Researching Book Mechanics

So today I thought I would look at how a children's book would get put together. I don't want to get suckered in to buying software to create one so I downloaded the open source software called Scribus. you can get it here. Its a page layout software and I'm told it does all the right stuff layout wise. The other software you could use would be OpenOffice.org which I always install on new computers, as its handy as bro'. The next thing is to look at how book mechanics works. A book is not just illustrations and words. There is a pace to how a book operates and it is detailed in various pages across the internet. Tara Lazar has got some good technical details on her blog. I suggest if you want to write a kids book you have a good look at what she has to say. The main thing of interest for me was the number of pages an average kids book has and how many illustrations you have to do to fill them.

I also am looking at stories of other illustrators. This documentary on You Tube was most interesting as it unveiled a lot of techniques like using a sketchbook the same size as the finished book.