Writing, Self-Publishing And Marketing Books For Children With Darcy Pattison

What are the challenges of writing and publishing books for children? How can you publish high-quality books and still make a profit? How can you market books to children effectively in a scalable manner? Darcy Pattison gives her tips.

In the intro, Novel Writing November; Business models and ethics for authors [Self-Publishing with ALLi]; AI-Assisted Artisan Author – my final AI webinar for 2025; Metal-working! with WTF Workshops, Bristol; Blood Vintage, a folk horror novel – out now on my store, coming 15 October everywhere.

Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Darcy Pattison is the multi-award winning bestselling author of more than 70 fiction and non-fiction books for children across multiple age groups. Her book for authors is Publish: Find Surprising Success Self-Publishing Your Children's Book.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Why writing children's picture books is more challenging than you might think
• Why Darcy moved from traditional publishing books to self-publishing for creative freedom and business control
• Working with illustrators through contracts, sketch revisions, and treating them as professional collaborators
• Using multiple print-on-demand services (Ingram, KDP, Lulu) instead of expensive offset printing for 70+ book catalog
• Marketing to educators through state and national conferences rather than individual school visits for scalable reach
• Focusing on STEM narrative nonfiction as a reliable income while still writing fiction passion projects
• Longevity as an author

You can find Darcy at IndieKidsBooks.com and MimsHouseBooks.com. You can find the Kickstarter here.

Transcript of Interview with Darcy Pattison

Joanna: Darcy Pattison is the multi-award winning bestselling author of more than 70 fiction and non-fiction books for children across multiple age groups. Her book for authors is Publish: Find Surprising Success Self-Publishing Your Children's Book. So welcome to the show, Darcy.

Darcy: I'm so excited to be here today.

Joanna: This is such a great topic. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing.

Darcy: Well, I have four children and I found myself reading books to them, and at some point I wanted to be on the flip side of that—to write the books that were read to kids. So I started writing.

It took a long time for me to learn the craft of writing children's books. It's very different than adult books. Picture books especially are very different than just a novel. So it took me a while, but I finally got an offer on a picture book, and I have eight traditionally published books.

Then at some point I decided that it was better for me to bring books to market myself. We'll probably talk about that more, but I'm actually a hybrid at this point. I do some pop-up books with a small Christian press, so I'm designing the pop-ups, but I do a lot of nonfiction STEM books for kids. I also do several novel series.

Joanna: I think that's really interesting. First up, you said that the craft of writing children's books is different, picture books in particular. So just tell us more about that craft side, because I feel like often people say, “Oh well, it's only a few thousand words. It must be super easy compared to writing a lot more words.”

Tell us about the craft side of writing children's books.

Darcy: I do teach writing picture books all the time for the Highlights Foundation and other places. Picture books are a very tight art form. I sort of compare it to writing poetry.

There are 32 pages, and you have a title page, a half title page, a copyright page. It turns out you have about 14 double page spreads, and in those 14 double page spreads, you have to set up a character and a problem.

You have to complicate the story, then resolve it in some satisfying way, in less than 500 words, while leaving room for the illustrator to do their job. So it's a very demanding process.

Joanna: And it's not the same now then, because like you say there, the 32 pages and all of this—I mean, this is a very print-heavy issue, I guess—but there are plenty of things now that might be on tablets.

Has that shifted at all or is it still a real print-heavy world?

Darcy: It still is a print-heavy world for children's books. Most people who independently publish will tell you that 90% of their sales are paperback.

It's still 32 pages. I can do 27 pages, I can do 36 pages. The problem is if I ever need to offset print—and I've needed to several times when I have a large order—then it's cheaper if it's 32 pages, because they figured out how to print 32 pages on one piece of paper.

If I go to 37 pages, it's two pieces of paper, more expensive. If I do 25 pages, you're wasting paper. So really the 32 pages is because of the requirements of print. I still go with that because children's books, even for independent people like me, are still by and large paperback or hardcover.

Joanna: Then I guess, talking about a 32-page picture book, that's not the only thing for children.

What is the range of books for children?

Darcy: You can do board books. That's for the very young children. Those are hard for self-publishers to do because there's no one who does print-on-demand for that. You have to do offset printing. So those are more difficult.

Then starting about age four to eight is picture book world. That's the young readers where the parents are reading to the kid.

Then—and the ages are very fluid here because some kids read faster than others—but maybe about six or seven years old, they're starting to read more independently. They want these short chapter books.

So those might be 48 pages or 60-page short novels where you're really paying attention. That's the only place where you really have to pay attention to the vocabulary levels for kids.

Then after that, you have middle grade, and that would run eight to twelve years old, roughly. Then YA would be—again, the definitions are very fluid—but maybe 14 and up would be young adult.

Joanna: Yes, and that YA category now I feel like has moved very adult. So I think that can probably be quite fluid as well, depending on what you find in the store.

Let's come back to your journey. You mentioned the hybrid approach. You did eight traditionally published books, but in your book Publish, you said deciding to self-publish was a way to avoid creative death, which I thought was a brilliant line. Maybe you could expand on that and—

Why is self-publishing a great choice?

Darcy: Self-publishing is a very great choice. There was a time period when I had sold eight books. I teach on a very high level—I teach a novel revision retreat. To come, you must bring a full draft of a novel. We talk about how to revise that novel.

One lady came to my retreat, she revised her novel, sent it out for submission. It sold in 11 days flat and went on to win one of the major awards in children's literature in America, the Newbery Honor. So I know what I'm doing. I know how to write, and yet I could not sell anything. It was so discouraging at that point.

I either decided I would quit—I don't know what I was going to do, but I was going to quit—or I had to figure out how to bring books to market myself. So I decided, yes, I can do this. I can bring books to market myself.

So I worked. I worked for five years. I just put my head down and worked. I published books that I liked. I did what no one else would accept, but I thought was good writing.

I looked for great illustrators and I found some great illustrators to work with, because children's picture books have pictures. You have to work with an illustrator.

So I worked for about five years and finally after five years, I kind of lifted my head and looked around and went, “Wow, look at this. I've got books out that I love. They're winning awards. They're selling, I'm making money. This works.”

So for me, one person asked me recently to talk about this in terms of scarcity and abundance. For me, the traditional publishing world is a place of scarcity. Nobody respected my opinion, nobody respected my writing. As we know from Scheherazade, if you do not have a story, you die.

So self-publishing is a place of abundance for me. I do what I want. I find stories that excite me, and I put them in the hands of kids.

Joanna: So what year was it when you were like, “Oh, I really can't sell, I am going to try indie”?

Darcy: Thirteen years ago. I've been doing this 13 years.

Joanna: So around 2012, I guess.

Darcy: Yes, 2013 I think.

Joanna: 2012, 2013. That really was, I think, a real takeoff time in the self-publishing arena when you could actually start doing this. For example, doing print-on-demand through Amazon. These things weren't that easy when you started in traditional publishing—it wasn't easy to do self-publishing.

Darcy: No, no, no. When I first started submitting books, self-publishing was not available. I did a book on writing very early and that taught me how to do the self-publishing process. It was not a book anyone was going to publish because it was revising your novel, which is very niche.

For people who want to write a novel, that's a fairly big market, but those who finished the novel and want to revise it, it's even a smaller market. So I self-published that book and that taught me so much about how to set up your files, how to set up the accounts on everything, on KDP and everywhere else.

Joanna: Yes, I do feel like so often actually just doing one—whether it might be maybe a short story or just something, but actually just going through the process gets rid of a lot of the difficulty with it.

Let's come back to some of the things you have to do. So you mentioned illustrators there, particularly for the picture books. Illustrators are important, but it also might be cover design.

What are your tips for finding and working with illustrators?

Darcy: This is a long topic, but basically I find illustrators through a couple of sources. One is the SCBWI.org, that's the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

It's the only professional organization for people who write for children, and they have a gallery that's available to their illustrators, and it's not behind a paywall. You can just go look at it.

Most illustrators use the Adobe suite of programs. There are other programs, but they learn on that one at least. Adobe has a social media platform for illustrators called Behance.net. The illustrators from around the world put their portfolios there, and I find people there all the time.

My family has hosted exchange students eight times, so I'm familiar with working with internationals. I'm not afraid of that.

I've had illustrators from Colombia, Ukraine, Poland, Canada. So I don't mind finding an international illustrator to work on my projects and I work well with them. So Behance.net is one of my main ways to find professional illustrators.

And then finally referrals. Just talk to other people. Ask them who they used, were they happy with the process, that kind of thing.

Joanna: Then what do you give them? Do you give them like the story, the text, or—

How do you actually work with an illustrator?

Darcy: Everybody wants to know, can I write notes to the illustrator and tell them that this character must have red hair and white boots? Of course you can do that. If you're self-publishing, you are the art director and you are in charge.

I prefer not to do that. I prefer to pick out an illustrator that I think has professional skills and an imagination of their own. So I give them my story, then they give me sketches, and when they give me sketches, then I'm very picky about the sketches.

For example, you cannot in a picture book have every page the same. So it can't always be in the cafeteria. It must move from place to place. You must make sure the character looks consistent from page to page.

There's a long list of things I go through to make sure that the illustrations are right at that point. So when I get the sketches, they get a long letter and I want a revision of their sketches.

Joanna: So you've given them the whole story upfront, then they've given you the sketches, then you've gone back with a letter.

How many revisions are you looking for in that process, and is this all set out in a contract upfront?

Darcy: Yes. I always do contracts to make sure everything's understood. Usually the contract will say that I need 14 double-page spreads plus a spread for the cover and a spread for page 32. So I'm asking for about 15 to 16 illustrations and within that, then they must tell the story.

So they get the manuscript. I try not to give them too many directions on where it goes and just see where they take it. Usually they're much better than I am and usually work well.

Joanna: Yes, we all have different gifts, right? Different interests and different skills. Your skill is in writing as is mine. So that's what we do.

Darcy: I've found I'm actually a pretty good art director though. I really have a vision for what this should look like in a picture book, so I know how the story has to flow well.

The pacing is in the pictures also. So you have to think of all the things you would in a novel, like pacing, characterization. That comes through in the story, so I have to make sure all of that is right in the sketches.

Once the sketches are approved, then it's not fair to ask them to change. You cannot do those last minute changes and go, “Oh, I want those white boots.” No, no, no. That's not fair to the illustrator.

Joanna: Yes, so treating them like a professional.

What about copyright assignment? Are you getting that in the contract?

Darcy: Yes, everything's in the contract. There are different ways to do it. You can do a flat fee where you take all rights or you can negotiate a royalty payment. It's all in the contract.

Joanna: And if people want templates for those kind of contracts?

Darcy: That's the difficulty, isn't it? Because I'm not a lawyer, I don't give them templates, but there are reasonable literary lawyers.

I'm glad to give them referrals to some literary lawyers who can do it, and usually they have pretty much a boilerplate and for less than $500 US, you can get a template that you can use multiple times.

Joanna: There are also author organizations that have these kind of templates. The most important thing here is you need to sort that out upfront, and absolutely some of the ones I've seen, they do also include things like you can have one revision on this type of level or whatever.

It's the same with covers, right? If you're doing older children's books, we are respecting other people's time and professionalism.

Darcy: Yes, absolutely. You know, you may want one or maybe two or three revisions at that sketches stage, but after that, when they give me final art, there's almost no changes because we've hashed that out early. That's where they want you to is in the sketches stage, because that's where they can make the changes the easiest.

Joanna: So another challenge is quality color printing, because as you said, most of your sales are going to be in print.

Talk a bit about printing and distribution and how you manage that.

Darcy: So I use three print-on-demand printers. I use Ingram because that reaches the wide distribution that I need, that goes to the schools and libraries and the education distributors and goes out in the world internationally also.

So Ingram's quality is what Ingram's quality is. I think if we go into this and say we're going to print-on-demand, we need to accept what they do.

I mean, people complain about everybody. Every printer gets complaints, but I think they all do a reasonable job. They correct mistakes when they're made, I think they do fine.

So Ingram's print quality is good. It's not offset printing. It will never be offset printing, but we do print-on-demand because the economic issues make sense.

We don't have to put a huge investment upfront of ordering 10,000 books. Then your money is tied up in that inventory and you can't recoup and you can't move on to the next book until you sell those books.

So I don't think that's wise for self-publishers. I think it's wise to be more nimble. So then the print-on-demand makes a lot of sense.

Then the second one I use is KDP, because I find that Ingram and KDP don't always work well together. So I just go ahead and upload it to KDP. It's always available on Amazon. It's never a problem.

Then the final one is I use Lulu and I love Lulu's quality. They talk about great looking books. They have a coated paper, 80 pound coated paper that accepts the ink really well. So the books just look much nicer from them. I use them for the back end of my Shopify store, and then anytime I have special orders.

So last year, my book Magnet came out and I got an order of 600 books that would be used for a public television station that was having an event. So they wanted 600 books to give people, and they ordered that. And yes, Lulu is where I print anything like that because the quality is just so much better.

Joanna: So then with that example, the 600 books, I mean, one of the reasons, as you said, we do print-on-demand is because we don't have to pay for those print runs, but also we do make higher profit because there's higher price per book.

So how do you manage the profit side of it with such high printing costs when the price of books just hasn't really gone up? With inflation, people still expect to pay the same thing.

With those 600 books, how did you make a fair profit there?

Darcy: So I price my books high. You cannot compete on price. I can't sell my picture books for $8.99. They are $11.99 for an eight and a half by eight and a half, full color, 32 page picture book. $11.99 is outrageous, but that's what I have to charge and they sell. What can I say? They sell.

Joanna: Plus shipping with your Shopify store?

Darcy: Yes, but I charge them shipping. So then you negotiate prices and you just make sure you're making a profit of $2 or $3 a book just like anybody else. People fight against that too. They go, “Well, I need my little chapter book just to be $6.99.” And I go, “Well, you can't make a profit.”

You must think as a business person and you must price accordingly and then write a really great book that they will buy anyway.

Joanna: Yes, I mean, this is the whole point. We are not competing on price. We cannot compete on price or shipping. Like people say to me, “Oh, well, but if I order from your Shopify store, it's going to take like two weeks or something.”

I'm like, “Yes, because I'm a small business. My printer is a small business. It gets printed, it gets sent. I mean, I'm not Amazon.” Literally then people will go, “Oh, right. Yes, I understand,” don't they? I mean, once you explain it, people understand.

Darcy: So if I have a large order, like 600 books, if I have three months to deliver, then I'll do an offset run, but I don't always have that luxury of having three months to deliver. They usually want it in two weeks and then Lulu can deliver. Lulu always delivers well.

Joanna: Right. Okay. So I guess you sort of addressed this a bit with saying, look, the quality is the quality, but I do find children's authors in particular can be a little bit precious about this, and they're like, “Oh no, this has to be perfect, so I have to use offset printing.” Given that you have more than 70 books—

I just can't see how it's practical to have a business with so many different books and insist on incredible quality every time.

Darcy: I can't make a profit that way. I can't have a stock of even 500 books of 70. I can't even physically, like a physical warehouse, let alone the price. I can't tie up my money that way.

So for me, print-on-demand is the only way that works. I cannot do the offset printing. Again, I do offset printing if I have large orders and I have plenty of time, but that's the only time I can get that kind of quality.

So, yes, it is different, but there are printers now who are approaching offset quality with print-on-demand. The newer printers that are coming out are very, very good.

Joanna: They are, but again, we have to look at the pricing there because the price is also higher. The quality of the paper and the ink and all that.

Of course the same is true for anyone. I mean, like for me with 45-plus books, I never have kept stock, but you just don't know. You don't know which books people are going to buy on any given day. So having print-on-demand just makes sense.

I think people who are just starting out, they're like, “Oh, well it's only one book,” but it's like, well soon it won't just be one book.

Darcy: Well, we hope it's not just going to be one book. I mean, I want a career. I don't want just a single book out there.

Joanna: Then I guess just circling back on anything that's different, because of course—

You do nonfiction books for children, as well as fiction. Is the process just exactly the same, but you don't have a story necessarily?

It's more like facts and things.

Darcy: Most of mine are narrative nonfiction. So I'm usually telling the story of a scientist making some kind of discovery or an animal. And usually it's not a species, usually it's a particular animal that's done something amazing.

For example, Nefertiti, the Spider-naut is the true story of a spider that went to the International Space Station. She's a jumping spider. She doesn't spin webs. She jumps to hunt. And the question was, could she jump in space? Because if you jump, you float away.

So would she starve to death or would she adapt somehow to that microgravity of the International Space Station? She did indeed adapt and she learned to hunt in space and lived long enough to come back to Earth.

Joanna: What did she eat?

Darcy: Well, they had fruit flies, so they had a little habitat she lived in and they raised fruit flies for her. They raised three generations.

Joanna: She wasn't a stowaway. She was deliberate.

Darcy: No, no, no, no. It was a deliberate experiment on the International Space Station.

Joanna: Oh, that's really cool. So how did you decide to do that book?

Was that a commission or is that just something you are interested in?

Darcy: I heard something on the radio. Then what I like to do is original primary research. So I contacted the scientist who's in charge of all of the live animal experiments on the International Space Station.

She lived in Colorado and my daughter lives close, so we went to see my daughter and I set up an appointment, interviewed her, and wrote the book.

Joanna: I love that because like you said, I mean this is creativity, isn't it? It's kind of hearing something and then making it. So does that book sell or is that just something that you did and it's just a passion project?

Darcy: No, no, no. It sells really well. The cover either repulses people because it's a very close-up of the face of the spider, so they either hate the cover or they love the cover.

For example, I had a school right when COVID hit that ordered 1,400 copies because they wanted to give one copy to each of their fourth graders to read during the summer. That one has licensed other things also, like for reading programs and things.

Joanna: Well, let's talk about that then, because bulk sales to schools is something that children's authors often can do very, very well that the rest of us struggle with. So tell us a bit about that and—

How can people can think about things like bulk sales, which is when you sell many books at once?

Darcy: Bulk sales come and go. You can't necessarily predict them. What I do is I really pay attention to the science curriculum. I make sure that each book I write and produce fits the curriculum some way. So I like to say that teachers don't just like my book, they need my book to adequately teach sound to their students.

So my book Clang is about a German scientist that went to Napoleon's court, entertained Napoleon with his sound experiments. Kind of like Bill Nye the Science Guy does—entertained him. Then Napoleon funded his work.

So in the book, there's everything you need to know about sound, how sound waves are produced, vibrating strings, vibrating air columns, all of that. It's also a great story about this scientist who goes to Napoleon's court.

So I think teachers need my book to keep kids interested in that topic. So if it fits a curriculum, then it's more likely to be picked up for reading programs, for summer programs, for summer camps, that sort of thing.

And so my book on AI, about the story about Lee Sedol playing against AlphaGo, that sold—suddenly I get on Ingram, it sold a thousand copies and I'm sure it was for a summer camp.

Joanna: Yes, that one—we're going to circle back to AI, but let's come on to marketing, because I'm sure people listening are going, “Well, I want to do that. How do I sell all of those books?”

How are you getting your information into schools?

I mean, obviously you are in the USA, it's a massive country, so how are you doing that? Marketing to schools, in particular, and libraries, I guess.

Darcy: Well, everybody says go do school visits. Yes, yes, yes. You can do school visits and you can make money that way, but I prefer to try other avenues because school visits are limited to the length of school year. You might have 150 days possible and I'm not going to go out for 150 days doing school visits.

So instead what I do is reach out to organizations in the United States. Well just this month I've been to the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media. That's the school librarians. At their conference I had an audience of 60 or 70 people and I talked about my 20 STEM books.

Then the next week there was a leadership conference for the Arkansas Literacy Association, and they brought in leaders from the local councils around the state, 20 councils.

So there was about 60 or 70 people. Again, these are the leaders, the opinion makers in their region. They did a “build your stack.” So they bought 90 books and each person got a free copy of the book, courtesy of the organization.

So what you have to do is find those sorts of organizations in your area, in your state, your region, and say, “Can I fill out applications to speak at their conferences?” For me, that's the audience, not parents.

Parents are a moving target because if their child is seven years old this year, next year they're going to be eight, and pretty soon they're going to be 14 and they've aged out of my books. But teachers and librarians always have those eight-year-old kids coming through their system.

Joanna: Yes, I think that's super smart and super scalable. I mean, some people really love going into the schools and they love teaching at that level or whatever. I think that's a really interesting, but it's not scalable though.

Darcy: No, it's not. I feel like there's other revenue—like some people talk about getting paid for that speaking. It's basically paid for doing assemblies and stuff like that.

Joanna: But as you say, yours is a more scalable approach.

So is that the same way you hit librarians as well?

Darcy: Yes, yes. I'll be going to the Arkansas Library Association Conference in October. So that's just local. Then I also reach out to national organizations. I've spoken at the National Science Teachers Association conferences, just went to the American Library Association Conference.

So there are many of those regional and national organizations that focus on kids and kids reading that are my target.

Joanna: So those STEM books, have you really done a lot more of those because those are the types of books that those markets want?

Darcy: Yes, those sell really well. If I find a topic that's not been covered well with other books, then I can write a book that does pretty well. Then I can still write the fiction that I like, and some of those do well, and some of those don't do well. The bread and butter is probably my STEM books.

Joanna: Yes, because they, as you say, would be a lot easier to sell if that's a topic that is covered at that age group.

Then just a broader question about age groups. You mentioned you have four children, and I often meet people and they want to write a kid's book, and it's often they're writing a kid's book for the age that their child is.

Then sometimes they grow out of the idea because their kid is now a lot older than they were and they've changed their mind about the book, or it was the wrong kind of age. Now, obviously your kids are presumably grown.

Darcy: Yes.

Joanna: So what advice would you have for people listening who feel like, “Oh, I want to write a book for my kid,” but are wondering—

How does that turn into a business?

Darcy: Katherine Paterson is a well-known children's book author. She wrote Bridge to Terabithia, which was a popular movie about 10 or 15 years ago. She once said that when she reads an adult novel, she hears an orchestra, but when she reads her own work, she hears a flute solo.

I just write flute solos. I don't write the big complicated orchestral pieces. It's just not the way I write. So you just need to find what's your strength and what's your passion.

I like children's literature. I read it all the time. I'm reading picture books, novels—I'm reading all the time. I just like the genre. So find a genre that you like and dive in.

Joanna: Right. So you can keep writing for an age group if you keep reading in the age group, even if your kids have grown.

Darcy: Yes, absolutely.

Joanna: Yes, that makes sense. I mean, you have to know the genre and, of course, tastes change as well. I mean, even since you started in like 2012, there's a lot more diversity now in children's books and that's a really important development.

Also I guess, translations—you've moved into translations and licensing.

How have translations and licensing worked in terms of the business?

Darcy: Translations—I did a test last year of five Spanish books. They've not sold particularly well. I need to find new ways to market them, but it was an experiment and I need to find new ways to market them, frankly.

However, I do have an agent in China, and they just sold a nine-book series to a Chinese publisher. So we'll see how that goes. They have also sold a six-book series to Korea. So working with a foreign agent has worked for me.

Joanna: Yes. I've sold into South Korea as well. They clearly have an interesting book culture.

Okay, and then just coming back on the AI side, because you mentioned your children's book about AlphaGo beating Lee Sedol in 2016, as part of your Moments in Science series. So I wondered—

How are you using AI tools as part of your creative and business processes?

Darcy: Well, I do use AI sometimes, so I love Google NotebookLM for research. I think the AIs hallucinate too much to let them do my research, but when I do the research myself and I find research reports, I drag them into NotebookLM.

For example, my new book out this year is NOT Extinct. It's about the Takhi horse, commonly called the Przewalski's horse, which in the 1960s was considered extinct in the wild, and they have worked for decades to bring them back. Now there's about 3000 in the world. So the story is about that process of conservation of the species.

So I found tons of research reports and I dragged them into NotebookLM, and then I asked it to give me a timeline and it can go through it, and it annotates the timeline for me.

It says this came from this report so that I know that it's documented really well and I can trust that the research is there. I really like that one once we get away from, can it do real research and deal with facts?

I do use it sometimes for outlining. I like Claude better than some of the other platforms, and I do use it for book descriptions sometimes.

Joanna: I would say that Gemini Deep Research is, I think, the best in terms of—

Have you used any of the Deep Research?

Darcy: I have not. No.

Joanna: So Gemini Deep Research, I would say is extremely good and has a very, very low hallucination rate. So that would be the one I would suggest for research people.

Like you mentioned earlier that many of the illustrators use Adobe tools and of course Adobe has Firefly, it has generative AI now.

How much generative AI is being used in the illustrators' work, or is that not even something you worry about?

Darcy: So far it's not been used very much. Most of the illustrators, I see their sketches at first and then they generally do digital work, but it's clearly their work. There's no question on most of them so far. That will come up, I'm sure in the next five or 10 years, but so far it's not been an issue.

Joanna: But it's not something you are embracing because, like you said, you know what you want. So you could be doing this yourself, for example.

Darcy: So I have one story. The Kitty Tuber series. It's about cats who make videos and so they're kitty tubers. The main character is Angel and she has one blue eye and one copper eye. I can't tell you how hard it is for ChatGPT to do a cat that has different colored eyes. It's just almost impossible.

Finally, I think last week I tried it, and it's finally getting to where it can do it, but it's a difficult task. The programs just aren't there yet.

Joanna: Again, I would suggest Midjourney, which is excellent. I know quite a lot of people doing kids books on Midjourney and you can do consistent characters now. So I think there's a lot of potential, and certainly for marketing, even if you don't want to use it for actual creation of the books.

Darcy: I think that's coming. I don't think you can stop it. I think it will be lovely, but I just haven't done it yet.

Joanna: No, absolutely. Well, you've got your processes for sure. I did want to ask you, because we were saying before we started recording, we've kind of known each other online for a really long time now, and you have managed this career now for a long time.

What are your tips for longevity in the market?

Both, I guess, in terms of the business and the mindset and just staying the course? Because both of us have seen a lot of people leave the industry in the time we've been doing it.

Darcy: A lot of people do leave, and I'm sad when that happens because that was my impetus for doing this, is to stay in the business. I think that's one of the reasons I wrote this new book, Publish. I made the mistakes so other people don't have to.

I think staying in the business just means that you stay excited about your work. You find things that you want to write about and you are passionate about. I mean, why do we write at all? Because there's some question that we want to answer or there's some bit of information we want to pass on to kids.

I think you have to keep finding that center and just stay really positive. Keep up with the industry. Don't think that it can be run the same way all the time for business.

I am not a very good business woman. I started with no information. I've never taken even an accounting class. So accounting just killed me at first. It's really hard for me to do the business, but I think you just have to keep pushing and trying. So I'm very curious, and I research and solve problems.

Joanna: Yes, I think that curiosity is what keeps us going, to be honest. I feel at this point that if there's still books I want to write, then I'm just going to keep writing them.

Darcy: Absolutely.

Joanna: And yes, we both run businesses, but there are lots of better ways to make money than writing books, especially children's books.

Darcy: Yes.

Joanna: Which is fascinating. Okay, so tell us—

You have a Kickstarter running right now. Tell us about that and a bit more about the book.

Darcy: So Publish is a book about self-publishing children's books and making a success at it. I did make all the mistakes so you don't have to.

I've been doing a blog called IndieKidsBooks.com for three years and writing things on there that I thought would eventually wind up in the book. Mostly they're about what I'm working on right now, what I'm worried about, what the current state of publishing is like. So it's a great resource for you.

But I wanted to put things together in a book that would explain the process for people who don't do this, who just come to it with curiosity and go, “Can I do this?” It's not easy. Self-publishing is never easy. You have to do everything from the creative to the accounting. It's not easy, but oh my gosh, it's fun.

I want people to get that. I want them to understand that it's not a horrible thing. It's not being put in the ghetto. I submit my books to awards, and I win awards, and I make money. You can do that too.

Joanna: Fantastic.

Where can people find you and your books online?

Darcy: So the best place to find my books is MimsHouseBooks.com, M-I-M-S-H-O-U-S-E books.com. And if you're interested in self-publishing, IndieKidsBooks.com is where I kind of chronicle my journey.

So you can find the Publish book on Kickstarter. Right now it will be live when this recording goes out. It will be also available for pre-order on Amazon, but look for the Kickstarter. I think you'll find a lot of things on there that are interesting.

Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Darcy. That was great.

Darcy: Oh, thank you so much.

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The post Writing, Self-Publishing And Marketing Books For Children With Darcy Pattison first appeared on The Creative Penn.