I wish you all the best for your adventures in picture books. Good luck! Maybe you’ll find a different way to present your ideas, but hopefully seeing how I do it will give you a starting point. As an illustrator myself, I know I prefer to interpret the story myself without too many suggestions from the author at this early stage. If I am intending to illustrate the book myself, I do often write a few illustration notes, using a paler, coloured type so they don’t jump out from the page at first glance. If the text is intended for another illustrator, I am careful not to include too many instructions - in fact only if the illustrative content is not evident in the story, or if the intention is for the illustrations to deliberately contradict the text. Rudie Nudie is a 24-page picture book, and you can see I’ve set aside the first three pages for the half title and title pages, so the text starts on page 4 (children's picture books are generally 24 or 32 pages long). I tend to divide the text into double-page spreads, so the publisher can see how the book will flow, but not all authors do this. A lot of major publishers wont accept manuscript or book dummy. This sounds really obvious, but I make sure I don’t hide my story amongst a jumble of other words. Feel free to use the example below of a letter that I wrote when I was querying. It’s the title and the story I want people to focus on, so for these I use clear, black typeface and all the other type is a pale grey or aqua colour. I want to make it easy for a commissioning editor to find my picture book text on the page, and read it. Sometimes authors will add a few illustration notes to the manuscript if. So, (as promised) I thought it might be useful to show how I do it. Story-based or fiction picture books are usually 32 pages long and vary between. I’ve received a lot of messages recently, asking for advice on how an author would present an idea for a picture book to an agent or publisher, and in particular whether to include illustration notes.
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