I have two big hurdles to jump for Chronicle Books to even consider my book. The first is the overwhelming number of submissions they (and all) publishers receive - and unfortunately the Christmas season is the worst time to submit work as every hack had time to send in their story. After January, things should slow back to the (still enormous) level of submissions and I'll hopefully get a looking at then (I'm hoping by March, at least).
The second thing against me is that Chronicle books already published a book about a small girl and her balloon. I still chose to submit to Chronicle Books first because they consistently have children's books similar to the style in which I draw and write. And while my book also contains a small child (albeit a penguin girl), our stories differ in several key ways - mine is better drawn, colored, and is vibrant and witty. A bit of hubris, maybe, but accurate.
Anyhow - I have several drawings from my book that I'm coloring - While one should usually wait until someone purchases their story, I'm going to slowly color it in case I need to self publish (inevitably, even the best of stories will get lost in the shuffle of the slush pile in big publishing houses). I would also like to give my dummy book the best chance of getting published by including the strongest color samples (when you're an illustrator drawing your own children's book, you submit a dummy book - this consists of the entire 32 page story with rough drawings, I cleaned mine up in Adobe Illustrator, and 2 to 3 color samples).
Here's my latest painting from Adelia.
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