Some fun facts about our company!

Brainstorming

The author, Sydney, gets an idea for a book and starts brainstorming how the story will go. She thinks through which family is best to portray the story and writes down any key points she wants to ensure make it into the book.

Initial Drafts

Sydney begins to write the story. She often goes through multiple drafts before feeling like she has finalized everything. Sometimes she even moves things around, deletes and adds, and changes words after finishing her final copy!

SEL Review and Revisions

The final draft gets sent over to Amy, our mental health consultant, who reviews and revises the story to ensure we are keeping in line with proper terminology and descriptions of any social-emotional learning and mental health themes.

Editing

The final draft also gets sent to Kathee, our editor, who goes through the entire draft numerous times focusing on editing grammer, puctuation, proper word and phrase usage, overall plot, and general readibility.

Storyboarding

Sydney reworks the final draft into what is called a storyboard which is a document that outlines which lines will be on which pages and has a general idea of what the illustration might be. This is then sent over to Dan, our illustrator. In the storyboard. Sydney outlines her vision for each page and together they collaborate on basic look for each picture.

Sketching

Dan sets to work on sketching out each scene and illustration. He uses the storyboard as a guide to determine characters, and overall feel for each page. He then determines what all he wants in each scene and how to position everything in a way that really enhances what is happening in the story.

Drawing

Dan then begins to draw the illustrations for each page. The medium he uses is graphite and watercolor paper. He then traces over all finalized lines in archival ink and scans them over to Sydney.

Digitization

Sydney uses computer programs to take each hand drawn illustration and turn them into a digitalized format. She then ensure all lines are full and adds any connecting vectors as needed. She resizes the illustrations to the exact size of the book.

Coloring

Sydney uses a computer program to digitally color the illustrations. She creates new gradient swatches for each open area in the illustration and colors the entire scene. She sends progress photos to Dan to confirm her color choices are aligned with his thoughts.

Picture Format

Once all illustrations have been finished, Sydney exports them into another program to begin to build the book. She resizes as need be to allow for printing bleed and to ensure the pictures go where expected for each page. Sometimes, she jumps back into the other program to shift pieces of the illustration to ensure proper placement in the book.

Typography

After the illustrations have been filled in and formatted, Sydney begins to add the words to each page. She edits all the fonts, sizes, and locations to best fit each page. She also adds line breaks to allow for clearer readability and succinct rhythm.

Cover

Sydney uses a specific program to format both the front and back cover, as well as the wrap around full-view cover. She adds the illustrations, title, author and illustrator names, summary, spine, and ISBN.

Registration

Sydney goes through many different processes in which she needs to complete in order to properly register each book and ISBN. She ensures all databases are up to date with the proper book details prior to officially publishing.

Printing

Sydney works closely with an offset printer to go through each page before finalizing and approving the final print file. Then the proof is sent over and the entire executive team pours over every aspect of the book to ensure every detail is correct. Once the proof is approved, the printer prints the first set of books to be sent directly to Sydney who then has the honor of packing and shipping to you!