Category Archives

3 Articles
Illustration/Self-Publishing/on-demand

Illustrating for Authorhouse children’s books

Posted by Scott Gregory on

AuthorHouse publishes tons of children’s books each year. Many of those books fall short on their appeal due to amateur illustrations. Even the illustration services that they provide (by way of India and southeast Asia) are sadly inadequate for today’s discerning tastes. Simply having illustrations is not enough. The artwork in your children’s book should be outstanding. Customers WILL judge your book by its cover and by its artwork. In a contemporary children’s book the text is integrated with the illustration. You won’t find that in most AuthorHouse children’s books. Unless, you allow Dragonpencil to illustrate your book for you. We have illustrated dozens of children’s books for POD companies such as AuthorHouse. We have 20 illustrators who are real, actual professional artists. AND we have real people for you to call and to manage your illustration project. Which artist do you want to for your book?

Publishing Biz/Book Promotion/Self-Publishing/Writing

Dallas Clayton : Awesomly Self-Published Success

Posted by Scott Gregory on

In 2005, Dallas Clayton did what so many parents think about doing themselves. He wrote and illustrated a children’s book for his son. The book was called simply, An Awesome Book! It was a 64 page picture book chock full of inspiration for Dallas’s son to lead an awesome life. Dallas put the book on his website for free for others to look at. Other people wanted it for their child after seeing it, so Dallas had some printed. That was 50,000 copies ago.

Dallas now has 6 books, all similar to the first, and spends much of his time promoting them and doing readings. He has signed a 3-book deal with Harper Collins and a 2-book deal with Candlewick. And I’m sure that those deals were made on his terms, and not theirs. His success with children’s books has also provided him with offers to do other work related to movies and TV. Dallas Clayton is living the dream.

The world is full of Dallas Claytons. Creative men and women with a story to tell and the drive to see it through. But most of those people will never take that first step towards self-publishing. We are afraid that our story isn’t good enough, or that the publishing world is too exclusive for us to break into. No longer. There are too many success stories out there to believe in those negative thoughts. It is time to cast away doubt and dive in. It’s time to be AWESOME!

Publishing Biz/Self-Publishing

Last Penguin Standing

Posted by Scott Gregory on

Random House, Penguin, Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, Crown, Pantheon, Ballantine, Viking, Putnam, Dutton, and many other publishing houses are now only one publisher. This new behemoth is called Penguin Random-House. I guess Penguin House sounded too silly. Along with Random Penguins there are only 4 other big publishers; Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster. If you thought getting a publishing contract was impossible before then it is now double impossible. Self-publishing gets a bad rap because there is little if any quality control. But the marketplace is now the filter. Amazing books are published by independent authors. I know, I helped launch quite a few of them.

None of the big publishers were interested in The Elf On The Shelf and today it is practically synonymous with Christmas. They even had a giant balloon in the Macy’s parade this year.

How a Self-Published Book Became a Best-seller