Hannah's Publishing Updates - Fall 2025

Saying goodbye to summer is sooo hard, but a family camping trip to the Cape Henlopen Beach was the perfect way to end the season. We rode bikes and played in the waves all day, and watched the stars come out at night as we roasted way too many marshmallows :) Yum!

September is ALWAYS exciting for me - I get to meet my brand new students and begin another year as an ELL (English Language Learner) teacher. But, this September is even more exciting as I get to start counting down the months until my debut picture book comes out in Fall 2026 with Free Spirit Publishing!

When I've told friends and family that I have a picture book coming out, their first question is often Where can I buy it? (as in, where can I buy it now?) because if you're not in the picture book industry, you may not know that it typically takes YEARS for a picture book to come out.

1. If you want to publish a picture book (or any book), step one is to read as much as you can in the genre you want to write in. There's no shortcut around this step. If you want to write a humorous fiction picture book, read 100 of them. If you want to write a multi-POV Middle Grade novel, read as many as you can get your hands on!

2. Step two... write the thing. This can include research, revision (after revision, after revision), and getting feedback from your critique group (I happen to have an INCREDIBLE critique group of amazing writers/human beings who have become my dear friends!).

3. If you're publishing your picture book "traditionally" (as opposed to self-publishing) the third step is getting a literary agent to represent you and your work (some writers skip this step and go straight to step 4, but it's not common). I was fortunate enough to sign with an amazing agent, Kaitlyn Sanchez of Bradford Literary Agency. Check out this article that 12x12 published about How I Got My Agent!

4. The fourth step is selling your manuscript (words only), or your dummy (words and illustrations) to a publishing press. If you have an agent, the agent handles the negotiations. If a press is interested, negotiating the publishing contract can take weeks, months, or even a year.

5. Then, a million things need to happen - things like editing the story with your new editor, the publisher finding an illustrator and negotiating a contract with them, the illustrator submitting and revising art, just to name a FEW!

So, even though Free Spirit Publishing expressed interest in my story over a year ago, I still have a bit more than a year to wait until I can hold it in my hands!

In the meantime, I've been super busy with edits for this story, writing and revising other stories (including a Middle Grade novel), learning the art of rhyme (through Renee LaTulippe's Lyrical Language Lab classes), and working on my illustration skills (I just started a new course through the School of Visual Storytelling).

I promise to keep you posted with more updates about my picture book debut as we get closer to the release date! I hope to share a bit about my story itself, and the name of our illustrator in my next newsletter!

Things I'm loving:

1. Fireflies

2. Finding new-to-me book stores (like Ren's Coffeehouse and Books)

3. My son's comics that he draws daily

4. The You May Contribute A Verse Podcast

5. The movie Bookworm

Things I'm grateful for: 

1. The gift my bestie got me: The Book of Alchemy by Suleika Jaouad and a journal to go with it (AND pretty pens!)

2. Groups that fight book bans

3. The 5 Calls app (makes calling reps about things like book banning and other pressing issues really easy!)