Barack Obama, LeBron James, Jimmy Fallon, Reese Witherspoon… It seems like every day you hear about another celebrity pushing their new children’s book. Is it just easier for celebrities to take a manuscript to the next level? The answer might surprise you.
Read MoreStorywalks®, Storybook Walks™, story strolls, and book walks are all names for an innovative form of storytelling where a children’s book is taken apart and displayed in a way that encourages children to move from page to page (we will use the name Storybook Walk here)… At StorybookWalk.com we have a team who believe it is possible to do a storybook walk just about anywhere and with minimal cost. This is why we have come up with many new creative ways to do storybook walks which work well both outdoors and indoors and provide tips on how to create these walks yourself. We believe that a storybook walk needs the following elements to be successful.
Read MoreWhen I first started publishing, I longed for a book award. I remember seeing all those pretty stickers and seeing authors boast about how many awards that they had received. I would look at author websites and drool over the little seals at the bottom of the screen. I mean, who wouldn’t want a pretty gold sticker on their book, right? Isn’t that like a book publishing gold medal? What I didn’t know then was that most of these awards are scams.
Read MoreI’ve been in the business of writing and illustrating books now for a few years and one of the areas which I find most frustrating is that of the editorial review. You would think that a good book just naturally gets good reviews, but that is not how the industry works. Traditional publishers send off their books to review boards months before they are ever published and usually pay nothing to have them reviewed. Self-publishers don’t have this possibility. They have to pay to have their books reviewed and this is not cheap.
Read MoreMany self-publishers begin with the dream of getting a traditional publishing contract. They write to dozens of agents and submit to publishers accepting unsolicited manuscripts. Then after receiving countless rejections and waiting months for copy-paste replies, they begin to wonder if getting a traditional publishing deal is really worth all the hype.
Read MoreAs an author/illustrator of children’s books, I like to be aware of what is going on in the publishing world from as many angles as possible. This is why I am on over 100 forums including those for teachers, librarians, principals, editors, illustrators, authors, and children’s book self-publishers. In the last few years in the world of children’s book self-publishing, there has been an increasing trend of people taking credit for illustration work which they have not created. AI did not create this trend, but it has added rocket fuel to the fire. AI has now become the number one topic on many of the forums that I am on and for good reason. Let me explain."
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