Self Promotion for Children's Book Authors and Illustrators

Guide to Self Promotion, School, Library and Festival Events and Visits for Children's Book Authors and Illustrators

If you are a children’s book author or illustrator, you will be aware of the need to learn and practice the delicate art of self promotion. This will involve a well organised web presence and interaction with your target audience.

The following tips are intended to help children’s authors and illustrators through this process but equally apply to many other disciplines that require self promotion.

I’ve divided it into two sections.

The first section, ONLINE, will help you to create a simple and effective online web presence and to guide you into world of social media, blogging and websites.

You’ll need this to get found and to promote your visits, events and other promotional activities.

The second section, OFFLINE,  will deal with the real world of bookshops, schools, libraries, festivals events and author visits.

Read the full guide to self promotion for children's authors and illustrators after the break...

Ten Terrible Dinosaurs

Macmillan Children's Books publish Ten Terrible Dinosaurs!

Ten Terrible Dinosaurs by Paul Stickland, published by Macmillan Children's Books 2017

The wonderful Macmillan Children's Books have just published a brand new remastered 2017 edition of my children's dinosaur picture book, Ten Terrible Dinosaurs.

I'm really pleased to see this book back in print as part of the wonderful new World of Dinosaur Roar!
Originally created as a companion book for the bestselling Dinosaur Roar! which Macmillan Children's Books are publishing in many exciting new formats.

Writing Ten Terrible Dinosaurs

I wrote the text for this book sitting on another publisher's stand at the 1996 Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy.
I spent many years visiting and working at Bologna and the atmosphere and company of colleagues from all over the world of children's books was always a stimulating environment for an author and illustrator.
Ten Terrible Dinosaurs was one of those lucky texts that just arrived, fully formed, all I had to do was write it down. Remarkably little editing and that doesn't often happen...
The same thing happened with One Bear One Dog and also Bears. I'd love to know how that works...
Ten Terrible Dinosaurs is a crazy colourful children's counting book but a counting book in reverse.
The simple story follows a bunch of naughty dinosaurs, as their mischievous antics and silly japes slowly diminishes their numbers until we're left with just one weary one...
...before his friends live up to their name once again!

Drawing Ten Terrible Dinosaurs

I had great fun drawing and painting all those naughty dinosaurs! 

It was one of those rare books where I sat down with a my favourite pencil and a miniature paper dummy of the book and started drawing on page one. 

I then drew every single spread, in order, in one fell swoop. Again, that very rarely happens!

Usually, I have to make some changes to the characters as I progress through the book but this time I started off with the full cast of characters on page one and for some reason it went right first time. Love it when that happens! 

I wanted to the book to be as bouncy and rhythmic as possible to match the rhyming text, so it was really important to get as much energy into this cast of silly saurians. It was a good day and the whole lot just flowed out and onto the pages of this little paper book.

The miniature paper dummy has 48 pages, hand sewn, drawn in pencil and only 105mm x 148mm

Here are all the rough drawings for Ten Terrible Dinosaurs

Reviews of Ten Terrible Dinosaurs:

 Winner of the Practical Parenting Best Book Award
"..the whole book has an exciting, energetic pace."
"..a funny and beautiful picture book that will make learning to count a very pleasurable task." 100 Best Books
"..an ingenious and entertaining way of introducing counting and subtraction..uproariously funny.." Early Years Educator
"What a welcome return of the wonderfully exuberant dinosaurs so much enjoyed in Dinosaur Roar! and Swamp Stomp... the text is terrific, full of rhyme and rhythm and delicious words to talk about.." Child Education
"..a must.." Parent Magazine

"This is a welcome reissue of a counting down, rhyming dinosaur romp and a companion volume to Dinosaur Roar. The vividly coloured creatures get up to all manner of lively, child-like activities such as dancing, stuffing themselves, playing tricks and more, as one by one they exit or are eliminated from the line-up (Not too sure about one sent off for being ‘too spiky’ what’s wrong with being different?) until just one dozing dinosaur remains. But then …
Great fun, with counting opportunities aplenty and perhaps even better, a chance to let rip with that grand finale."  Red Reading Hub

Dinosaur Roar! and Ten Terrible Dinosaurs

Cover of Paul Stickland's Ten Terrible Dinosaurs

by Paul Stickland

Dinosaur Roar: making a big noise across the platforms

The latest from the team behind Dinosaur Roar!

Nurture Rights, the kids entertainment company set up by ex HIT exec Peter Curtis and Nick Barrington has signed a deal with the Natural History Museum to develop and market its pre-school property, Dinosaur Roar!, based on a classic picture book by Paul and Henrietta Stickland. The plans don’t initially include a TV series though, instead Nurture will work with the palaeontology team at the NHM to create an interactive dinosaur property for the under sixes including an online world, a touring dinosaur exhibition an IMAX experience and a licensing programme including new books, apps and more. A deal with Random House has been signed for the publishing programme. Nick Barrington explains the project...

David Tennant aka Dr Who reads The Christmas Bear

David Tennant, aka Dr Who, reads from The Christmas Bear. 

The BBC has played this several years running on CBeebies Bedtime story on Christmas Eve. 

Just trying out a video presentation in google drive.

Fine Art Prints and posters of Paul Stickland's artwork for the children's book The Christmas Bear are available from 

The Christmas Bear on StrangeStore

Get Rid of The Glooms

Have you got The Glooms? Get rid of them now, it's easy!
See The Glooms on Google Plus!

The Christmas Bear Prints

I have made prints of my children's christmas picture book, The Christmas Bear, available on my Zazzle StrangeStore.
I have made this Google Drive Presentation to show the intricate details of the prints. They took a very ling time to paint! Full details on an earlier blog post here.

Click through to buy prints or the book on Amazon or visit:
 The Christmas Bear Prints on StrangeStore

by paul stickland ©paul stickland

The Christmas Bear

New Prints available from Paul Stickland's Illustrations from The Christmas Bear.

I have made prints from the illustrations which I did for The Christmas Bear, a children's book first published by Dutton in New York.

The book follows a little polar bear who falls into Father Christmas, or Santa's study, warm and cosy, deep beneath the snow in the far, far north, one night before christmas.

I wanted to create an incredible detailed and intricate experience, with thousands of toys and colours to dive into.

It took such a long time to design, rough out, research and eventually paint! 

I roughed the drawings out in pencil to get the 'architecture' and then transferred these, with a light box, on to hard Schoellershammer paper. I then stretched this onto boards and started painting.

I use Ecoline Inks, which have very rich intense colours, they are easy to mix and paint with and they reproduce really well. I use the best sable watercolour brushes that I can afford.

I started by laying down a background wash all over, to set the overall light in the picture and to pull all the colours together when they are painted on top.

Any light areas, such as the stairwell, calendar, bear, beard etc being left white, or near.

I then painted in all the details, pale colours first.

The artwork was the same size as the finished book, 29 x 26cm.

The borders are marbled with ink on wet paper.

I have scanned in the original artwork at very high resolution, which means the The Christmas Bear Prints are very high quality and available in any size up to very, very big!

 Three Christmas Bear Prints are now available on my Zazzle  StrangeStore.

You can buy The Christmas Bear by Paul and Henrietta Stickland from Amazon here.