkin Month. One way to do that is to check out “The Pumpkin Project”.

It is too late to grow pumpkins as frost kills the vines. Fall is when pumpkins arrive in the stores and get ripe in the garden.

pumpkin month honoree
Sugar pie pumpkins are the best eating pumpkins. Larger pumpkins can be eaten, but are coarser and not as sweet. Giant pumpkins are not eaten.

Pumpkins Aren’t Just Decorations

Pumpkin displays start appearing at houses around town in late September. I like to keep track of these as most people putting these up throw the pumpkins away after Halloween. Unless the weather has been very cold, I like to take these pumpkins home.

At my house the smaller pie pumpkins become pumpkin puree for cookies or soups. Some are chunks in stews.

Bigger pumpkins are treats for my goats. I cut them into bite sized pieces and take them out each evening. A few pieces go on each plate of grain.

Different goats eat the pieces differently. Agate pushes hers around as she eats all the grain. Then she eats the pumpkin pieces. Drucilla and Spring attack the dish before it is even set down in front of them as they grab the pieces, then eat their grain.

cover of "The Pumpkin Project" by Karen GoatKeeper
The focus of this book may be pumpkins, but it explores many aspects of botany and plants.

“The Pumpkin Project”

This science activity book has lots of pumpkin puzzles and investigations in it. Many of them start with the seeds and growing pumpkin vines.

There are stories about pumpkin history and growing giant pumpkins by people in the U.S., Sweden and Australia who grew award winning giant pumpkins. These are weighed at special fairs called Weigh Offs.

For Pumpkin Month there are more things to do with pumpkins. Of course, you can carve a pumpkin, but then it’s not good for anything but display. Painting one lets you cook up the pumpkin later.

What Can You Cook Up?

There are recipes for making pumpkin puree. Then you can make not only cookies, but pumpkin bread, Caribbean pumpkin bread, cheesecake, soups, pie and more. You can even roast the seeds for snacking.

In honor of Pumpkin Month, you can get a free pdf of “The Pumpkin Project” by emailing me and asking. The book is only available in print or as a large pdf.