Podcast Interview: Karen Ferreira 06/22/2022 - How to Produce and Publish a Children's Picture Book

Karen Ferreira: How to Produce and Publish a Children’s Picture Book

Nonfiction Authors Podcast | June 22, 2022 10:00 am PT / 1:00 pm ET

‘The great thing about nonfiction [children’s books] is–it offers unique opportunities with schools and libraries. And if you can find something that fits into the curriculum, then that can really open a very big door, where you can sell literally hundreds or even thousands of copies…they’re going to be more interested if you have a book that fills a gap that they want to fill.’
-Karen Ferreira

Karen Ferreira is an award-winning creative director, illustrator, philanthropist, founder, and CEO of GetYourBookIllustrations and Children’s Book Mastery. She helps self-publishing authors get amazing, affordable illustrations, and also provides them with the know-how to succeed in the industry with the annual online Children’s Book Mastery conference in July 2022, as well as courses and author challenges.

Nonfiction Authors Podcast: Karen Ferreira

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Show Notes

Links

In this episode…

How to make a Nonfiction Children’s Book stand out to schools and libraries.
How to find a publisher for your nonfiction children’s book.
The different categories of children’s books, specifically nonfiction children’s books.
Standards for nonfiction children’s books.
Things to remember when thinking about illustrations in a nonfiction children’s book.
How to turn your children’s book into an ebook format

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the interview series for the Nonfiction Authors Association. Today’s session is with Karen Ferreira and we will be talking about how to produce and publish a children’s picture book. I’m Carla King, your host, and I’m happy to have you with us today. This interview will last only 30 minutes and you can find the replay on our Nonfiction Authors Association website and social media platforms including YouTube, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

And now I’d like to introduce our guest.

Hi, Karen, welcome to the podcast.

Karen Ferreira 2:04

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Carla King 2:06

Okay, so let’s talk about nonfiction authors who aim to write children’s books. A lot of authors I know have written a book for adults, and then they decide they want to plant a seed and a younger audience. And topics include–in my experience–ecology, science, math, spelling. One author who did an oceanography book with fish pictures, almost anything really. So can you tell us–are nonfiction children’s books a viable idea for a nonfiction author? And can you generalize about how they perform in the marketplace versus fiction, that is?

Karen Ferreira 2:47

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, if you’re self publishing, it comes down to marketing. So I just want to mention that. So I can’t say, ‘Oh, if you write nonfiction it’s just going to do 10 times better.’ It really just depends how good your marketing is, right? But the great thing about nonfiction is–it offers unique opportunities with schools and libraries. And if you can find something that fits into the curriculum, then that can really open a very big door, where you can sell literally hundreds or even thousands of copies. Obviously you have to really do well to reach out to enough schools and so on. But it does open that door, because they’re going to be more interested if you have a book that fills a gap that they want to fill. They’re going to be more interested in nonfiction than in a fiction picture book, or children’s book, right?

So if you research the curriculum, and you have a unique slant–you don’t want to do a biography on George Washington, maybe there are probably 10 others that are already out there. So you want to have a slant that is different in some way–that you can pitch it as a unique kind of book. But if you can do that, then you really can have a really good opportunity for a lot of sales, actually. And the other great thing is, if you can get in with a publisher, with nonfiction, they will actually send you work. So what I mean is–they can say, ‘We need a book on the butterfly life cycle,’ or whatever it might be, right? And you can then write that book. Where that isn’t really done with fiction. But it is done with nonfiction, because they need specific topics written about.

Carla King 4:46

Well, that brings up a question I hadn’t thought about. Okay, research, research research–I say it over and over again. But how does one find a publisher who’s looking for a nonfiction book? Is that through an agent? Or do you look through the writers marketplace? How do you do that?

Karen Ferreira 5:05

You can work through an agent, although I tend to not really recommend it, just for the simple reason that it can be really hard to find an agent, right? So it can add this whole long runway of added time, etc. So obviously, you’re not going to probably get in with the big, you know, like Macmillan or Scholastic, and so on without an agent. But you can look for your mid-level to your smaller publishers who accept submissions, and agented submissions. And of course, you’re looking for publishers that published children’s nonfiction, in this case. And it would be–with any writing, really, you would be needing to pitch through them. And you should have a book that you’re actually pitching to get your foot in the door, right? I wouldn’t suggest kind of pitching, ‘I want to write books,’ when you send your work. You should show them, ‘Hey, this is my work. It’s really good.’ And then you can take the relationship from there, basically.

Carla King 6:07

Right. So say they have a nonfiction book–they’re an expert in some genre, and they’re self publishing it. And so they have that book. Should they have the adult nonfiction book first before they pursue the children’s book? Or should they be an expert, or a scholar, or have a degree in something? Any tips on that?

Karen Ferreira 6:31

I would not say you need to have an adult book at all. If you’re excited about writing it for children, then you don’t need to ever have an adult book. Of course, if you have an adult nonfiction book, and you want to go into the children’s side–like you mentioned–you can do that, but there’s no reason to have to have an adult book first. And if you’re an expert–if, like you said, you’re an oceanographer, or you’re a biologist, or you’re whatever expert it might be–a doctor, a dentist, whatever it might be, of course it can be to your advantage, right? Because firstly, you can put your credentials on. But also, you already know the subject really well.

But anybody can write children’s nonfiction if you’re willing to put in the work to do the research. So I could decide to write a nonfiction about something I know nothing about. That just means I’m going to have to research a lot, because you do have to have your facts really well researched. So you should never have the idea, ‘Just because it’s for children, it’s okay.’ If you just kind of figure out what you want to say, right? You have to be spot on with the facts, but that’s more a matter of how willing you are to put in the work for the research, even if you’re not an expert.

Carla King 6:46

Got it. Thank you. All right. So we’re talking about children’s books, and I haven’t even asked you to define a children’s book yet. I know there are different kinds of children’s books for different ages. And they’re very strict formats about the pages and the paper quality, the board books, the square books, etc. Can you tell us the range of those kinds of books?

Karen Ferreira 8:23

Yeah, absolutely. So children’s books, in general, are divided into board books–which are those–literally, the whole book has those hard cardboard pages, right? And they are like that because they are for really young kids–toddlers who are hard on the books, right? So those are called board books, as I said, and they are very simple, of course, because they’re for young kids. Then you have picture books. So fiction and nonfiction picture books are actually different in age groups. For fiction, you have kind of like 3-5 and 5-8. But for nonfiction, they go from 3-5, and then all the way up in different groups up to 13, which I can tell you a bit more about the different groups.

So in other words, your picture books in nonfiction go for kids up to way older. Because a 13 year old–most 13 year olds–don’t want to read a picture book–a storybook. But nonfiction, you need a lot of visuals. So it kind of opens the door. A nonfiction picture book isn’t too ‘babyish; for a 13 year old. And then you get early readers, or easy readers, which you get in fiction and nonfiction. Where basically, a picture book is normally more meant to be read by an adult to the children. But now, when the kids get a bit older, like 6, 7, you want them to start reading by themselves. So you call those Early Readers–the middle grade–which is exactly what it sounds like. And then young adults, which are kind of for teenagers. So I don’t know if you want me to go into more of the exact age groups for nonfiction children’s books.

Carla King 10:15

Yeah, let’s stick to the picture books. I think what we’re talking about, and what I’ve seen, are the 32 page square books, right? But if there are picture books for an older group as well–that isn’t so limited–we’d love to hear about that, too.

Karen Ferreira 10:36

Okay, great. Yeah. So the 32 page book is your standard for fiction picture books. So they’re not always square. They are quite often square, but they can be portrait, they can be landscape, or they can be square. But there are more for fiction. With nonfiction, it actually varies. So for your 3-5 year olds, you get sometimes the board books, and sometimes picture books that are normal paper. So they can be 10-32 pages. And your 10 pages will normally be more like the board book, right? Where the 32 pages will normally be normal paper, because that would be a very fat board book.

So for that age range, you have a low word count–it can even be 50 words. Can even be less than 50 words, up to maybe 600 words. And these are obviously the books that are normally read by an adult–like the parent, or a teacher to the child. Because these kids don’t normally read by themselves yet. So these are, of course, fairly simple. It’s about explaining concepts–more like beginner concepts, if you understand what I mean. From shapes and colors, to maybe more advanced things–like about bugs and animals. But it’s appropriate. For 5 year olds or 4 year olds, you don’t want to go very complicated.

So then, the next up–it overlaps–you’ll see it’s about 4 to 8, so it overlaps with the other one. And that has normally the same word count, but that will normally be about 32 pages. So that’s not your board books anymore. It’s just proper hardcover, or paperback. You know, normal books, not board books. And obviously, they’re a bit longer, because as kids get older, you can present a bit more data. You can get a bit more complicated with the language and that kind of thing–all the concepts. So every time you go up an age group, of course, you kind of step up everything a little bit, right?

So then your next age group is 7-10, and here you can now go up to 1000 words. So it doesn’t have to be 1000 words, it can be way less, but you can go up. These can be even–they can be about 32 pages–but they can even go up to 48 pages. So nonfiction picture books are often longer than fiction picture books, like a 48 page is very uncommon for fiction picture books, but it’s not that uncommon for nonfiction picture books. In this case, there’s more detailed text, the concepts can be a bit more high level, and in this case, the adult can read it to the child. But sometimes the child will read it by themselves, of course, because they are now at that age level where they can read. But the book’s still fully illustrated, it’s not a whole bunch of text and no pictures. It’s still pictures everywhere, right?

And then the 9-13 year old age group, that I mentioned earlier. So this is for only nonfiction, as I mentioned. So here you can go up to even 3000 words, although I should mention, it’s normally more like 2000 words on this–it’s not usually 3000. And this can even go up to 64 pages. But it’s also normally more around 48 pages. But you get these exceptions. That’s a 3000 word 64 page book. And, of course, now, when kids get to that age, you’re not quite at adult level, but you’re getting quite fairly close to adult level in terms of the concepts, they can start understanding and so on. And you actually want to make the book challenging for them, because you want to encourage them to learn. You want to stretch their vocabulary, you kind of want to stretch their mind with the concepts. But at the same time, you have to be careful not to go too far. Because you don’t want to discourage them. You don’t want them to feel like, ‘Oh, it’s so hard,’ and they don’t want to read anymore. So it’s that balance of stretching them, but just enough that they still enjoy it.

Carla King 14:45

Wow, that’s pretty detailed. So I’m just gonna recap here. So there’s the 3-5 year old–it can be a board book or a normal book, 10 to 32 pages. 50 words to 600 words.

Karen Ferreira 14:59

Right.

Carla King 15:00

Okay, good. For 7-10 year olds, you get a 48 page book with about 1000 words.

Karen Ferreira 15:09

Yeah, there’s also the 4-8 year olds, which are kind of this in between, which is about 50 to 500 words. And that’s normally around 32 pages.

Carla King 15:15

Got it. Then you go to 7-10. And that 48 page book can be what? Can that be 6×9, or?

Karen Ferreira 15:31

It can be 6×9. 6×9 is not that common. Like you said–square, maybe 8 1/2 x 8 1/2 is common. It might be 8×10, or 10×8. Those kinds of sizes are more common. Or 8 1/2×11. 6×9 is quite uncommon–that’s more going towards your novel. Where the picture books are normally a bit bigger, because you want space for the pictures, you know?

Carla King 15:57

Absolutely. Okay, so for the 7-10 year olds, you’ve still got those shapes. And then 9-13 year olds–48 to 64 pages, 2000 to 3000 words. And what dimensions are those covers, usually?

Karen Ferreira 16:14

Those would be the same. So you basically have a distinction between a picture book for that age group, and just a nonfiction book for that age group. So you get nonfiction books for 11, 12, 13 year olds that are very text heavy, and have very few images. But then the picture book category is still fully illustrated–or lots of photographs–and the bigger book. Usually it’s a bigger book. It might be 7×10, even, because it still has a lot of pictures. So it’s never a small–well, not never, but hardly ever–a small book.

Carla King 16:54

This is great, Karen. I mean, I’m just used to the 6×9, 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 world, so this is a whole different language that most authors who write memoir and prescriptive nonfiction books don’t know. So I hope it’s giving everybody some good ideas. Now, I do realize that sometimes an author wants to illustrate the book themselves, or find an illustrator themselves. Some authors have images–pictures, actual photographs–that the author may have taken if they’re a talented photographer. But should an author, in general, dictate how the book is illustrated?

Karen Ferreira 17:41

I would say no. So obviously, if you’re traditionally publishing, they will hire an illustrator. Maybe I shouldn’t say, ‘obviously.’ In the children’s book industry, if you traditionally publish, they get an illustrator. So you’re not involved at all. So then you shouldn’t dictate. If you’re self publishing, you still shouldn’t really dictate how everything is drawn, because you want the illustrator to have some kind of creative freedom and leeway. Although, I have to add that, because it’s nonfiction, the illustrations actually have to be factual, right? So if you’re going to do photographs, then you could do that yourself, really.

If you’re self publishing, there’s no reason to necessarily hire someone for the photographs, depending on your situation. But if you’re hiring an illustrator, you will have to guide them to the point where everything is factual. So it’s a bit different in terms of–you can’t just kind of let them be creative, and just tell whatever story they like with their illustrations. You do get different kinds of nonfiction. Like traditional, which is kind of what we all grew up with. Which is all about the weather, or all about dogs, or all about planes–that kind of thing. So something like that–of course, if you were saying, ‘All about trains,’ and you’re saying all the different kinds of trains, they have to have reference images that are correct. In that regard, you will kind of have to dictate it.

But if it’s creative nonfiction–or narrative nonfiction–which is told with characters, and dialogue–it’s told with a story arc, right? And tension–like a real story, but it still has to be factual. So in that case, though, they could have a bit more creative freedom in terms of just the artistic details of the image. But still, of course, on the other side of the coin, it has to be factual. So they can’t draw everyone in the middle of winter in the snow when the event happened in the middle of summer, as an example. So there is, though–the creative details, I would leave up to the illustrator. But only to the point of–it can’t become non-factual, in other words.

Carla King 19:59

Got it. And this is something that we tell authors a lot is hire a cover designer, and don’t micromanage them. Because they know the market, they have creative ideas that you don’t have. And let them go, and you’re probably going to get a better product.

Karen Ferreira 20:18

Yes, if we were speaking about fiction, I would be hammering on, ‘Please, just let the illustrator do their job.’ Because exactly–you do get a better product. Because they have their own creativity, and their own story to tell. And they’re not a photocopier for your imagination, right? They can create some of their own world in a way that still should match your story. So you can keep that in mind for nonfiction. But as I said–obviously it is much more limited, because if you’re saying a monarch butterfly, they can’t draw a pink and purple and orange butterfly, or something like that, because they think that would be pretty. That’s obviously not an option.

Carla King 21:03

That’s great. Good. And another question that just came to me just now when we’re talking about book formats is ebooks. You know, the advent of digital books and the tablets, and the readers, have changed a lot [in terms of] how books can be made. They’re not always made like this. But I do know that there’s an age range where kids should not be looking at a screen. So when does that switch end to–kids can look at the screen. There’s a developmental area where it’s not good for them. And what are the tools and maybe what worlds does that open up for an author to present their work differently?

Karen Ferreira 21:52

That’s a good question. Yes, of course. So you get your board books, hard covers, paperbacks, and then, as you said, ebooks. So, just an aside, for schools and libraries, you should aim to have hard covers, as a note. That is more desirable for them. So if you’re printing on demand, and you’re only printing with KDP paperbacks, you should check into Ingram Spark or bulk printing or something to have hardcovers, as a note. But, yea, so back to the ebook question.

Carla King 22:23

Okay, thanks. Yeah, I just remembered the hard covers. Amazon is printing hard covers now, but they’re very limited. And it’s mid 2022, when we’re talking here, so they may start competing with Ingram Spark, but there’s also Lulu. And I think Draft2Digital, although I don’t know if they are printing hardcovers. But yeah, that’s a whole different podcast, I’m gonna address that somewhere else.

Karen Ferreira 22:49

You’re quite right. But KDP–they’re sizes are, as you said–their sizes are still for children’s books, the sizes are kind of too limited. But yeah, we can go into a whole thing about bulk printing is better, but we won’t go there right now. So for ebooks, you’re right. There is that age–you don’t want a child that’s too young to be on the screen too much.

At the same time–even though a physical copy of a book, in my estimation, is much better for kids always, we do live in a world, also, where ebooks open up a lot of opportunities in terms of–you can offer the ebook for $1.99 or even $0.99, or $1.99, $2.99, which just opens the door to so many more people getting it. Where, obviously, if you’re self publishing especially, they may not be willing to invest the money in a hardcopy.

Because remember, with picture books, it’s all full color, and your printing costs are quite high. And then of course, you have to ship it, and so on. So the profit margin–when you print on demand with picture books–tends to be extremely low, because you’re trying to put a competitive price. You know, if you’re trying to look around the $10 mark to be competitive, you almost make nothing. And so an ebook just gives you that opportunity to reach more readers.

So to put an age of what’s okay for them to read on the screen or not is difficult, because it is a book. It’s not like they’re watching videos, or playing games which are not so good. Not saying that it is better for them to read on the screen than a physical copy. Like I said, physical copy is always better. But there is kind of that question of–you might not reach them at all if you don’t have the ebook. So is it better to reach them with the ebook or not at all, you see? So you kind of have to make that judgment call.

If you go look, most of the board books–you won’t find them in ebook format. And that makes sense, right? But normally from the picture book age–from 4 and up–you do actually find them in ebook format. And as I said, I think it’s just because of the world we live in, it just opened so many doors. So I would suggest, if you’re publishing a picture book, from 3-4 up, just put it out as an ebook as well. Because you are going to get people who will buy that, who won’t buy the physical copy.

Carla King 25:30

Great. And do you recommend that we use the bells and whistles? Like, maybe insert a little video or something in there? Are you seeing that happening lately?

Karen Ferreira 25:39

I have seen that happening. The way I see it–or what I normally would say is–you can put a link to a video on YouTube if you want to, or that kind of thing. If you want to put it in the book, you can. But I find–in my experience, at least–everyone who I’ve seen doing that, it almost becomes–the complications, or all the work involved, almost is not worth the benefits or the results they get. So I would say you can put a link to YouTube and say, ‘Go watch this little video about…,’ and link something about your book, right? But I personally wouldn’t recommend going through all the work of trying to put it in the book.

Carla King 26:22

Bingo, that was the answer I was looking for–should we bother? Took me a while to get there. Okay. Well, I’d love to talk to you some more, but we’re running out of time. So I’d love for you to tell us what you have to offer. I know you do have a service for authors to find illustrators, and all kinds of good stuff. So why don’t you just tell us where we can find all that?

Karen Ferreira 26:48

If someone is interested to possibly get illustrations, or if you even just want to book a free call and just ask some questions, it’s completely obligation free. My illustration company is called Get Your Book Illustrations and the website is getyourbookillustrations.com–all just one word. And if you just want to look around, we have on there how our process works. And we have a good blog, where you could learn more about children’s books, and illustrations, and how it all works. So it’s a fairly good educational resource. And as I said, you can book a free call if you want to ask some questions.

And then I also have a company called Children’s Book Mastery, where I help people to write their children’s books, and publish. Literally everything–from getting writing, through publishing, through marketing. Just the whole gamut of the exciting author journey, right? And all the parts to it. And we’re having a free summit in July. We have this every year in July==called the Children’s Book Mastery Summit. So if people want to go to childrensbookmastery.com, they can sign up for the summit for free, and get loads of expert interviews–including Carla–sharing all the wonderful expertise to help authors on the journey. Also all the way from writing–how do you get started, through to marketing.

Carla King 28:18

Great, thank you. So the live version of that is free. That’s awesome. And that’s in 2022. That is July 11th?

Karen Ferreira 28:27

11th.

Carla King 28:29

Excellent. Okay, good. That’s the date I was looking for. So it could be near the same date and the subsequent years. Karen, thank you so much for your expertise. I’ve learned a lot, and I know everyone else has. I hope we’re all inspired. And maybe we’ll all–in the nonfiction group–start writing books for kids as well. So thanks again.

And thank you to our listeners for joining us today and every week. For a list of guests and topics just check our schedule on the site, use your favorite search engine, or better yet, sign up for our mailing list at NonfictionAuthorsAssociation.com.

Quotes from our guest

‘If you’re excited about writing it for children, then you don’t need to ever have an adult book. Of course, if you have an adult nonfiction book, and you want to go into the children’s side, you can do that, but there’s no reason to have to have an adult book first. And if you’re an expert–if you’re an oceanographer, or you’re a biologist, or you’re whatever expert it might be–a doctor, a dentist, whatever it might be, of course it can be to your advantage, right? Because firstly, you can put your credentials on. But also, you already know the subject really well.’

‘To put an age of what’s okay for them to read on the screen or not is difficult, because it is a book. It’s not like they’re watching videos, or playing games which are not so good…physical copy is always better. But there is kind of that question of–you might not reach them at all if you don’t have the ebook. So is it better to reach them with the ebook or not at all? So you kind of have to make that judgment call.’