Have you ever thought that if you could design and illustrate your own kidlit book then you would be able to save thousands over the course of your writing career, and get faster traction which could mean going full time much sooner?

My name is Andy Gray, and I have over 3 decades of experience in illustration, and two decades illustrating in regular and indie publishing.  

So here’s the deal:

1. it’s going to take you 12 books on average to get enough traction (longtail sales…all that kind of thing) to be able to become a self-employed writer.
2. The costs of writing a children’s book aren’t cheap!  Even conservatively, and ignoring your own time (blood, sweat, tears not included!) you’re talking £500 design; £500 editor; £1000 (fiverr cost) on an illustrator. 
3. And if you go to one of those ‘done for you’ self-publishing companies (DON’T DO THIS!) then you can add another couple of thousand on top of that (if you do…they take a share of the profits and give you whats left)

So let’s run the maths.

£2000 for each book x 12 books

that’s a shocking

£24k costs to become a self-published author

Now you might have that kind of money, and are happy to pay it.  Great!  I look forward to seeing your work, do tag me on Instagram (Onegraydot) and I promise I will follow you and like, comment, that kind of thing.  I love it when someone is successful.

For everyone else…

Paying that sort of rate could mean that you can only produce one book a year and if you are anything like me you’d like to be hitting success in 3-4 years.  You don’t mind doing the work, but you can’t afford things up front.

Only a couple of years ago I was charging the kinds of prices that self-publishers could afford.  I’d gone back into illustration after a career break to train in my other passion (I am a minister now in the Church of England!) and I was just starting to rebuild my brand. But quickly my costs have risen and now few self-publishers can afford me.  And it started to grate on me…

 

My heart is to help authors, like you, to tell their stories.

But I couldn’t help everyone like I wanted to, and I had to take the big clients to help support my family

So I had to work out a way I could serve the big clients coming to me, but still help the indie authors who  mean so much to me. We’re all on the same side!

So I broke down my process.

First I help authors to look at their work and get it ready for illustration.  Are there page turns? Does everything flow correctly?  Part of the process is I script their books, just as if I was writing a super-hero comic or even a movie.  It means I can then pull out all the descriptive words out of the text and keep that word count down.  I make sure their sentences are short and concise. That language works.  Basically, I become an editor… and I can teach this. It’s the design process and overlaps with illustration…

Then I illustrate the book using my process of ‘undrawing’. This is based on years of working doing a hybrid of concept art and illustration.  I don’t see many others if any, kidlit book illustrators doing this, and trust me, it is so much easier than how most people are taught.

Then I help authors to get the marketing machine working.  Most of my authors who follow my process see 100+ books sell with no other effort than this.

I even help people to get their books to Amazon and Ingram Spark/lulu to get everything to the right people… Told you that you didn’t need to pay another company to do this.

For this service, I charge thousands…

But, if you are willing to put in some hard work and practice, I realised I can teach all this.  And teach it to a standard that most authors are happy with. And that’s within 12 months!  Give it that 4 years and you’ll be knocking it out of the park (caveat: put the work in!)

So how about that hardest part: the illustration?

Most people are taught poorly at school how to draw.  They feel rubbish and mark themselves as unable to do it.  Listen, the difference between someone who can do it and can’t isn’t talent: it’s EXPERIENCE. And almost every illustrator will tell you that.  And experience comes from putting in the right work, and the right amount of work.  This forms the heart of what I teach, and I have taught even children to do this: it’s called my UNDRAWING process. (it’s UNlike any DRAWING process you’ve ever used!)

What standard of art do you think you can achieve in just one year?

Theoretically, anything you like.  When I was 13 I couldn’t draw: then in a year something clicked and I produced something in the 80’s that a gallery said was worth £250.  And that was the 80’s! According to inflation that means today, it would be £500… yep a 14-year-old drawing at a £500 per piece standard.  So yeah, you could do that!

But what do you NEED to do to illustrate a book, do you really have to be Rembrandt?

If you look at my homepage you’ll see some very detailed work, and some light, almost cartoonish work.  Here’s the thing: you won’t be able to do the detailed stuff in 12 months, not unless you are some latent artist and didn’t realise it. (You can still do this, but I don’t want to get your hopes up and make false promises).  But you WILL be able to draw the lighter cartoon style, like this…

Oh…and this…

 

(I love drawing ‘fluff’ balls… not as hard as you might think either, following my method)

And I will show you how to do all this whether you are using natural media or digital.

The big news is this: the work you will be able to do in just 12 months will be better than Fiverr.

I can save you £1000 right there

And of course, I will show you how to design and layout your book

That’s another £500 saving

And you will do a pretty decent job of self-editing your book (and I can show you where to get the resource to get you further than you ever felt possible… in fact, I’ll send you the link to the resource in response to you signing up for the email)

Which will get you another £500 saving.

So it could save you around £2000 on your next book (if you do the work of course )

What am I offering?

At the moment I am putting the course together which will cover getting your book edit-ready, illustration and learning to draw ‘better than Fiverr‘ using my own Undrawing technique (which anyone can learn), how to design your books, how to design a front cover, AND how to get marketing, and how to get your books onto the three big self-publishing platforms.  It should be completely ready in September/November time 2019.

And it will cost £100

That’s 1/20 the cost estimation above to self -publish a single book.

And just about the cost of an ISBN which you’ll be buying anyway. (that’s the little number on the back of the book which helps stock and uniquely identifies your book from millions of others)

And once you have learnt this stuff, and put in the effort to do the lessons, then you will have the ability for life.  If you go on to do the next 11 books, you will save literally thousands.

Here’s the best news ever.  If you don’t have to pay anyone else, you can publish as fast as you can get the work done.  So you could be publishing 3-6 books per year!

If all that sounds good to you, then hit the ‘sign up’ button below, and we can stay in touch.  There’s no obligation right now, I’d just like to keep you in the loop for when the course is ready and what will be inside

I won’t share your details with anyone (I have no idea who I could give them to anyway). It won’t cost you a penny.  I’ll send you out the link to the book I recommend which will help you get illustration ready.

I’ll use your details only so that I can send you updates when the course is ready, and if I come across anything I think you’d find valuable – I hate long sales letters so don’t worry, I won’t bombard you!  Mostly I like people to have free stuff.  I put a lot of things on my youtube channel too (Onegraydot).  And I answer questions (just email me…no charge!)

Click the button below and you’ll be on your way!