Mentorship Program

Picture book collaborations mentorship

Receiving input from both the writing and illustrating perspectives, a collaborations mentorship allows individual picture book authors and illustrators, or an author/illustrator duo, to bring your work to its most publishable form and confidently present your picture book to publishers.

How it works

Working with Erica Wagner, an expert editor and publisher with over 40 years experience in Australian publishing, and Craig Smith, a prolific picture book illustrator, a collaborations mentorship provides you with feedback on your picture book from both the writing and illustrating perspectives. This mentorship will help you ready and confidently present your picture book project for submission to publishers.

This 5-hour mentorship for your picture book manuscript and/or flatplan includes the mentors’ reading and assessment time. These hours will be split between the two mentors, Erica and Craig, depending on the mentee’s individual needs and preferences. You may work with the two mentors at once for up to two hours to deepen your understanding of the author/illustrator collaboration process.

Who is this for?

If you have any questions about our Mentorship Program, please email [email protected].

The ASA’s Manuscript Assessment Service can help you get your manuscript to a publishable standard for the consideration of publishers and agents.

A one-hour consultation through the ASA’s member-exclusive Publishing Consultancy Service can help guide you through key career decisions.

How to book

If you’re unsure, please email [email protected] for advice.

For a picture book collaborations mentorship, you will be asked to submit:

  • A 300-word statement including a brief synopsis of the work, its current stage of progress, and what you would like to achieve through this mentorship program
  • A completed picture book manuscript (authors) or completed 32pp flatplan (author-illustrators/illustrators)

If you are booking a mentorship as an author/illustrator team, you will also need to provide the details of the second mentee.

The ASA member fee for a picture book collaborations mentorship is $825 (GST inclusive).

Please note that we ask for upfront payment for all our mentorships. This is to ensure our mentors are paid promptly for their work.

You should receive an automated email confirmation from [email protected], as well as an email receipt from our payment platform, Stripe. Please check your spam/junk folder if you don’t receive these emails after submitting your booking.

ASA staff will attend to your booking within 2-3 business days. We will contact the mentors and notify you as soon as we have more information on their availability for your consideration. You will receive email updates about your booking from [email protected]

Once the mentors and time frame are confirmed for your booking, the mentors will be in direct contact to get the mentorship underway.

Meet our picture book collaborations mentors