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Mark interviews award-winning author Darcy Pattison about publishing childrens’ books.
In their conversation, Mark and Darcy talk about:
- Darcy’s background on getting into being an author of children’s book
- The 70 books Darcy has written in the past 13 years
- The number of different illustrators Darcy has worked with over the years
- The Moments in Science picture books Darcy has written with along with the specific illustrator who has worked on a dozen of those titles with her
- The books for authors Darcy is releasing in January 2026 that collect details about the current state of publishing for children’s books
- The challenge of doing layout for a children’s picture book
- The importance of an author being clear on their own definition of success
- How children’s book authors can find the right illustrator and/or designer
- How Darcy fulfills orders online for her books
- Getting her books into education distributors (Follett, etc – Follett can order their books through Ingram)
- The EPIC app and how Darcy earns money from it
- The various reviews Darcy gets, including paid Kirkus reviews (which are important)
- Who you are writing for versus who you are selling to when it comes to kids books
- Fiction VS Non-Fiction
- The importance/difference of being good at illustration versus being good at text (or even layout)
- The challenge of scaling up things like school visits
- The benefit of finding places that will sell a kids’ book in bulk
- And more…
After the interview Mark reflects on the unique element of the two audiences for childrens’ books, as well as the efficient business mind-set Darcy adopted in her approach to how to grow a more scaleable author business.
Links of Interest:
- Indie Kids Books
- Mims House Books
- Manuscript Report (Mark’s affiliate link – use MARK10 to save 10%)
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Mark’s YouTube channel
- ElevenLabs (AI Voice Generation – Affiliate link)
- Mark’s Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Newsletter (Signup)
- An Author’s Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author’s Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark’s Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
- Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
- I Think It’s A Sign That The Pun Also Rises
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
My big take away from this episode falls under the category of building connections. The how of Darcy using the connections she was building to ask questions about how to best place her books has me feeling a little jealous. This is an area so many of writers need to navigate as we search for ways to reach out to our target audience.