My new Picture Books 101 series on Substack

As I recently mentioned in my keynote at the SCBWI Florida conference, Substack is my current happyplace online. I’ll post more about Substack and how it can help children’s book creators later this year, but I wanted to let you all know about my new Picture Book 101 series on Substack. Target audience: writers and illustrators who are just getting started in creating picture books. My posts are mainly geared toward those interested in traditional publishing, but indie creators may find some of the info useful as well.

Q. Why Substack? Why not just post here on your own website?

While my goal is to still post much of this info in regular blog posts as well as my FAQ, I find discoverability much easier over on Substack (when I post on my website, it’s up to me to actively promote new content on social media).

I’ve been backing off a TAD from social media, as some of you may have noticed. I’m still using it much more than the average person, I’m sure, but I have found that since the Twitter has started its slow-motion self-destructmode, the kidlit community have become more scattered across multiple social media platforms. Twitter remains one of my go-to platforms for connecting with educators and kidlit creators, but it’s not nearly as enjoyable an experience as it once was. There are far more spammers, I notice, plus some of my favorite kidlit creators are no longer on that platform.

I had hoped Post.news would be a new home for much of the kidlit community and was actively working toward helping that happen, but was let down by the constant tech issues and negativity (latter was the biggest turn-off, esp Twitter-bashing and unrelenting focus on U.S. politics).

No platform is perfect, but after putting WAY too many hours into trying to get the kidlit community over to Post.news, I’ve decided that since I’m switching my newsletter to Substack that it makes sense to just embrace that platform.

Feel free to check out my Substack at DebbieOhi.substack.com.