Book Dummy done, now what?
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hi everyone, I've been following SVS for a few years and finally became a member this year and started the lessons and joined the forum. Everyone here is so supportive and welcoming!
Anyways, I've been working on a kid's book for a while and have had some good momentum recently and finished, what I think, is the book dummy (based on what some of the podcasts have described as a book dummy).
My question is: now what?
-I'm looking into the self publishing option through maybe Friesonpress (here in Canada),
-or perhaps just going the Will Terry route and having some books produced in China and shipped over,
-or (the dream) get it picked up by a publisher.But this all raises so many questions, my social media presence isn't huge and my portfolio showcases more comic style design and graphic design, so this book is pretty much my only children's illustration work. Or maybe I should look trying to find an agent?
I really don't want to lose the momentum by stopping and then building up my portfolio before proceeding, but maybe I need some tough love/ hard truths here?
It's all very overwhelming and I have some money set aside for this project, but I don't want to waste it on the wrong thing. I know 'finished is better than perfect' so maybe I just print it and focus on a marketing strategy?
Any thoughts, advice, or opinions would be appreciated.
here are some images from the book as well...
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@AbramHartrick your illustrations are cute, but I think you could do more streamlining. Like the last page instead of saying the spaceship was full of all the food he didn't like, and naming them, you could simply it down to, something like "revealing his hidden stash". Rule of thumb with kids books is show don't tell.
( I can't think of the right wording since I don't know the whole story, so I wouldn't recommend stash since it's more associated with drug use and terminology with children's lit needs to be very considerate ) -
Also i would print a physical copy, to hold the dummy in your hands and see if the page turns feel natural. Read it out loud to see if you find anything that sounds unnatural.
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@AngelinaKizz thanks so much for the feedback, much appreciated. I was thinking the same thing - regarding trimming the descriptions. Robert Munsch was definitely an inspiration in the writing (hence some of the descriptions, which are intentionally repeated a few times throughout the story). I remember hearing the 'show don't tell' mentality as well and it's definitely something I've been weighing/battling with given the writing style. I think I'll go back to some of my test reading groups and ask about that now, maybe I can get rid of the descriptions...
Thanks for your help!
