On almost a weekly basis, I’m asked for advice from budding authors and illustrators on how to ‘get noticed’ by publishers. They often describe all the things that they’re doing which reads like a laundry list of someone who has read all the ‘advice’ from others about how to ‘break-in’ to publishing. They say they’re attending conferences, listening to other authors and illustrators on podcasts, researching publishers, understanding who’s who in the industry. What’s most curious about these lists that I often get is that ‘writing and drawing’ is always one of the last activities on it, if it’s there at all.
I don’t know if that’s just because it’s so obvious that people feel it’s not worth mentioning upfront, but my fear is that people are spending far too much time ‘getting noticed’ by doing all the things that aren’t making the work.
As someone who never set out to be a children’s author/illustrator (but it happened anyway), my only advice is this: write and draw. Every story you write and every picture you draw is another entry in the big publishing lottery. It’s another chance to learn who you are, what you’ve got to say, and how you want to say it. I’ve been to a few publishing conferences now and you know who I never see there? The people who I aspire to be: Bruce Whatley, Ann James, Jackie French, Shaun Tan, Stephen Michael King, Leigh Hobbes, Anna Walker, the list goes on.
What are they doing instead? They’re spending their time making art. Image after image, story after story. Followers don’t matter. Schmoozing doesn’t matter. All that matters is prioritising the work. If we spend more time prioritizing the work, the work gets better. If the work gets better, eventually it’ll be so good it can’t be ignored.