How to write, illustrate and publish a children’s book

written by John Lim | Writing

January 14, 2025

I paused over the phone, wondering how best to respond.

She had just called to tell me that the Ministry was pausing the project, insisting that they had to look through every part of the book before letting it go to print.

We had to stop for at least 3 months before moving ahead.

ItemsCost (all figures in USD)Why you should pay for it
Printing of 300 copiesAbout $2500Whilst you can do Kindle Direct Publishing, they might choose the wrong quality of paper, put it together poorly, and you would generally want to give a good first impression with your book.
Illustrator About $2800 for an experienced one, but you can start with about $800 for one based in a low cost country like Indonesia The difference between a good, and an outsourced designer in a lower cost country, is their ability to understand your concept. The good ones might struggle and you would have to explain quite a few times before they get it.
Copyediting About $500For simple copyediting, you might just need to pay about $500.
The cost involved in publishing a children’s book. Don’t worry, you don’t have to max out your overseas credit card just for this.

Traditional publishing… might be dead

If you’re publishing a book, be prepared to wait similar times if you’re working with a traditional publisher. They will pull out every stop to make sure that their ass is covered, before they let you put out the book.

Yes, you might not be designing an annual report that’s going to be scrutinised by people looking to invest thousands of dollars. But you would still need to be careful.

Another horror story I recently heard was a writer who worked with a big publisher in Singapore, who ended up collapsing and closing off their Singapore office. They once started as a mighty bookstore, with many outlets in Singapore. But along the way, they failed to reinvent themselves and needed to shut down their operations.

The writer who worked with the publisher ended up having her 5 book deal with the publisher paused after the second book. Any other efforts she introduced to try and revive the book, such as getting more overseas bookstores to take her book, was greeted with a wait and see.

On the other hand, there are books that have done much, much better, with authors taking the lead on choosing the artist they would like to work with, and by using their own platforms to promote the book.

Just look at Haruka, whom we recently met in Singapore.

She had created the book together with a French illustrator, whom she had been connected to via a mutual friend.

Having done this work for several years, she had also grown a sizeable community with her work, and could thus organise events that brought together a number of people.

She’s gone onto bigger things, with the book now being adapted to an anime, and then being showcased at the World Expo Osaka too.

It’s clear that as authors, if you want your children’s book to succeed, you need to be focused about 3 things.

Here’s the recipe that works

Writing the story

You first need to write a good story with two things.

A good story, focused on an ideal reader.

Illustrating the book

Don’t worry. You don’t have to be an artist or graphic recorder to do this well.

You can just get someone good!

When we were illustrating the book, we also started off with a moodboard. We took individual lines in the book and tried to understand what each of it meant, and then conceptualise a coherent concept for it.

This is what we often mean by conceptualising.

It’s about coming up with relevant themes that can bring everything together in a coherent way.

Start with conceptualising

For example, with this book, we took the first lines, and tried to find quintessential singaporean elements that we thought could fit in with it.

When you write your book, you’re not writing about something. You’re writing it for someone. This means that the words, and the pictures have to tie together to form a coherent concept for the child. It makes the child fall in love with the story, and think,

Oh, I can relate with that! That’s so real.

That’s like what’s happening at home.

Get into the head of your reader

That said, the best books are those that are able to get into the head of the readers, rather than just the character. The character is the easy part. Making it something that’s a must-read for the end-reader, is what is tougher.

That’s why we’ve always emphasised that you should think of 3 things. Behavior, attitude, and demographic.

Most of us tend to start from the demographic of the child, and then move onto what we foresee they might be thinking, and what they eventually do.

I would argue that a better is to start from behaviour, because that’s genuine. That’s what people do. That’s what you can see – as the writer.

This was what we eventually came up with for the child in the story.

Then we went onto find picture references that would work well for the book. These were some that we took from The Woke Salaryman.

We also looked at what was around us, and tried to take references that our artist could work with.

Choosing an illustrator to do this might not be easy. After working with about 7 different designers, we’ve realised that different designers are great at unique things.

Finding one that’s strong at

  1. Conceptualising, finding the initial concepts that tie together the message of your book and the drawings that would work
  2. Drawing the initial sketches
  3. Executing the full coloured sketches

is not that easy.

That said, you can come to us.

Start with pencil sketches

After you do that, you can get your illustrator to start with pencil sketches.

I recommend that you ask designers to come up with two different designs, so that you can choose one.

Get the ISBN number

If you’re publishing in Singapore, you should then go to the Legal Deposit site to post your book.

It’s not that simple. But you need to place your ISN first, before your CIP, before putting in the legal deposit.

If that sounds like alphabet word soup, don’t worry. It’s really quite simple.

You just need to get your ISBN number.

It looks like this.

Then you put in a Catalogue in Publication application.

Build your own sales channel

Building your own sales channel is what’s vital after this process. You have to be smart about it, because it’s not that simple a process.

You really have to constantly push, and keep thinking about ways to sell your children’s book.

With the children’s book that we did for PPIS, they didn’t want to sell it. They wanted to give it away.

But that isn’t the case for most writers, like yourself.

You want to make some money too. Or at least not lose that much money.

But to do that, I urge you to take inspiration from this picture.

In 2006, Pixar Animation was working on their newest film, Brave. To understand the character better, they took archery lessons to figure how the bow would twang after being shot, how it felt like to string the bow, and how it felt for the arrow to sing through the air, racing towards the target.

That was the work needed to push their children’s movie to become one of the top movies that year.

Movies are not that much different from books.

You need to understand your protagonist, and make it your best friend.

You need to understand your reader, and make yourself the best guide.

Only in that way would readers keep wanting to come back.


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