At Blue Balloon Books, our goal is to democratize and demystify the publishing experience by involving you from beginning to end. After all, we’re here to bring your vision to life while ensuring quality every step of the way. But what do those steps look like? How do you get from rough draft to the book of your dreams? Here’s a quick crash course!
What Is Production?
Production involves everything from editing to illustrations to design to printing—whatever it takes to bring your manuscript from a hypothetical to a tangible. We have expert production editors ready to shepherd your book from a Word document to bookstore shelves.
The Production Process
1. Editing
To kick off production, we start with the manuscript itself. That will guide the rest of the process! Our expert editors will comprehensively review your manuscript to address any grammatical or spelling errors, suggest ways to improve the cadence (especially for rhyming books), point out any inconsistencies or plot holes, and provide whatever feedback is needed to make your story shine while preserving your message and voice.
Of course, we always use the Track Changes feature to ensure that you can see each edit and suggestion. After all, we’re not here to tell you what to do—we're here to work together with you to get your manuscript in the best shape possible! There will usually be a few rounds of back and forth with your editor taking a couple of different passes before your manuscript is officially final. WOOHOO!
(To learn more about the editing process, give this insightful blog post a read!)
2. Illustrations
Next up are illustrations. This is usually the most exciting part because it’s the most visual. It’s when you can really begin to see your vision take shape!
Once the content of the manuscript is final, we suggest how to break up the pages and work together with you to develop detailed character and illustration descriptions. These will guide the illustrator you choose.
Tip: Make sure you lock in your book’s dimensions at this stage. The artist will need to know that to ensure the illustrations are the correct size and orientation!
And how do you choose your illustrator? We start by sharing our portfolio, which contains tons of samples from our vast pool of talented artists. Once we have a sense of the style you’re looking for, we recommend a handful of excellent options and get sample sketches of your main character. Once you fall in love with an artist’s work, you’ll have your illustrator!
We always start with sketches to ensure everything is heading in the right direction. Once we’ve gotten feedback on those and made revisions, we’ll focus on complete color illustrations, making final tweaks until we have gorgeous artwork ready to be paired with the text!
(Dive deeper into the illustration process by reviewing this detailed blog post on the topic.)
3. Design
This is when we pull everything together to create one dynamic, engaging reading experience. Unless you have a specific idea for fonts, we generally curate a menu of font options based on the tone of the book. From there, we mock up the front cover, refining it based on your feedback until it is perfect as it can be.
(This blog post sheds more light on the cover design process—after all, people WILL judge your book by its cover!)
Then, we complete the interior, integrating the text of the story with the illustrations. Of course, we take care of the seemingly “boring” things as well—the title page, copyright information (including ISBN), dedication, and so on. We even help write the synopsis and author bio and use them to complete the cover design, adding the barcode and publisher logo to finish the spine and back cover.
(Good news—we have a blog post specifically about the interior design of your children’s book as well 😊)
4. Additional Formats
Although e-books and audiobooks aren’t as common for children’s stories, this is when the production team can work on those formats if you choose to add them. It should require very little effort on your part, as the text and illustrations are final! If you’re doing an audiobook, you may work with your production editor to find a fitting narrator (or narrate it yourself). Then, leave it to us to pull everything together, share it with you for approval, and set up for distribution through typical e-book and audiobook channels.
5. Quality Checks
Once the full cover and interior are completed, the final files will go through several rounds of quality checks by Blue Balloon's expert editors. We will review everything one last time, paying special attention to the text placement, margins, and grammar/spelling to confirm no mistakes were introduced during the design phase. This is how we ensure everything is in the best shape possible before publication!
6. Printing and Other Final Steps
At this point, your book is ready to be shared with the world! Depending on whether you’re doing an offset print run or going the print on demand route, your production editor will submit the final files to the printer to get a sample made and then approve mass production or will upload the final files for online distribution. This is when we set your official pub date and make your book available for preorder. Now all that’s left to do is create a marketing strategy and then get ready to celebrate the official launch of your masterpiece!
A lot goes into taking your book from the seed of an idea to a high-quality finished product, but as you can see, your voice will be heard every step of the way! While our production editors are experts in their craft, your ideas and feedback are invaluable. Ultimately, our goal is to work together with you to bring your vision to life so that, in the end, you can feel great pride as you hold the children’s book of your dreams in your hands!
Ready to get started? Visit our website to submit your book idea and chat with one of our acquisitions editors about what this process would look like for your unique project.