I have written a children's story that I really would like to have illustrated and published. Do I find a publisher before looking for an illustrator or is it the other way around? Should it be fully illustrated before sending it to a publisher?
you'll find that most pb publishers have a policy of not accepting any artwork from the writer... so, be sure to scour each one's guidelines before sending any with your ms... as for finding an illustrator, are you prepared to pay them?... since the chances of getting a publisher to take on the book are slim to none, most good illustrators won't work on spec, as it's a lot of work to do for nothing... normally, you just query with your ms... many publishers don't even want you to indicate where artwork will go, much less what it should be depicting... so, again, check each one's guidelines first!
just adding my ten pence worth.... Publishers have their own illustrators as a rule, and this must be a relief to some writers and a pain to others. If you have a great talent for illustrating send in some samples. I was on a publishers file of freelance illustrators once and there is a certain way they like them to be presented, a short course on such things would be to your advantage.
merits of a course aside, each publisher sets its own parameters, so i doubt there's a one-way-fits-all standard... thus, the most important thing you need do is check each one's submission guidelines, to make sure your submission meets their requirements...
Not always they accept illustration from the author's side, but you can definitely get sure first. And you can make the cover art before publishing. I'm drawing cover arts for people before they even publish and it works, depending on the company you're dealing with.
Thank you for your input everyone. I will definately research the publishers req's before hiring anyone or illustrating it myself.
A book that I found very helpful for someone ready to publish their first children's book was The Business of Writing for Children, by Aaron Shepard. I bought the book, then I learned that several pieces of this short book are also on the author's website, http://www.aaronshep.com/kidwriter/index.html
can't tell what you mean by that, but i'll guess it's something like 'they'll accept illustrations by the author'... and it's not true of most of the pb publishers, sorry to say... some will, certainly, but they're few and far between, with paying publishers... the vanity/self/pod ones may, but that's a whole 'nother story and the writer has to be able to pay the huge extra costs of using his/her own artwork... not only can, but should be sure it's acceptable before you send them anything... if the guidelines say 'no art' and you send it anyway, your stuff will most likely not even be looked at... no, you can't, unless you're paying to have your book published... and in this thread, i thought we were dealing with the subject of querying/submitting to paying houses... if foxy was referring to paying to have her book printed, then both cover art and story illustrations supplied by the writer will be subject to negotiation and require additional fees... i'll assume you're referring only to self-publishing and not paying publishers... if you've found this to work with some of the latter, please let me know which ones, as i mentor a lot of writers and some would love to provide their own cover art, but haven't come across any traditional publishers that will allow it...
