SCBWI Thursday

Our local chapter of SCBWI held its winter holiday meeting this week -

It was held at the Washington Convention Center, where they are showing a large selection of children's art painted by local SCBWI members.

Met up with a few friends who also have work in the show (here, Catherine Bassova)-

- and critique-group member, Jo Gershman (with fellow-member's painting, Kathleen Kemley showing over her shoulder on our right).

There was a very wide range of art on display (here's a tiny sampling)-

*Every* medium imaginable (this one is cut paper).

Steve Walker

Wendy Wahman

Craig Orback

Richard Jesse Watson

Out of the handful of pieces I submitted, they chose Baba Yaga (that made for some interesting conversation throughout the evening).  T'was a nice night and fun to see so many local artists and art. I even won a swag bag in the raffle. :-)

More Publishing Mysteries -

After this post on author-illustrator relations, Vickie asked: This is interesting to hear. I never knew it worked that way if you were the author. So now I'm curious to hear the other side, how did you and other illustrators come to be working with publishers. What route do you or did you go to get on there list of artists? It's always so interesting to hear about these things because for those of us not in the field it seems like some mysterious process.

The mysterious, once known, becomes mundane I'm afraid - so if you want to preserve that sense of magic and intrigue, stop reading now! :-) Since publishers are the powers-that-be who select the illustrators for their projects, the more you can make your work visible to them, the better. Here is a bit of my artistic-life-journey and some different ways that I have personally used to get my work in front of those who buy art.

Back in college we were required to take a class on business practices. Self marketing and promotion were a large part of that. This was 20 years ago - you know, the dark ages before the internet?- and back then one of the best ways for a starving young artist to be seen was to send out physical samples of your work.

I can't tell you how many hand-made cards, pamphlets and envelopes (including a 'response card') I assembled in these ventures. I did this quite regularly - at least once a quarter - keeping meticulous records of where these went and what the response was. I had two young children at the time, so initially I targeted small jobs, mainly magazine work. The Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market was my best friend for contact information.

After I started getting magazine jobs, I would use 'tear sheets' (copies of printed illustration) in promotional mailings. This would show 1.) that I had actually *been* published and 2.) how my work translated in print. This process kept me quite happily busy in the magazine realm until my children started getting a bit older. Using this same technique, I tentatively began to target a very few book publishers with samples of my work. I began a dialog with one of them, and mentioned that I had a book dummy of an old Christmas carol, and would they like to see it? They did, and decided they wanted to publish it (looking back on this now, I can't believe how lucky and unusual that was. Friends of mine have gorgeous book dummies that they have been shopping around for years...)

I had published my first book, but it about killed me - it is so difficult to work on large projects when your children are still young - so I decided to hold off on books or *any* big project until they were older. I did however, want to continue illustrating in more manageable scenarios and find ways to continue growing as an artist.

I did continue to send out mailings to smaller venues. I attended SCBWI conferences, showed my portfolio and networked. I took art classes when I could. I also taught them. I got work in other markets - I created signage for zoos, designed scrapbook papers, stencils, rubber stamps, fabric, book marks, greeting cards, product labels, company logos and many other assorted items. Anything I could think of. And I created promotional materials specific to whatever market I was targeting at the time (fold out samples made for a SciFi/Fantasy convention I attended shown above).

By the time my kids were both teenagers, I had more experience and a little more time to dedicate to illustration. Of course by now the internet is a huge thing. I design a website for myself. I decided to see if I could get an agent so that I could have more targeted exposure. Wendy Lynn & Co. agreed to represent me. (A big part of their job as agents is to promote their clients, so now all those mailings I used to do? They do it for me. This can be very helpful - the art directors for most publishers get hundreds of mailers like I used to send a week. It's very easy to get lost in the pile as a single individual.) Through them, I also take out ad space in Picturebook or Blackbook every year. I have a portfolio page on ChildrensIllustrators. I try to network through various other online venues - this blog, LinkedIn, Facebook and Jacketflap for instance. I use the books I have just published as promotions for more opportunities.

With all of these efforts in place, sometimes it is a bit mysterious why you are chosen for a particular project, actually. Sometimes the art director can tell you exactly where and what piece they saw that lead them to you, sometimes you don't ever find out. Maybe the stars aligned and your promotional piece ended up on someones desk the very day they needed someone to do a job that looked just like *that*.

The more places you can be seen, the greater your odds of *being* seen.

All that said, I still send out 'real' Christmas cards, but that's the only physical promotion that I do anymore. Everything else is through the agent or online.

OK - never start a blog post at 2 am... They get awfully wordy and disjointed! (sorry Vickie). I may have to delete this all tomorrow, but for now, I'm going to bed!

(This is studio kitteh, and she approves this mailing)

Workin' the System -

Awhile back a very patient Hayden of Lyric Flight asked: "Would you mind explaining to me how things work in your world - are you hired directly by the publishers, or do you collaborate with the writer?"

This is a really good question. I find there is a lot of misconception about how the world of children's publishing actually works. I get emails from first-time, would-be authors on a fairly... regular basis (nearly weekly?) telling me of their newly finished manuscript and how they are now on a hunt for the perfect illustrator, and wouldn't I be pleased to be that person?

For Hayden (and these author inquiries) the short answer is that invariably I am hired directly by a publisher. A publisher who has acquired a manuscript that they are excited about. The publisher, who has experience in this arena, and is now pretty invested in seeing that this new book sells, approaches the illustrator(s) that they think is the best fit for making this book the most marketable it can possibly be. Even though it may seem counter-intuitive, at this point, the author has very little, if any, input. I never interact with an author directly. Occasionally I will get clarifications via my art director, but never directly, and not often.

(There are exceptions to this - maybe if you are already uber-published and have more cred, like say, Jane Yolen?, or you are authoring a non-fiction kind of book and you are an expert on the subject, and therefore your input becomes invaluable, but from what I hear and have experienced, these scenarios are very, very rare).

Harold over at the Purple Crayon (there are many sites and blogs out there with lots of good information) has assembled a nearly perfect list of FAQs about how the relationship between children's book manuscripts and illustrators works. When I get one of those emails asking if I am interested in illustrating a first book by the author, I send them that link, and then if they still think they want to go this route (if they are self-publishing for instance), I refer them to my agents who handle all the contractual details.

For the serious inquisitor, there are a number of resources out there that admirably describe the workings of the industry at present. The best resource for creative folks wanting to learn about and hopefully break into the industry that I know of, is The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). They are a worldwide, professional organization for writers and illustrators 0f children's books, complete with newsletters, meetings and conferences - all very informative and up to the minute with current market mores. Chances are good there is a chapter near you - look them up. They are very nice people.

My favorite book on this topic, published yearly, is the Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market. Lots of really good introductory material on all things industry, as well as pages and pages of contact information for book, magazine and novelty publishers as well as art reps and agents, etc... You can find much of this information online of course (publishers generally list submission guidelines on their websites), but it's good to have it all in one place, complete with interviews with various industry professionals and a lot of nuts and bolts kind of info.

*

So, spread the word. If you're writing a children's story, join SCBWI. Find a critique group. Polish your kick-butt manuscript to a shiny, reflective finish. Then you can, and should, go ahead and directly submit it to an appropriate publisher. You don't need to email me first. :-)

The Inside Story

After unnecessarily fretting over my participation in this event, I found it a lovely evening, full of interesting and interested people. There were nineteen authors and artists singing the praises (very briefly!) of their currently published wares. A few of the the other local artists that I admire who spoke about their books included Jesse Joshua Watson (see his blog to read his humorous entry about his nomination as the #44 Hottest Guy in Children's Lit), Julie Paschkis (whose work I've admired for years. I have a poster of her art hanging on my studio wall) and my fellow POBL-critique member, Kathleen Kemley.

Andrea asked if I'd post my 'speech', so.... Okay.... It wasn't exactly like this - I tried hard to speak more conversationally than I write (NO reading of the speech! thankyouverymuch). Normally, I just make a few notes to help me remember what I want to talk about and somewhat wing it, but this was supposed to be so short - no longer than 3 minutes - that I felt I'd better think/write it out entirely. So this was what I ended up with if you are interested in slogging through it:

Hi, my name is Tara Larsen Chang, and I’ve spent the bulk of the past year and a half creating illustrations for a new series called “The Fairy Chronicles”.

When I was little, my time was split pretty evenly between running around outdoors being a tomboy and completely immersed in nature, and being inside sunk into a chair, and lost in a book--the more fantastical and heavily illustrated, the better. I loved and kind of wanted to live in both the real, here and now world and the more Mysterious and Magical.

This split happened on many levels as I was growing up. I can remember being eight years old, and trying to decide how my room or my wardrobe would look if I could design them any way I wished. Would I choose something organic, ornate and fairy-tale-opulent, or fashionable, "cool" and contemporary? I never could decide between the two. I still can’t.

So *this* particular project was like a very personal gift from the universe – handed to me on a big, fluffy, velvet pillow and tied with a fat ribbon. "The Fairy Chronicles" features contemporary characters--real girls who also happen to be fairies, and given gifts by Mother Nature that they use to interact with the magical side of reality to solve problems, take care of nature and even ‘save the world’. My younger self would have found it a near-perfect melding of the realistic, natural, and modern world with the magical and mythical realm that I couldn’t choose between as a child and continue to enjoy as an adult.

This particular blend of imagery has been incredibly fun and satisfying to work with; yet not without its goblins - there are so many illustrations in these books, and never enough time - time to completely develop each character and illustration to it’s full potential, but some of them still manage to practically arrive fully formed in my head and paint them themselves on the page– such as this mermaid [I brought an original illustration to display] who seemed to have a presence of her own, far beyond what the text indicated. The worst gremlin has probably been being chained to the studio desk so completely, that I haven’t been able to get out in my gardens, which are one of my greatest inspirations. There is many an afternoon when I look longingly out the studio window at my plants and flowers as ironically I’m inside painting a gardening gnome.

If you have young, fairy-loving girls (or happen to still be one yourself) that also find contemporary themes like protecting the environment appealing, this series connects ‘real life’ to the fantastical in a very satisfying way. Both sides of me have been tickled to be able to work on it.

So we got to briefly wax eloquent, sign some books for people and for the store, and meet and chat with local industry folks whilst eating chocolate dipped cookies with cups of tea. The best part about the evening though was that nearly my entire POBL critique group came. What a wonderfully supportive group of women. Thank you girls! One of them took pictures of the event for me - which I'll post when I get copies. [later: Fellow critique member has already posted a few over on the POBL blog].

Very nice evening. Glad it's over. Back to painting.

[p.s. thank you for all the kind sentiments regarding my daughter. We will hopefully find out what is going on with her back next Wednesday.]

Event of the Week -

(Click picture to see larger, more legible image)

Somehow (it seemed a good idea at the time) I thought it would be fun to do this event. I was supposed to have a bit more time now to work on things like this - but NO!

Luckily it is just a 3 minute presentation - albeit in very prestigious company, and to a large room full of children's book professionals.... I'll have the dubious distinction of having written my presentation while waiting and watching my daughter in a bone scan machine (checking to see if she has a stress fracture in her spine. Most likely not serious, but if it's not one thing....)

Think good thoughts my direction for Thursday night!