how to crowdsource a children's book in ten simple steps c. chavez
do you want to write a children's book? perhaps you have a ton of great ideas, but you are not entirely sure where to begin. then, our ten-step workflow will help you crowdsource your book. our family is traveling the world and we wanted to produce a multicultural children’s book about our adventures. while traditional publishing was the first choice, it wasn’t a good option for our type of project. in our search for an easier and more effective means of publishing, we blended ideas and strategies from the startup world, digital media and film and then fused them into our new children’s adventure travel book. acknowledge the complexity of book creation, champion simplicity in the story and it’s design think of crowdsourcing as the age long adage "many hands make light work" and true to the adage, effective crowdsourcing is a powerful tool. as a result, instead of just your creativity, you have access to crowd creativity and innovative global communities. crowdsourcing saves you time, buys you a lot of value and gets your book to market quicker than traditional publishing and distribution channels. the "old guard" of publishing is comparatively much slower which is why we chose to self-publish and set up our own production and distribution systems. another benefit of crowdsourcing is even if you still decided to court larger publishing houses, this is a cost effective solution to test your book concept and to get objective feedback before submissions. according to wikipedia (one of the best examples of crowdsourcing), “crowdsourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model ... problems are broadcast to an unknown group of solvers [‘the crowd’] in the form of an open call for solutions”. so, you could either be overwhelmed with your idea or you could do the same things platforms like facebook, google and many more have done over the years – harness the power of the internet to drive a new idea forward. how to crowdsource a children's book in ten simple steps
successfully crowdsourcing a book requires a well-defined workflow to get your story to market quickly. after tons of researching, trial and error and a limited budget, we have created a ten-step workflow that generates market feedback fast and early. in fact, this is the very same model we used for the adventures of cash and cortez. for any effective book crowdsourcing campaign, you must understand the following: what book type you are to crowdsource? who your crowdsourcing platforms will be? how to structure crowdsourcing incentives? the process of crowdsourcing a book. for the purpose of this article, we are going to assume you already know what type of children’s book you want to crowdsource, so we will not dwell on book types. it is important to note that every task requires a special set of people to crowdsource to. these people are usually found on some online platforms such as fiverr, upwork, galaxyzoo and figshare. these platforms amongst several others would help direct your requests to the specific individuals that can generate the required ideas for your children's books or project. more than 20,000 illustrated children's books are published each year and with such a competitive market, crowdsourcing guided by the ten-step model below, clearly makes the generally difficult adventure of publishing a children's book less demanding. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
crowdsourcing a children’s book in 10 simple steps an important note about this model is each of these building blocks can be produced by the author/illustrator depending on your background and expertise. in our case, we didn't have any experience or skills writing a children's illustration book, so we crowdsourced each step and assumed the book directors role. a book director controls a book’s artistic and layout qualities and visualizes the story while guiding the crowdsourcing community in the fulfillment of that vision. one of the lessons we learned in the course of this project was we needed to run campaigns quickly, so we could either fail fast or succeed fast then move on to the next step of the model. that way, we could run more targeted campaigns based on our specific design and story requirements. half of our campaigns failed miserably as some of the crowdsourcing communities often times over-promised and did not deliver to win a new engagement. based on our experiences, we would advise that you run mini-campaigns to find a good partner for each phase of your book. otherwise, you could waste a lot of time and money. here's an extensive explanation of our ten-step workflow: 01 story inspiration – education through travel education through travel every great book begins with an even greater every great book begins with an even greater story. for our project, we wanted to write a book story. for our project, we wanted to write a book about our children's cultural experiences as we about our children's cultural experiences as we traveled the world. we observed our children, traveled the world. we observed our children, took notes and captured special moments in took notes and captured special moments in photographs. our story development was based photographs. our story development was based mantra - your on an education through travel mantra - your story can come from any creative or inspirational story can come from any creative or inspirational vision. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
02 storyboard concept in order to find a good collaborative creative writer, we came up with a storyboard concept for our campaigns. the storyboard highlights key stories in our travels and imagery. we ran many mini campaigns (e.g., a gig® on fiverr) with our story and our storyboard to see how our writers worked with our story. the goal in this step was to see how creative the writer gets with your storyboard and how well they communicate and collaborate within the scope of your project. this is an important relationship, as the book will need to have edits based on the illustrations later in the book creation process. figure 1 storyboard example for crowdsourcing a book mini campaigns are essential for sifting through the sea of artists in crowdsourcing. the rules we used for initial creative collaborations is the following: do not scope in the story rights or rush orders. do not ask for original source materials (e.g., .psd, .ai, .indd). do not ask for "print-ready" or high-resolution formats. you need to be very detailed in your requests and requirements. review requests based on how they respond to your requirements. stay away from students and “moonlighters.” if you are creating an electronic book, make sure you account for single page spreads. make sure a partner time zone works with your time zone window. check their current workload, as good people are always busy. the goal here is to do a quality check on the work being provided and reduce production lead-time. there is a lot of noise in the crowdsourcing market, so think of this experience as speed dating. failure, in this case, is a sign of progress. so, fail quickly and find your right match. once you have identified the right match, run a more detailed campaign with the aforementioned bullet points as scoped items in your engagement. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
03 write the story we chose a 32-page book layout that has approximately 1,000 words for our book format. putting together this book, we learned that writing the story was the easiest part when compared to the illustrations, book layout and publishing. the writing/collaboration is the shortest task you will have using this model from our experience. for example, one illustration took the same amount of time as writing and editing the story with our writer. it is noteworthy to mention that this stage is essentially your rough draft, so you must be dynamic and open to rewriting your story once your illustrations are complete. once you have your draft story freshly minted, use this opportunity to start brainstorming about your illustrations. there is a considerable balance between laying out your story against the backdrop of your illustrations and making sure your story flows from the front cover to the last page. 04 storyboard illustrations storyboard illustrations we started our storyboard illustration we started our storyboard illustration campaign the same day we finished the campaign the same day we finished the story, so the story was still fresh in our story, so the story was still fresh in our writer's mind before she transitioned transitioned writer's mind before she to another project. the idea with this to another project. the idea with this process is to get some illustration ideas process is to get some illustration ideas that are aligned to the story, so we could that are aligned to the story, so we could put together some ideas for our illustrator put together some ideas for our illustrator campaign. similar to our earlier storyboard, we tried similar to our earlier storyboard, we tried to frame in the passage from the story. the to frame in the passage from the story. the illustration ideas and series of imagery will illustration ideas and series of imagery will give the artist creative room to operate and give the artist creative room to operate and meet the story's spirit. think of this process meet the story's spirit. think of this process as developing a guide or a starting point as developing a guide or a starting point with an illustrator, so they can get to their with an illustrator, so they can get to their first illustration example. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
05 illustrate, illustrate and illustrate illustrate, illustrate and illustrate in in this article, we have said this article, we have said earlier that earlier that illustrations are quite a difficult aspect of the illustrations are quite a difficult aspect of the book production process, the most book production process, the most difficult. the book layout can also be said to be difficult. the book layout can also be said to be in a close contest with that in a close contest with that illustrations create. these two activities are both illustrations create. these two activities are both creatively dependent on each other, so we creatively dependent on each other, so we decided that we would lead with illustrations decided that we would lead with illustrations without any layout requirements. if not if not the difficulty the difficulty without great illustrations that drive your story, without great illustrations that drive your story, everything else seems to be more difficult. to everything else seems to be more difficult. to get an effective layout you need to give your get an effective layout you need to give your contributors high quality content so they can contributors high quality content so they can be imaginative. take the time to find the right be imaginative. take the time to find the right illustrator otherwise this workflow won’t work. illustrator otherwise this workflow won’t work. we wanted to self-publish and take advantage of the ebook market and distribution we wanted to self-publish and take advantage of the ebook market and distribution channels, so we preferred electronic artists that used tools we were familiar with such channels, so we preferred electronic artists that used tools we were familiar with such as adobe photoshop, illustrator and corel's products. this will be a controversial statement, but using electronic artists versus traditional art mediums offered us many advantages: leveraging illustration layers for other digital assets (e.g., book trailers, website imagery, infographics and blog posts) help repurpose the investment. if an artist doesn't work out or gets too busy, you have the art to work with in a standard format that many creative professionals know and use. we wanted to write once and publish many. if the book grows and gets popular and a publisher wants to help retool the book, then you have access to all the art and layers and in an industry portable format. artists on crowdsourcing platforms will sign over creative licensing rights, in most cases contrary to many popular illustrators in traditional publishing arrangements. learn the difference between vector and raster graphics for your illustrations. we were traveling with limited bandwidth, so working with digital illustrations was easier for us to manage. we made changes with our artists via file sharing programs like dropbox and wetransfer. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
we were learning our book in real-time, so having a simple approach to developing and owning our illustrations was crucial. here are some tips we learned from running many campaigns with artists: many artists on crowdsourcing platforms are amazing one-off illustrators, but collaborating on illustrations with the author is a different skillset than basic artistry. most artists have a particular style they are comfortable with, so stick to the styles they know so you can have a consistent artistic style for your book. since an artist can make great illustrations, keeping them consistent across a series of illustrations is challenging for any longer campaigns. flexible, patient and talented artists are few and far between. sometimes, it can take many edits to get an illustration to align with the storyline and layout. as buyers of these services, we have to be patient in the art process and be flexible in our campaigns (e.g., readjusting timelines and budgets). artists on crowdsourcing platforms are not project managers, so we had to manage this process and not rely solely on the artists to drive schedule and costs. be mindful that both parties can improperly scope an engagement, especially bigger projects. scoping a project (e.g., a gig®) can be uninspiring when you are crowdsourcing artists for illustrations and layout designs. we were fortunate that the artists we selected were passionate about putting together great original content. the key is to structure your engagements, so your artist is motivated and producing the required art in a reasonable timeframe. we had one campaign take 4 weeks for a single illustration with little communication with the seller. we are mindful to notice when a project has been under-scoped. we work with the artist and setup a "tip" or bonus on larger projects to help keep artistic quality high while keeping our schedules manageable. another idea to create incentives is to add the artists to the credits of the book. in our case, our artist did a lot of work so we put her on the cover as the illustrator. like any creative project, always budget for more in this phase. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
if the goal is for a long-term relationship with an artist, structuring win-win engagements is important. always remember that you might have to go back to the artist for another project or for changes down the road. artist for another project or for changes down the road. artist for another project or for changes down the road. figure 2 illustration examples for a children's book 06 book cover we actually started with the book cover first, but we should have waited until all of our illustrations were completed. it is much easier to take your illustrations and craft a cover from an illustrative scene that captures the story. important notes we have learned with book covers and the title selection include the following: the book cover is very important to catch the reader’s eye, so take your time on the balance of your book cover art, colors and font type. the title of your book is probably more important than the illustration, so keep it catchy and memorable to drive interest with your cover art. we hired a book title consultant because we felt the book title was important and we wanted objective feedback (publisher, john kremer). you need to reduce your cover down to thumbnail size to see how it reduces for websites like amazon or other platforms that use thumbnails in their book listings. for online platforms, we have less than 3 seconds to capture a reader’s attention. for illustrated children’s books, people actually judge a book by its cover. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
we originally worked with our illustrator for the front and back cover layout. after a couple of layouts, we tried a few different layout artists to get a different perspective. we were able to partner with a creative layout artist that leveraged our illustrations for our covers. once again, we put a lot of thought and ran many mini-campaigns to get a book cover we liked for our story. when possible, see if your illustrator has layout experience. otherwise, you will need to source a creative layout artist. in some cases, there's usually an overlap in the illustrator's skillsets and the layout artist's skillsets. finding the right balance between the two was our and should be your strategy. 07 rewrite the story at this stage of our book, we needed to true up our original story with the illustrations we had collected. we had to make subtle changes to our story, so they aligned with our illustrations. since the illustrations are a time-consuming part of the book, it was easier for us to rewrite our story so it flowed with our drawings and page turns. we left one illustration in our project undefined in case we needed to provide the right illustration to make our story work or fill in any gaps. after editing our book, we were missing a key illustration so it was easy to work with our illustrator to provide the right illustration for our story. you want your story tight and your illustrations prepped before you enter the layout phase. 08 book layout with our amateur background in children's books, we thought once the illustrations were done and the story was completed we were almost there! laying down the story shouldn't be that big of a deal and we probably could just do that piece on our own. we didn't know what we didn't know to even begin this conversation or tackle this design challenge. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
our layout campaigns took as long, if not longer, as our illustrations and cost as much as the art. the adventures of cash and cortez took 13 different layouts before we settled on our final design. for the style and book, the layout became as important as settled on our final design. for the style and book, the layout became as important as settled on our final design. for the style and book, the layout became as important as settled on our final design. for the style and book, the layout became as important as settled on our final design. for the style and book, the layout became as important as settled on our final design. for the style and book, the layout became as important as the story and the illustrations for our travel concept. the story and the illustrations for our travel concept. the story and the illustrations for our travel concept. the story and the illustrations for our travel concept. the story and the illustrations for our travel concept. figure 3 layout examples for a children's book in hindsight, we learned you could always account for your layout when creating your illustrations but for us, focusing on the layout after the preceeding steps was an efficient strategy for the following reasons: trying to coordinate the layout, story and the illustration in a crowdsourcing campaign increases the complexity, timelines and cost. writing a children’s book is hard enough. crowdsourcing adds an extra level of complexity compared to a traditional approach with publishers and illustrators. breaking up the different creative workflows made the project more efficient. leveraging a book director’s role with these many moving parts was a more comfortable standpoint than overseeing and combining several artistic talents to produce our book. our strategy was to create a book in 3 months and it took 5 months while crowdsourcing a website and traveling concurrently. remember that the goal of this project was to take our children's experiences in a short period of time and on a limited budget and get it to publication quickly to keep the storyline fresh and culturally enlightening for our audience. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
09 book media in the vast sea of children's books and online content, how do you get your book to stand out? we knew that marketing was going to be a complete endeavor on its own but while we were putting together our book, we had also been working on a couple of media assets while we were in production. in lockstep with the book director role, we created a book trailer to help share our story. a book trailer is a video blurb, which employs techniques similar to those of movie trailers to promote books and engage readers. in parallel, we have created animated videos with the cash and cortez logos for video intro and outros for any promotions we came up with. for better video performance and enhanced for better video performance and enhanced marketing efforts, we uploaded our video marketing efforts, we uploaded our video assets to youtube and embedded our video assets to youtube and embedded our video link to our website and wherever we could link to our website and wherever we could leverage our media assets. as a backup, we leverage our media assets. as a backup, we created two types of videos - one for amazon created two types of videos - one for amazon and one to promote our website. idea we idea we another implemented was an implemented was an another infographic about children’s books and some infographic about children’s books and some key demographic information using our book key demographic information using our book as an example. once we move on to the marketing phase of our project, we will leverage many of our media assets and test different marketing campaigns. facebook and pinterest will be our initial target platforms based on their demographics. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
10 publish our methodology when it came to producing and publishing our book was to “write once and publish many.” we wanted to produce the book in a way that could be published in many different formats without sacrificing quality. even though we aren’t using traditional methods for producing our book, we have honored traditional publishing guidelines and best practices for availabilty. our book has the following publishing characteristics for our model: a standard 32-page picture book that has an 8x10 portrait layout. illustrations and layout were done with a single-page spread for ebooks. we bought our isbns for our books. we used our background elements to produce a double-page spread for print. our source format is 300 dpi, so we could convert to 72 dpi for ebooks. we allowed for cmyk and srgb color spaces when we put together our book. our book can be printed and is ebook ready without any extra campaigns. figure 4 publishing examples for a children's book one incredibly important design and publishing note we learned was to create big and produce small. remember that contrary to the print world, web and mobile devices are completely different platforms. many crowdsourcing campaigns may or may not give you high-quality assets if you don't plan for them in your campaigns. it is a fairly straightforward process to take a high-quality image or design file and down process to your desired medium. if you want to take a low-quality asset and then convert it to print, it will result in a low-quality product! since we are doing this project as independents, we knew our book would have to be flexible in order to leverage different distribution channels. in the future, if we want to increase our marketing efforts, we want to focus on marketing and not publishing logistics. using this model for our book, we were able to meet the following publishing formats: traditional offset printing for high volume campaigns. print on demand (pod) services for low volume and zero inventory. ebooks with their different platform and distribution formats. www.cashcortez.com cashandcortez
remember, your publishing format or target distribution is a big part of your book launch strategy. traditional offset printing will bring your lowest cost per copy at the highest quality. we didn’t want to commit to a big print order or deal with inventory or fulfillment. this is a format to consider once you get some momentum with your series and you are looking at book margins versus gaining an audience and keeping your costs low. print on demand services have come a long way and we are using them for our first book. note, when you use a format for print on demand there will be a higher cost to produce your book and you will need to share costs with the platform. our focus is using print on demand services and targeting the ebook market because the overhead associated with these platforms are minimal and let us focus on traveling and telling stories. platform and submission formats pdf epub .mob/azw platform amazon createspace - pod amazon kindle direct - ebook ingram lightning source - ebook, pod ingram spark - traditional books barnes and noble - ebook apple itunes - ebook lulu - ebook, pod smashwords- ebook our intent wasn’t to publish to each one of these platforms from day one, but we wanted to have the ability to work with any platform in the future. the adventures of cash and cortez would be on amazon and ingram spark in print and electronic formats. we would also improve our creative reach by working on new marketing strategies as we get feedback from our readers. in closing, what we have learned about crowdsourcing a children's book has greatly helped us with production for our next book. regardless of what happens in the market we produced a family book in a short period of time with minimal costs. we hope the lessons contained in this article would also help others create new books and bring their ideas to life. if you are wondering whether or not this creative paper was crowdsourced? of course it was! how to crowdsource a children's book in ten simple steps