Children's Book Design Template | Children's Book Trim Size | Fonts | Text Layout | Book Designer

Your picture book is written. That means you're ready for art, right? WRONG! Getting started with sample art and character designs is fine, but don't go any further than that without getting a book designer on board to lay out your book. Why? Because there are a lot of moving pieces to laying out a children's picture book, and one misstep can cost you a lot of money!
So what does a book designer do for you? They lay your book out into a template that can go to your illustrator. Doing this first forces you to make some decisions:

Best Children's Book Trim Size?
There are a lot of size options for picture books, some more common than others. (And some that aren't available with print-on-demand books, if that's the way you plan to go.) For a deeper dive into size options, check out What Trim Size Should My Picture Book Be.

What kind of art are you using?
Spreads? Single pages? Spot art? Your designer will help you figure this out before you start drawing and end up with pieces of art you can't use. For more information on the different kinds of art, check out What Are the Stages of Picture Book Art?

How does your text fit the page and what font are you using?
This is the big one. A template helps you see how the text fits on the page, which tells an artist how much space they need to leave in the art for the text. But not all fonts take up the same amount of space. That's why picking one early is key to making sure the text fits.

Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:30 Text layout
0:42 Trim size
0:55 Fonts
1:00 Book designer should work with your illustrator and use the book design template to layout text


Find professional children's book editor Brooke Vitale here:
website: https://brookevitale.com
children's publishing blog: https://brookevitale.com/blog
facebook:   / brookevitalebooks  
twitter:   / vitalebrooke  
linkedIn:   / brooke-vitale-b51ab81  
email: [email protected]