Bonjour
This week in the blog I want to present you Shanita Allen‘s first self published book : Sleep tiny dreamer.
Shanita commissioned me to illustrate her story at the end of 2018. We collaborated on the creation of the book. I took care of illustrating her story and putting the book in shape so it could be published on Amazon on demand printing service : KDP.
Amazon is the most used self publishing platform. I will not talk about self publishing platforms on my articles, since I do not know every one of them. But I highly advise you this article if you want to know more about what is available.
How did the self published children book adventure started ?
I have been working for a few years in collaboration with Reedsy. I will talk about it further in a future blog post. Long story short, Reedsy in an online platform that links illustrators to authors that want to go down the self publishing road. This is how Shanita and I met. I liked the idea of her book and she liked the illustration style I proposed so we decided to work together.
The begining of the story.
Very early on we agreed that a watercolor style would be best for this sweet and gentle story. And after a few test the hero of the book, Ari, was here :
The story is around Ari and her dreams. It allows for a wide variation of colorful illustrations. The story gives hope and pushes kids to dream big. It’s a very uplifting story that I was really glad to give color too.
Sleep tiny dreamer is a self published book. It means that the author is not going though any publisher. Shanita took upon herself to take care of all the distribution and promotion of the book. On my side I was a little bit more than just an illustrator. I was also a graphic designer and took care of the layout of the book, placing in the illustrations and getting the files ready for printing.
I’m really happy about how the book turned out. I feel like in term of illustration, I hit a cornerstone in my style. Sleep tiny dreamer is the kind of children book I want to do. I am glad to work on the next one. I am even happier to share the process of this new self published children book with you all!
Follow me in the creation of the next book, click here to start with this article.
Let me share with you one last illustration of the book :
For the rest I highly advise you to go on Amazon and get the book for yourself!
There is also a coloring book available if you are feeling creative and want to color Ari.
Follow the author Shanita Allen on her adventure on instagram. She shares positive energy and goes to events to promote the book!
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed having a look inside Sleep tiny dreamer. I hope you will follow the creating of the new book from Shanita and I !
See you next week 🙂
And in the meantime, did you see the other books I illustrated? Clic here to see more of my books!
Super mignon ce livre ! Chapeau pour avoir réalisé les illustration + la maquette ! C’est du boulot. C’est marrant, je ne connaissais pas du tout cette plateforme, Reedsy, je vais jeter un oeil.
Merci ! Oui c’est une plateforme assez intéressante, j’ai beaucoup de mes clients là dessus, principalement pour du livre auto édité comme celui ci. C’est un site qui travaille un peu comme un agent, ils te prennent un petit pourcentage et en échange font de la pub pour attirer des nouveau clients qui sont souvent plus au fait des tarifs corrects que ce des plateformes type Upwork et Freelancer que je me refuse de rejoindre pour leur politique trop basé sur ” le prix le plus bas gagne”. J’ai pus réaliser quelques beaux projets et surtout forger des relations durables avec les auteurs, comme ici avec Shanita! je travaille en ce moment sur le numéro 2 avec elle 😀
nice book
Thank you so much! I’m glad you like it, Shanita and I worked hard to give life to it 🙂