The first thing to do is get yourself to the children's section of a good book shop and explore and enjoy the books on offer - (tip: if you think this is beneath you it might be time to consider another more suity job)!

You'll find a vast array from picture books to board books, activity books to pop-up books and so on. All aimed at different age ranges and each with a huge range of illustration styles and mediums from stylised digital to intricate pen and ink, from funky collage to painterly oils and acrylics. Don't be bewildered though - be inspired, and also make a note of who publishes styles which are similar in some way to your own - or to the kind of style you want to do - these are your possible employers!

Then get to work - draw draw draw - children and animals mainly although do think about backgrounds too as for years I found these problematic as I hadn’t had enough practice - but now I love painting a snowy scene or a river bank behind my characters (nothing with straight lines though - ask me to draw a kitchen and I'll run a mile). Ideally you want to get together a portfolio of at least 15 images which should include examples of character continuation - i.e. the same character drawn from different viewpoints and in different positions yet still looking like the same character! Also try to include different settings and try to get some action into your illustrations - an illustration brief would rarely involve a character simply walking along - instead they’re in the middle of some action and adventure which moves the story along. Try re-illustrating a favourite story from your childhood or writing your own story and illustrate a couple of scenes from it. Show awareness of page layouts in your samples - the crease down the middle of a ‘spread’ (2 page layout) shouldn’t cut through the middle of a characters face for example, and you also need to leave enough space for the text of the story somewhere in the spread.

When you feel you have a strong body of work get yourself an online portfolio or website to show it off (on the AOI website for instance), and print yourself up some mailers - a couple of A4 sheets with samples of your work printed on them and your contact details.

But who to send them to? This is when we return to our trusty list of publishers we made a note of in the book shop! With this list in hand get yourself a copy of The Writers and Artists Yearbook 2009 from a library or Amazon - in there will be the details of all the publishers you made a note of plus a ton more, alongside incredibly useful articles - I can’t stress how important this book is for starting out! There is also a list of agents if you want to send your samples to them as well (I can definitely recommend this - my agent’s great). Then send a short covering letter and your samples off to the publishers and await some replies - many won’t, and most will reject you so be thick skinned and persevere - and meanwhile keep illustrating and getting better - and keep sending out! It took me a year of doing this before the work started to trickle in - and I haven’t been out of work since.