Chop Chop

When it comes to submitting your hard work to a publisher, the important thing is to keep an open mind.  When I first began working on my soon to be released, "Hello, Boston!" and "Hello, Cape Cod!", I had in mind a childrens book that would be about 9x9 inches.  I envisioned it having the standard count (for children's books) of 32 pages.  This translates to about 14 "spreads" give or take a few title/copyright/dedication pages and my writing reflected this.  My publisher, however, decided it would make a great board book with 8 spreads (there isn't an industry standard page count for boardbooks).  They thought it would sell better as a board book and they had recently published a couple of books in the 9x9 size about these locations.  I had written @ 14 verses and now had to cut them down to 8. Chop Chop.  I had also envisioned the illustrations having a white border around them.  They thought they would look better "bleeding" off the page.  Working together, we were able to work with this to create a finshed book that was better than anyone person could have created alone. Above is an illustration for "Hello, Boston!" that shows the white border.  I loved allowing aspects of the illustration to "break the border", but in the end, the bleeds look better.... I went back to the drawing board and made it a full "spread" (a picture that continues from left to right".

P.S.  Please note that all material and images in this blog are copyrighted to Martha Zschock.  Thank you for respecting copyright laws.