Children’s Book Publishing

How Does Children’s Book Publishing Work?

When browsing a children’s book, it is difficult to meet a person who does not have that pleasant feeling of disconnecting from reality for a few moments. We all experienced, at least once, to travel through this fascinating universe of imagination.

Children’s literature is meant to entertain and also has an essential role in society.

Colors, drawings, and fantasy in the narrative create playful moments and help with literacy. There is a lot of research on the importance of children’s books in forming new readers and in the child’s cognitive development. Even so, many are unaware of the steps involved in the editorial production of books of the genre.

Here we will cover the main stages of the editorial process of a children’s publication. Authors and readers have an idea of the difficulty in transforming originals into those beautiful books that we see on the shelves of bookstores and online stores.

The illustration

A very important item in the process of creating an enchanting book is the illustration. Children’s stories are not just told by words, but the drawings play a fundamental role in understanding the context and retaining the child’s attention during reading.

Finding an illustrator who can capture the author’s story and ideas to translate them into images is one of the first and most difficult stages of the work. Each illustrator usually has a line, a style and works best with a technique. There are manual and digital techniques, and within them, there are several methods: charcoal, watercolor, pastel, etc. The illustration service is not cheap or fast, but the work needs to be charming.

The Layout

Once illustrated, the book needs a layout that can harmoniously unite history and drawings. The Designer (artist) will have to test the font, the amount of text per page, the size of the line and the margin. Also, the illustration’s position on the sheet, all so that the publication is visually pleasing and fulfills its objective.
Depending on the work style, the use of Vignette (graphic design) can also be indicated, as in classic fairy tale books.

The Quality of Paper

Another relevant element in a children’s work is the quality of the paper. The paper’s quality and weight are crucial for the image not to “leak” to the next page. It is important for the illustrations to have a good definition and visualization. However, there are also works with other materials in this area of publication, such as wood, cloth, plastic, among others. This is the universe of interactive books. This modality allows children to play with puppets, listen to music, test different textures, thus developing their visual, tactile, and auditory skills.

Conversion to a Digital Book Format

For children’s books, the fixed layout is used when converting to digital format, which keeps the page design the same as the printed book. Because it has illustrations and a unique layout, it is the most recommended work for the genre. Some conversions also have animations and interactivity, which makes the e-book more stimulating for children.

Producing a children’s book takes a lot of work, but the result is gratifying, besides being charming. We at iSpirit Publishing would love to publish your children’s literary work.

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