Yet another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle Rough

Almost done with the  book dummy! I'm sure I'll need to make revisions before I send it out, but it's nice to be so close to finished. This may be my first complete traditional book dummy. I really love the process and I'm looking forward to doing many more, and (hopefully) many many actual books.

I don't think any of this will feel real until that first book sees print. Until then, a part of me feels like I'm just playing at being an illustrator. Magazine illustrations and individual commissions don't quite carry the same weight as a real off-set printed book. Handmade books and zines don't quite count either, even though I've made quite a few small odds and ends that I'm proud of.

So, hopefully, it all starts here.

Another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle Rough: The Inside of the Pumpkin

As an shortcut I used gradients in this one, even though I hate gradients, since it's still in rough form. There won't be any gradients in the final, but in this case it was a quick way to get the point across.

I didnt' anticipate using any kind of extreme perspective in this story, but I wanted to show the contrast in size and how the characters were engulfed by the space. I felt I had two options here: To go for a bird's eye or a worm's eye view. I chose bird's eye to contrast with the image on the previous post which was from more of a worm's eye perspective, though drawing the characters foreshortened from above was a challenge. I think it worked out pretty well, though.

Another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle Post

Another Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle rough for my dummy in progress. I'm putting this together in Indesign--it's so easy in Indesign to move pages around and get rid of pages and see the whole picture at once, a lot easier than the old cut and paste (with actual glue!), analog way. It makes revisions incredibly easy, and I don't feel so committed to the layout.

The main thing I'm worried about is word to image density. There's a lot of dialogue in the very beginning with Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle basically sitting around, and I want to spread this out in a way that's still engaging and interesting. The entire book is less than 500 words, so this is, of course, relative, but visually and compositionally I don't want any passage of text to be more than about 4 lines or in that general range. The images should be the stars of the show. Always, with a picture book, the challenge is to get the reader to turn the page, and kids can be very fickle readers. They don't have the patience of adults, and this is a relatively quiet story. So enough blogging--back to the drawing board! I hope to get this sucker done in dummy form by next monday at the latest!

Another Gentleman Beetle Rough

Here's another rough spread for my Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle book in progress. Hope everyone had a good holiday!

"I Promise" Says Gentlemen Beetle: Character and Pantomime

I went to figure drawing last night--I went earlier this month as well, but I'm still very rusty. It will take a another few sessions before I get back to form, or share any of my figures here. I really can't go that long without drawing from life without having to get back on it. So for now, more Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle.

My Favorite Model

As I put together the mock-up of the book, I'm finding that as I draw the images, lines of text become superfluous to the action. The characters body language is increasingly carrying the story, which is as it should be. The best case scenario of a picture book is that the words are as important as the pictures, and the story can't be told without both. In aid of this, I rely on my favorite model. 

One of many blurry photos that helped me get just the right gesture for this pose. What these guys lack in fingers, they make up for in arms and legs, so then it's about how to best translate human body language into bug body language.

Character and Pantomime

I based the earlier dance sequence on stills I took from Fred Estaire and Ginger Rogers. Watching the film by frames I began to really see how Ginger Rogers was at times struggling to keep up with him. I never quite realized just how good a dancer he was! But I wanted my own dance to have a little more give and take. Here's that post if you missed it. 

But often it's hard to visualize the gesture if you can't see it. I have a full length mirror in my studio, but often that's not enough, and so then it's time to prop up my camera and set the timer. Then I translate this gesture into bug anatomy, adding a little exaggeration and drama and hopefully subtlety. Cartoon anatomy has its challenges--everything is simplified and distilled.

In that earlier dance sequence linked above, one of the hardest things to do was to have Gentleman Beetle give a bow and offer his hand in that courtly manner of a traditional gentlemen. When drawing this pose, I neglected to use my favorite model, so I had to make it up from a few scant pieces of reference found online and my imagination. Little problems arose, for instance: my Gentleman Beetle lacks not only hands but a neck. All that head tilting and head raising has to be implied without a neck. His back, too, is stiff as a board, since it's all shell. So the arms legs and held tilt have to carry much of the motion. And I almost forgot to give him antennae when he took off his hat--I hadn't yet had to draw him hatless. 

The more I draw the characters, the more I get to know them and how they work in space. Sometimes they've surprise me by subtly changing the tone of a phrase written in the prose. While in the prose I said, "Ladybug smiled" when she asks Gentleman Beetle for reassurance, suggesting that she's not at all as frightened as her words suggest, here her body language could easily translate as earnest entreaty. But she's still smiling. It's not as obvious. Should it be more obvious? I decided that no, this works better. Just as Gentleman Beetle has his own mock expressions as he playfully describes the scenario, Ladybug in her own way is just as clever.

Arriving on the Island...

So I'm concentrating in the next week or so primarily on the Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle book which is going pretty briskly, but here's a rough from the early reader book I was working on before. I'll be returning to that one soon. I've been having fun with both, and barring anything unforeseen, should be back to full productivity!

Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle Dancing

So I'm making Ladybug and Gentlemen Beetle into a picture book, rather than an early reader. Here are some sketches from the dummy in progress. I've always been a fan of sequential action, so here's Ladybug and Gentleman Beetle dancing!

Another Spread for Work in Progress

Another spread. Deliberately messing with scale a little bit. Since the boat is something from their imagination, it's huge when their working on it, smaller when their in it.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mary Sue?

In 1973, Paula Smith wrote a story called "A Trekkie's Tale" for a Star Trek fanzine that parodied what was then becoming a common trope in fan fiction written by women. The character in the story was named "Mary Sue." As much as has been made of the story and the trope since, it's surprisingly brief. You can read it here in its entirety.

That's it. That's all there is to it. For all that's been written about the trope, and plenty has been--just Google "Mary Sue" if you're curious--it's all of about 200 words or so.

Essentially Mary Sue is a character who is talented to the point of absurdity and admired by all who come in contact with her. She achieves boundlessly and, if it comes to it, dies valiantly, a soul too good for this world.

In this insightful interview, Paula Smith herself explains the problem with the trope better than anyone I've heard so far. In her own words:

"A story demands headspace, and the Mary Sue wants to come and occupy your whole head, so the writer gets the enjoyment and not the reader. It's a little too much like being used. I suspect that's why an awful lot of people agreed with our assessment."

She also identifies one of the most problematic aspects of the trope as it relates to gender:

"I was really struck when the Doc Savage: Man of Bronze movie came out. I thought: that's a Mary Sue, too!"

"...Any of these wish-fulfillment characters [James Bond, Superman] whose presence in any universe warps it way the heck out of reality. But we don't notice that when it involves men."

Soon after the term "Mary Sue" came into popular use, Marty Sue was added to describe Mary's male counterpart, but Mary Sue was still more commonly used as a pejorative to describe female characters than Marty Sue was to describe male characters, and these canonical male characters, Superman, James Bond and Doc Savage, tended to get a free pass. 

This is why the fact that "Mary Sue" is a woman is not insignificant.

I think it’s fair to assume that male “Mary Sues” existed in fan fiction with equally blatant and amateurish prevalence well before "Mary Sue" was coined. but I also think that  the absurdity of the trope stood out all the more because the characters were women. This fact is significant if we are going to use historical precedent in our evaluation of the term.

Part of the assumptions behind these canonical characters “getting a pass” is because they initiated a certain archetype. They were the model. But women don't have the same archetypal precedents, so they’re by default disenfranchised from getting this “pass.”

In genre fiction, men have more Marty Sue leverage than women. We’re willing to permit more Marty Suishness in male characters than Mary Suishness in female characters.

What separates Marty Sues from their female counterparts is also an aggressive kind of masculinity. Idealized men are given more license to be disliked while still being held up as heroic. They can be ruthless because they are noble. Conan, Batman and Wolverine are great examples of this kind of Marty Sue. The begrudging respect they receive is sometimes treated as a character flaw, but I think it’s a false one. This character embodies a different kind of wish fulfillment. What used to be called the "anti-hero" has become the contemporary go-to Marty Sue.

The contemporary treatment of James Bond in the recent spate of films with Daniel Craig reflects an effort to try to update the Marty Sue trope, but I think this too follows the same pattern. The model is more Conan than super spy. People associate this kind of grittiness with realism, when it’s still just veneer. It’s a trait that women aren’t permitted to have, further requiring them to be more flawed by comparison. Bond has no female equals either in his films, or equivalents in other popular fiction.

On the one hand, the Mary Sue/Marty Sue trope is a useful way to point out this trend in writing. Unfortunately, it doesn't tend to be employed as equally or judiciously to both genders. It's still fundamentally about Mary Sue, and the term is generally used to vilify idealistic portrayals of women. So it’s not simply the origin of the term, but its employment, and the fact that it’s often used as ammunition to dismiss characters that have similar attributes to celebrated male characters that puts it in the realm of sexism.

When Paula Smith identified and named the trope, I don't think she intended it to be about gender. But like all language, once the term went into circulation it took on a life of its own. It became both a convenient way to identify the trope, and a convenient way to hold women to a double standard. Which isn't to say that every use of the term is inherently sexist, or identifying this trope in fiction isn't useful or even helpful as a tool for an author to look at their characters more objectively. But that double standard still exists. 

The term isn't going to go away any time soon. I think we're stuck with it. But if we're going to be pointing out all the Mary Sues we should level the same finger at all the Marty Sues. And if we're allowed our few exceptions--Batman and James Bond--then shouldn't women be able to have the same kinds of characters who embody this same kind of wish-fulfillment?

Because if not, then I don't think our Marty Sues should get off so lightly.

Addendum:

While the trope is often used as a justification for sexism, I think the Mary and Marty Sue CAN be well written. I don’t dismiss the trope. I don’t think the trope by default is an indication of bad writing. Keep in mind that Paula Smith's original piece was a PARODY, exaggerating the worst aspects of the trope, not a definition.

James Bond doesn’t get a pass. Batman doesn’t get a pass. At least not until we see female characters who embody the same archetype who are equally embraced. If precedent is the measure of these “passes” then you can hardly give a blanket dismissal to the same trend in women when they have no such precedent to go by.

But I do think there is such a thing as a well written Superman story or James Bond story. And if these canonical male characters get a pass, it should be because of a compelling story with a compelling conflict, not their precedent as archetypes. Mary Sue can be a well-written character if handled right. 

I'm Drawing!

After months of sporadic and spotty productivity as a result of my illness, I'm back to it! This is a rough spread for an early reader dummy I'm working on. This time I've done a little more homework and am confident that I can do a book that will be a good fit for the early reader market. 

This book is written at the very early end of the spectrum. One thing I noticed with some of these early reader books is a lack of scale. I think a lot of them are well done, but its as if, because the physical size of the book is small, the spaces in the images have to be small. So I'm trying to make a big world is a small package in this one with lots of full bleed spreads. Vocabulary, word count and physical size doesn't have to limit the scope of the book. 

Freelancing in Publishing, or Why Royalties Don't Make Artists Rich

Why do freelance artists get all those wonderful royalties while other professionals get paid only a flat fee? After all, a plumber doesn't get a royalty for his contract work, and artist's who do freelance work are, like plumbers and construction workers, essentially independent contractors.

But artists for mass media aren't treated the same as other independent contractors because the product they're making hasn't been sold yet, and the people they're making it for don't make a profit until that product is sold. So many of us work for deferred payment. The payment we get initially is an advance. We don't get compensated for the complete value of our work until sales exceed the advance and we begin to accrue a royalty. And there are many many projects that don't sell past the artist's initial advance, or that sell in such small numbers that the royalty amounts to very little. Most of them in fact.

Imagine it this way: I pour the concrete for the foundation to a house and am given an advance that is well below the value of the work done. In exchange, you promise me a percentage of future rentals of the home. How much this will ultimately amount to is based on a number of factors that include fluctuations in the market, the potential that the house will go for long periods unrented, or worse, become abandoned.

 Some artists will sacrifice royalty for a work-for-hire arrangement. They get paid a flat fee for work completed, no royalties or reprint rights beyond the initial contract. The publisher may use their work in any way they wish. The publisher could sell a million copies of a work-for-hire project and the artist will never see a penny more than what they were initially paid. The advantage for the artist is that they do get a guaranteed amount, but it can be llower than what the work may be potentially worth to the publisher.

To extend the metaphor: the contractor doesn't get paid for the true cost of what laying a foundation is worth, but they take the job because it's what is available to them. In this way, artists as independent contractors do no receive anywhere near the equivalent of what other contractors get paid. The average freelance artist does not make the equivalent of what other professionals--like housing contractors--make for their professional work.

So one of the best scenarios for freelancers in the publishing field is the royalty system. Deferred payment. It's a risky way to work, but it's the best option for most of us. We depend on those future potential sales--and they are POTENTIAL sales--nothing guaranteed--to make a reasonable income. 

Yes there are rare occasions when  book is hugely successful and the artist or writer makes royalties that far exceed expectations. Or maybe they become known enough to receive a regular flow of royalties from books that have become steady sellers. Again, this is a small percentage of freelancers and authors, and most of them still aren't getting rich. We can't all be Dr. Seuss or Stephen King. Typical royalties are quite modest. 

But the integrity and quality of the work isn't the same as the success and popularity of the work. You can put the same effort into one project that doesn't receive the same reward as another. This is the same in most professional fields. The best work does not always result in the best pay. Unfortunately, in publishing, the discrepancy can be be much greater. A popular book can outsell a steady seller or modestly successful book by very big numbers. An unsuccessful book can fail at the publisher's expense. And there are far more unsuccessful books than successful ones. It's a risky, unpredictable business all around. 

 Successful publishers are successful for a reason: they know how to stay in that middle range, publish more steady sellers, or at least, more books that make back their initial investment than books that fail, and those rare big sellers help considerably to buoy the rest of their catalog. They base their choices on precedent, professional instinct, magic tricks and blind luck. There's no way to determine for sure just what it was that made that hugely successful book so popular in the first place. 

Getting published by a major publisher is no guarantee of success. You're still at the mercy of a mercurial market, but advances tend to be higher than smaller presses, and your chances are just a little better of getting future royalties. But don't expect a windfall. 

Captain Marvel and Plastic Man, or DC Comics: What the Hell?

There was once a great series back in the 40s called Captain Marvel by Otto Binder and  C.C. Beck Whimsical, funny, and beautifully drawn, it featured characters like Tawny the talking tiger and Captain Marvel Junior. It was  a great series, never condescending to it's audience, great Children's lit.

Then DC Comics acquired the property. For legal reasons--somehow Marvel Comics had gotten the rights to the name--the character was called "Shazam" after the magic word that changed Billy Batson, mild mannered kid reporter, into a superhero. But even with its original artist C.C. Beck, it never quite regained its tone or quality. Not even Beck was satisfied with the scripts he had to illustrate.

Then about a year ago, this happened,

Shazam, Shizazzled

Another favorite character of mine is Plastic Man created by Jack Cole, a series that was genuinely fun and funny and entertaining. With his sidekick Woozie Winks, Plastic Man was a superhero who could stretch into any shape.

 He could disguise himself as anything from a table lamp to a car, but these disguises were always the same color as his costume, red with telltale yellow and black stripes.

DC acquired Plastic Man as well, and after years of sincere but misguided attempts to update the character by a variety of artists, around 2005, Kyle Baker finally got it right:

An all ages comic that was genuinely funny and captured the spirit of the original.

But more recently, this happened:

Rapey Plastic Man?

These updated versions are meant to appeal to a mostly male audience in their 20s and 30s who prefer their superheroes grim and gritty or, well, like this. This is either because of a complete lack of understanding or respect for what made the original comics great, or because they just don't get it, or don't want to get it. But I'm not telling them how to run their show. If this is what their audience wants, so be it.

But There Is Hope

The original comics still exist in pricy reprint editions, sometimes as much as 50 bucks or more, but these collections are directed at the adult collector's market. DC comics has entirely neglected the potential kid audience for these characters. They don't even have to produce new material. They just need to release the reprints at more reasonable prices and do that thing they've long forgotten how to do, market comic books to kids.

It's not as though kids aren't reading both contemporary and classic comics. Tintin, a popular Belgian character that began in 1929 (please try to forget the movie if you can) is still popular in the U.S. and all over the world, read in his original form by the great artist Herge. Great comics like Tintin, Captain Marvel and Plastic Man hold up surprisingly well. They're both good comics and good children's lit. And frankly DC, your contemporary versions of Captain Marvel and Plastic Man are not only poorly conceived, but just plain weird.

So DC, could you please do us a favor and give us reprints that we can afford and put them on the graphic novel shelf next to Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Tintin? I think there's a very receptive new kid audience out there just waiting to discover these great comics if they only knew they existed.

Why Tracking in Contemporary Children's Lit Makes it Harder For Good Books to See Print

Recently I wrote what I'm confident is a good book. When my agent submitted it I got the most glowing rejections I've ever received. It's not over yet, I'm still waiting to hear from a number of publishers, but it's a frustrating situation made all the more frustrating because of the praise its been receiving.

The principal reason the book was rejected? It didn't fit within their catalog. Too long for an early reader book, too short for a middle grade, they didn't know where to place it. Despite the fact that the format, vocabulary and length is no different than the perennially popular Beatrix Potter books that inspired it, they didn't know what to do with it.

I don't mean to sound bitter. It's not the editor's fault. This is the reality of the marketplace. It's how they sell books, and it's worked well for them. Adults use this system to find age appropriate books for their kids. And in the end, publishers need to sell books that parents want to buy.

These terms, "early reader" and "middle grade" are not arbitrary. They relate specifically to something called The Flesch-Kincade Reading Level Scale. It was a system first developed in 1975 to determine the readability of military technical manuals. The scale rates readability by grade level. It's been used in education for decades, and more recently, in marketing books for young readers. There's even a setting on Microsoft Word for determining a Flesch-Kincade score. It can be a great tool to determine the clarity of your writing if you're communicating to a specific audience.

Dr Seuss and Dick and Jane

Before Flesch-Kincade, Dr. Seuss created a book especially for beginning readers as a response to an article written by John Hersey in Life Magazine in criticism of beginning reader primers like Dick and Jane, a series of books that were notoriously bland. The Cat in the Hat used a vocabulary that involved the same repetition and single syllable words that the Dick and Jane books employed, but was anything but bland. The Cat in the Hat was released in 1957 and was an overwhelming success. It spawned not only a sequel but an entire series of beginning reader books from Random House by different authors overseen by Seuss. It was a groundbreaking idea.

The great P.D. Eastman did a number of them. Here's my favorite non-Seuss beginning reader, Go, Dog, Go!:

At the same time, Harper and Row introduced their I Can Read series with books like Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad are Friends and Else Holmelund Minarik and Maurice Sendak's Little Bear series. These books were longer, had chapters and had vocabulary that was a little more sophisticated. They were what would now be referred to as early reader chapter books, books designed for young children to read by themselves without an adult.

Both series resulted in a generation of enthusiastic readers.

Tracked Books

More recently publishers have created whole lines with the intention of further honing in on the developmental advantages of books tracked by age group and reading level. Some of them are great books. Some of them aren't. But in all of them, the word count and vocabulary are dictated by a strict set of guidelines established by Flesch-Kincade.

Here are a couple of examples:

There's a good deal of pressure in education to have kids advance from picture books to chapter books as soon as possible. Even older books like Frog and Toad have been given a developmental category.

So this:

Becomes this:

Over the years, many classic books have been abridged or altered or given new formats or new illustrations to appeal to younger readers. Beatrix Potter is no exception. Now even her books are subjected to this method of tracking. So this:

Becomes this:

Altering the text of a classic book like The Tale of Peter Rabbit to fit into a given track category not only compromises the quality of the original prose and the experience of the book as it was meant to be read, it's pointlessly doctrinaire. Since the original text is written in very simple prose the abridgment  for track purposes is about as hairsplitting as it gets. Up to a certain point, these kinds of changes don't amount to anything useful even for educational purposes.

A testament to the fact that quality lit can exist in this system is that the classic Frog and Toad Are Friends fits into this structure without abridgment. I'm sure there are many well written and illustrated contemporary originals that fit well within this track system. I'm not saying that the track system prevents any good books from being published, but it can, in many ways, tie an author's hands. Authors are forced to contrive their stories to fit within these standards if they want their books to see print.

This tracking method and vocabulary standard has permeated the entire industry. In children's lit, the Flesch-Kincade standard reigns all the way up to middle grade books like Amelia Bedelia and beyond, though less so the further you move up the food chain. Young adult books are immune, but there are still vocabulary lists on the lower end of the middle grade spectrum.

Tracking Doesn't Work

The principal flaw in the track system is that vocabulary and sentence length do not dictate quality or depth. You can fill a book with compound sentences and advanced vocabulary but this does not guarantee that the book will be more intellectually complex than a book with a simpler vocabulary and sentence structure. The focus is on reading level alone. To some degree  this makes sense, since you can't objectively measure the quality or complexity of story, but you can't make kids better readers by advancing them from one reading level to the next in the same way you would advance them from multiplication tables to fractions. Literature just doesn't work that way. If kids are discouraged from choosing books that are considered to be at a lower reading level than their tracked reading level they could potentially miss out on a lot of great books. 

But this is now the contemporary thinking. Now kids aren't only discouraged but shamed for wanting to read books that don't have the right number on them. If the number isn't high enough, it makes them feel as though they're not achieving. But just because your kindergartener has the vocabulary and reading comprehension of a third grader does not mean you should discourage them from reading great picture books. 

 The best way for kids to become great readers is to allow them to choose their own books based on what interests them. The number of compound sentences or multi-syllabilic words has nothing to do with what makes a book great. Great literature, whether intended for children or adults, will always remain great literature.

Genre, Forms and Marketing Terms in the YA and Children's Markets

I frequently hear people refer to picture books, graphic novels and YA fiction as genres. So to clear this up once and for all, here's a cheat sheet:

A Form

A form refers to what the thing is, not what it's about. Not its content, but how that content is delivered. Its format.

Examples: Novels, short stories, comics, picture books, poems.


A Genre

Genre is a way to categorize stories by content usually based on the tropes and conventions that distinguish them.

Examples: Science Fiction, Mystery, Romance.

Fiction that doesn't fit in a particular genre is by default referred to as "literary fiction" but this doesn't necessarily make genre fiction any less literary. In the past if you wanted to write literature with a capital "L" it couldn't contain genre tropes, but this is changing.

Non fiction genres would include history, biography, autobiography or anything in the realm of the arts and sciences that you could put a general category around.

Genre can also be discussed in terms of form, but in a story sense rather than in a format sense. This has  more to do with structure than category.

Picture Books vs. Storybooks

The true picture book is equally dependent on words and pictures. Take out the pictures and it wouldn't make any sense. Some picture books work just fine without any words at all. Picture books like comics fall within the general area of sequential art--stories told with pictures set in sequence.

 Storybooks, and there are fewer and fewer of them these days, are illustrated prose, but with lots and lots of pictures. Storybooks fall into a looser formal category because some of them can just as easily fall in the realm of novels or illustrated short stories.

Great Picture Books Are Great Literature!

Nothing to add here. I just thought it needed to be said.

A Marketing Term

This is how you categorize books in order the sell them. The difference between a genre and a marketing term is that marketing terms don't necessarily dictate content. Note: I said, "not necessarily." Sometimes genre in itself can serve as a marketing term. But what I'm referring to here specifically is terms like "Young Adult."

Young Adult Fiction is any fiction that contains characters in their teens as protagonists. This does not necessarily refer to the sophistication of the writing, and does not refer to genre. It can refer to reading level--young adult tends to be written at a higher level than middle grade or early reader--but not necessarily.

Middle Grade Fiction is a marketing term for books written for ages 8 to 12.

Early Reader and Early Reader Chapter Books are books written for ages 5 to 7. These are the earliest books for young readers that have chapters in them.

And here's the kicker: Graphic Novels are actually, believe it or not, comic books. There's no real page limitation, it's just a self-contained comic book with a beginning, middle and end. In fact, even that might be stretching it. This is simply a term used by booksellers to sell any comic book that is not in periodical form. And just as comic books aren't necessarily comic, or books, graphic novels aren't necessarily novels, and just what a novel in comics form might be is a contentious debate that I don't even want to touch here.

 So there you have it. Not a genre, and not exactly a form, since a graphic novel could be just as easily the equivalent of a short story as a novel. Maybe even a poem. The term makes all of this all the more confusing to the new initiate, and has caused a lot of eye rolling from a lot of frustrated cartoonists who have long been ambivalent about the term.

How the Marketplace has Changed How We Read

There's been a recent push towards getting kids to graduate more quickly from picture books to chapter books. The storybook, the natural intermediary has gone out of vogue. There's more of a concentration on getting kids to progress developmentally than to have them simply read good books. Books with chapters and more words somehow equal a greater level of sophistication, when this isn't necessarily the case at all. Some of the best picture books have very advanced vocabulary, especially those that were written before the last decade. Picture books can be some of the greatest literature there is.

More recently word counts for picture books have diminished. 500 to 700 words has become the standard. Chapter books and Middle Grade books follow a similarly rigid format. These formats are so specific that books like Winnie the Pooh or anything at all written by Beatrice Potter are hard to market strictly on the basis of format in the current environment. It's telling that there are so many modern versions of these stories abridged to match the current industry standards. Look up Peter Rabbit and you'll find anything from board books for toddlers to picture books that contain simple variations on Potter's text, sometimes replacing Potter's illustrations with illustrations that look more contemporary. The Potter originals are thought to be a hard sell not because of how well they might hold up to a contemporary audience but because they don't fit in with a publishers Early Reader list. They're not the right word count. They can't put a "for ages 5 to 7" sticker on the front

Beatrix who?

On the plus side, the quality and sophistication of content of the young adult book has expanded dramatically, particularly in the fantasy genre due in large part to the success of Harry Potter, technically a middle grade book. When I was a kid there were few books around for the YA fantasy market as sophisticated and progressive as A Wrinkle In Time. Now I could name dozens. The appeal of these books has widened and they've even garnered a considerable adult audience. now YA, or at least YA fantasy is one of the few growing markets in fiction.

So kids, especially teens are reading, and reading more. There's a whole new generation of enthusiastic young readers. But the market place, at the same time, has become more conservative, and readers expectations have become more specific. We'll see what happens.

My Hand Bound Book!

My first hand bound book! Hand sewn with linen covers and glossy dust covers. Stephanie Pulford did the majority of the sewing, though I'm proud to say, I did the first six! Chris Beer cut out the cardboard for the covers and trimmed the dust covers, but even with lots of help, it was still one of the hardest things I've ever done (and still is, I've got about nine more to go). 

 These things are really turning out to look like actual manufactured books.  Since I ran out of endpapers, the last few will have endpapers with handmade paper purchased from the art supply store, so that might make them look a little more unique. Each book is 4x8 inches. 

I'm sending a number of these with my agent Abigail Samoun so she can give them to editors and art directors in Boston and New York in early January. These are strictly self-promotional and are not intended for traditional publication. If all goes well and I don't screw them up, I'm making 18 and 18 only. The story is only 18 pages long and wordless (24 if you include the title page, dedication and so forth), a pirate adventure with my favorite model, Ella (some of the pages can be seen on my website in the children's section). I'll probably put the whole story on the site eventually.

I had hoped to get these things finished last month but the digital printer kept screwing up my pages. The whole process of getting the things printed properly took months for a number of reasons I'm too exhausted to go into. 

so here they are with dust covers and all: 

This one has end papers made of handmade paper bought from the art supply store:

Here's one of the spreads: 

Another spread:

 The linen bound cover:

And my messy workspace that is currently taken over our dining room and part of our living room:

I really didn't know quite what I was getting into. I'd never done anything like it. 

There's a good deal of satisfaction in making books that look like actual books from the ground up. I've loved books all my life, and they've been such a part of my life that the experience of making one from scratch feels miraculous, like manufacturing a lightbulb or a door knob on your kitchen table. I've always been fascinated by making objects in multiples assembly line style by hand, like Gepetto's workshop or Santa's elves. 

And last of all, bookmarks:

I had them printed, and then Stef's plus one, Morgan Jenkins put in the ribbons. I found this special hole punch at Michael's that makes these two little parallel wedge-shapes, that the ribbons fit snugly inside. 

I've thought of putting out a cheaper, digitally printed version, but I'd have to charge at least 10 bucks a book, softbound, which seems like a lot for a tiny paperback. I'm thinking I'd want to add some kind of incentive to make it worthwhile, maybe a little sketch or something.  If you're interested in something like that, give me a holla!

Why I Don't Illustrate Other People's Self-Published Books, or Work on Spec

About once a month I get a request by an individual to illustrate their self-published or print-on-demand book. They're very passionate about their project, but they don't tend to  know very much about publishing or the publishing industry, and don't have much knowledge about what goes into publishing and promoting a book. But this isn't the only reason.

Even if they're willing to pay, I typically won't take the job. Not from a family member, family friend or good acquaintance.

The reason is that most people don't know the process. They don't know how picture books are structured. They don't know how to work with an illustrator in a professional way. For the illustrator, this only results in grief, and the grief often outweighs the reward.

Typically, professional book publishers who match writers and artists for picture books do not encourage the collaborators to discuss the book with one another beforehand. Often notes from the author that suggest illustrations are eliminated from the manuscript. Editors work with writers,then work with art directors who work with illustrators. This hierarchy is in place for a reason. It works.

Illustration has its own vocabulary, and good art directors know how to speak an illustrator's language. They understand design, they understand how illustration serves a story. They know how illustration relates to story structure. Good art directors know their stuff.

People who don't have this experience, even some of the best authors of children's books, (with rare exceptions) don't tend to share this knowledge. It's a discipline of it's own. Many authors tend to have very specific images in their heads--and I sympathize, as an author, this is difficult to avoid--and the illustrator's vision is inevitably different.This is the nature of picture books. It's a true collaboration between author and illustrator. The illustrator does not simply execute the author's vision, but adds their own personality in equal measure to the book. The pictures tell half of the story.

 Working with a non-professional is an unpredictable proposition. You don't know how involved the writer wants to be in the process of creating the images, how little or how much they know about the process. You don't know what the ultimate design of the book is going to look like, whether it's going to be properly typeset, whether the printer they've chosen is going to do a professional job. And since the writer is new at this, the quality of the prose is often not as good as they think it is.

I take pride in the work I do, and I don't want to make a bad book. I don't want to endlessly negotiate with the writer about how they want the images to look when they don't know the mechanics of what makes an illustration work.

What if I've got this great project to pitch to a publisher. I can't pay, or pay much, but I'll give you half of the profits.

This is called "working on spec." "Spec" stands for speculation, the idea that maybe the project will be taken up and in that event the artist gets paid. This seldom works out.

First off: artists don't typically submit finished illustrated books to publishers.They submit what's called a "dummy" a mock-up of the book that generally includes two finished Illustrations and a cover, the rest roughed out, giving room for art direction and editing. But this is only if a writer/illustrator is submitting. For the reasons stated above, writer/illustrator teams are rarely considered.

Secondly: illustration takes a long time to do. It's work. Though there is some satisfaction and pleasure in the work, we don't do it because it's "fun." Many people enjoy their work, but that doesn't mean they want to do it for free.You don't ask your plumber to work on spec. You don't ask a retailer to give you their wares to see if their product is going to work out for you. Why would you ask an illustrator to do the same?

If you would like to learn more about how professional books are produced, I recommend joining The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators and attending one of their seminars. The SCBWI is how I got my start. It's how I met my agent. You don't need to attend one of the big expensive national conferences. A local one will do just fine.

But I'd like to return to the subject of self-publishing, because I don't think it's a completely untenable option. Not everyone is interested in huge book sales. Some of us just want to make books for family and friends. I've had the same notion, and am considering doing a small number of self-published books myself. Not all books are commercial. Most of us aren't going to get rich.

If having a professional publication published is your goal, its the wrong goal. You should concentrate first on being a good writer. Unfortunately commercial success tends to be the focus of the SCBWI, but I don't think that was the intention or original design. It does the best it can to serve its members, and its members want to be commercially published. I just think that's not the best goal for most of them.

Which Doesn't Mean You Shouldn't Self Publish

I think self-publishing, especially now that it's so easy and at such a low cost, is a fantastic option for writers, and a great way to share your book. But first, make a good book, the best book you can, a book that you're proud of. If you want to commission professional illustration for your book and you're not an artist yourself, the key word is "professional." Being an illustrator is a profession, and professionals get paid for their work. If you're not going to seriously pursue a professional writing career and do the proper research, even if you intend to self-publish,  then realize that it's hard for a professional artist to consider you seriously as a professional writer.

 If you're serious about being a commercial self-publisher you you need to act like a real publisher.You need to do what commercial  publishers do. You need to actively promote your book, with purpose, and, preferably, with honesty.

 When someone's promoting their book, the first thing I look for as a consumer and professional is whether they care enough to acquire good design, both for the book and their website. Usually a generic photo cover means a print-on-demand hack job, unless it's really really well presented. And if it's a picture book, the quality of the illustration is a given--if it's amateur, it's obvious. If you've found an illustrator who feels the same way as you do about the book and does professional work--this will go leaps and bounds towards selling the book. But as I mentioned, this isn't any easier than promoting the book in the first place. If someones willing to illustrate your published book, you've got to pay, and pay well for good illustration.

And don't pretend that you're anything else but an individual who is passionate about their personal project. If I see that someone is trying to fool me into thinking that they're published by a commercial publisher, if they've invented an imprint and their not upfront about the fact that they're self-publishing, it's an instant no-confidence. It suggests to me that they feel like they have to hide that they're a self publisher, which to me means that they're ashamed of the fact. Don't try to hide it. Embrace it. This reflects your passion and pride in your product. If you want people to take you seriously as a writer and self-publisher, act like you mean it. If you're describing on your website a book you've published yourself and are doing a follow up, describe it as "My self-published book."

Back cover quotes, especially on a self published book are risky. Some people are just being nice, and in the case that they are, it's a little embarrassing, especially when the quality isn't there to back it up. Maybe if a well known author believes in your project enough to write a real introduction it would make sense, but I'd be careful about soliciting back cover quotes.And NEVER quote without permission from a private e-mail or snail mail. The purpose of a private correspondence is NOT to promote your book, and you could easily get on the bad side of the person you're using to endorse it, which is neither a good personal or professional move.

But more than anything else, DO YOUR HOMEWORK. Professional self-publishing is a business. If you don't consider it one, then it doesn't have to be, but if you're in it to sell as many books as you can, you've got to act like one.

Sometimes, you just want a book you can hold in your hands, something you wrote, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. It's an accomplishment to write a book, and pride in that accomplishment is justified. But try to be conscious of what your real intentions are and act accordingly. If you' don't you're going to be disappointed, or worse, spend money that you can't afford to spend. Be sensible. Be clear about your goals, and if its important to you, strive for excellence.

Why you haven't been seeing much of me

I have a chronic illness that is being effectively treated with drugs. At present I'm making a drug transition. This means withdrawing from one drug and going onto another, assessing whether the new drug is effective, and if the new drug doesn't work out (which seems to be the case) trying another drug combination and starting the business allover again. It's an exhausting and prolonged process, but it's not one I haven't gone through before, and it will ultimately works itself out. In the meantime, the unfortunate result is flu-like symptoms, with limited periods of lucidity.

So the situation has largely put me out of action, and my productivity is at a real low point. This post, for example,  was written in fits and starts over the course of two days.This has not been fun, but there is an end in sight. So no need for condolences, I'm OK, but I just wanted to let everyone know that I haven't been lazy, just ill. I spend most of the day watching bad TV on Netflix, since I don't have the cognitive or physical stamina to do much else. I will say that The Vampire Diaries isn't actually that bad, but then, maybe when this is all over I might think differently. It's hard to say. It's about as much as I can handle at the moment.

Slow Down, Take a Deep Breath and Calm Down About Giles Coren's Article About Comics in The Spectator

I just read this article by Giles Coren for the Spectator. It's caused a lot of people to freak out who need to calm down. I will concede that I might be giving him too much credit, and I don't think it's the greatest article, but it's an intriguing, if poorly targeted (and pompous) attempt at a jab at the comics establishment on both ends of the spectrum. This was my response:

Slow down, take a deep breath and look at this article with less of a chip on your shoulder.

I'm pretty certain this is satire, a jab at the pompousness of literary prizes in general, a jab at the way comics have been accepted over the years by critics, and how literary critics generally tend not to be very savvy about the medium. One jab at this is how he presents Maus, how Maus was singularly heralded as literature by critics in the 80s when comparable if not better works were being produced at the same time.

He points out the handful of comics that are essentially mainstream genre comics mentioned by the mainstream press as "worthy," intended to demonstrate their larger ignorance of the medium as touted by the insiders who tend to be critical of the whole "graphic novel" phenomenon, and the US centric nature of this group, who tend to focus primarily on American comics.

Then he takes a jab at the pretensions of this small press critical establishment in the US, the rejection of the term "graphic novel" by many of them--myself included--as a desperate and unnecessary grab at legitimacy, a way to present the medium to the mainstream as not comics, which, it basically is, something all of us who are into comics have had to embrace whether reluctantly or otherwise since it's here to stay.

He further takes a jab at comics as it is often mistaken for a "genre" and by the context, clearly understands the difference, even though it might sound like he doesn't.

The absurd pronunciation of the word "comics" as "karmcbwerks" is a bit mean spirited, a jab at the New York comics critical establishment that lionizes Spiegelman, something it sounds like the author resents. It's an exaggerated satirical take on the prejudice, very much on the borderline of the real thing, but I don't believe its intended as such.

His references to the history of comics as touted as a legitimate medium from their inception is also a crack at this group, and the whole I dressed as Superman and read nothing but comics as a kid thing is a satire on the sometimes over vehement expressions of enthusiasm for the medium and insiderness of this same group.

Basically it's a series of very inside jokes that someone only with a very very intimate knowledge of comics would get, but I can see how someone who was just as familiar with comics might immediately misunderstand and react negatively. Essentially I think the guy has missed his audience by a broad margin here. It's something you might see in a English comics fanzine and it's very odd to see it in the Spectator. But believe it or not, he's not actually a prick, he just sounds like one, though this too is an arguable point.

The whole thing seems to be written out of anger and with a complete lack of regard for how it will inevitably be received, which to me demonstrates a certain, precious embrace of the author's own feeling of outsiderness, the infantile romance of being misunderstood, or maybe just an impressive bout of trolling.

So unless you believe these prizes are sacred, and that the whole screwed up history of the way mainstream academics have attempted to contextualize the whole mess out of half ignorance and the one-sided battle between mainstream critics and the small press comics critical establishment in the US (a conflict that academia also largely remains ignorant of), then I wouldn't waste your time defending comics, but criticizing these opinions as presented, in an elaborate tongue and cheek way by the author.

Sturgeon in Drybrush

A sturgeon drybrush painting for my wife's birthday. Selenium toxicity in sturgeons were the subject of my wife's PHD thesis. It's a really ancient fish, practically a dinosaur, and they can get really huge.  It's both one of the homliest and most difficult animals I've ever drawn, but homely in a kind of fascinating way.

 The hardest thing to draw were those ridges on its side. I just couldn't get them to look right. This was my fifth attempt, and that's a conservative estimate. They're done rather quickly, but to maintain the freshness of the piece, it's better to start new again rather than work it to death. I wanted it to be a scientifically accurate as I could make it, but I'm sure it's still a little off.

Next time I'm drawing our dog. Dogs I can handle.