August 23, 2022

Hi everyone! My next update is all about the editorial phase and this was a huge learning experience for me.
The editing process from start to finish was a total of seven days for me. This varies for everyone as it depends on how fast communication is between you and your editor.
My production editor read through the manuscript and sent back to me some ideas on how to expand on certain topics, punctuation, grammar, and spelling. She also made a layout for the book, meaning the manuscript was divided into page numbers (these are called spreads) and she left pages blank for the extra materials that needed to be included. A standard number of spreads for a children’s book is 13 spreads which is equivalent to 25 left and right pages.
The supplementary materials portion included, my author bio, book dedication, book description, character description, and illustration description. This was everything that I had to add in to complete the book.

I am able to have complete creative control with this publishing company so this means that for all of the characters in my book I needed to describe the qualities, and personalities, that I wanted each character to possess. All the way down to hair and eye color. Once I choose an illustrator this is an easy way for them to follow and create the characters based on what I am looking for.

The illustration description was very interesting. For each spread I needed to add in what exactly I was looking for from the illustrator. First I had to choose between a full-spread illustration (one illustration that spans both pages, individual left-hand illustration/ right-hand illustration (two separate illustrations, one takes up a full left-hand page hand page and one that takes up a full right-hand page), or spot illustrations (multiple small illustrations on one page or spread, to show different activities or motions).

This process was completed when my production editor and I were both 100% happy and ready to move on to the illustration phase.
Thank you all of your continued support and I’m excited to share with you the next steps! Big news about illustrations next week!