Pete the Cat: You can just... Write things.

I have a complicated relationship with Pete the Cat. 

If you're not familiar with the navy blue feline who sometimes wears shoes and never feels strong emotions, Pete the Cat is a children's publishing phenomenon. 

I have read about a thousand picture books about cats (one of my kids really likes cats). According to the library website, almost 10% of those were Pete the Cat. (This is probably a slight overestimate due to the inclusion of media with similar names, but I'm not going to page through all of the titles.) Amazon lists 63 Pete the Cat books. 

However you count it, James Dean has published a lot more books than I have. (That's zero. Zilch. Nada.) 

The wild thing about this massively successful children's literature powerhouse is that it is so poorly drawn. The colors look sloppy, proportions are wonky, and areas that are too much of a pain to paint (like between the rungs of a ladder) are often just not painted. And yet kids love it. It's outsold Jan Brett. I think they've turned it into a TV show. 

The creator, James Dean, didn't even set out to make kids' books. He was just an artist in the Atlanta art scene painting pictures of his real cat, Pete. IMO, these paintings of Pete are marginally better than the illustrations in the books, but not by much. One day, a musician approached him out of the blue and told him he'd written a song about the cat. The two decided to collaborate, and self-published Pete the Cat: I Love my White Shoes on Amazon. (They disn't even bother pitching the book to publishers.) 

And... The book became hugely successful and got picked up by publishers and now I own a bunch of Pete the Cat books because my kids have been fans for over a decade.

I can't even blame publishers for Pete! It seems kids genuinely like the series.

The important thing about making books for kids, it seems, is to have bold colors, simple shapes, and to just turn out a LOT of stories about your title character. 

Little kids loves serieses. Reading multiple short books about the same character gives them a chance to get to know the character and flesh out their world. Kids get excited when they see a book about a character whom they already know and love. But I can't tell you how many times we've loved a book (most recently: Crispin's Rainy Day) and gone in search of more books by the same author and come up with zilch. 

Of course every author starts by writing their first book, but I can't buy what doesn't exist. Put out sequels, durn it.

And for the aspiring authors out there: just write. Get that book done. Because you can't sell a book that doesn't exist.