All Things Book Making...
You want to publish a story? Become an Author? Become an illustrator? There is not one road to achieving this, but many! I cannot tell you what road is best for you, but I can tell you how I did it.
Here are all my personal musings in processes I use, lessons I have learned on my self publishing journey to becoming a very lucky author and artist!
Children’s books are put under so much pressure.
This is a conversation that I have been wanting to have with everyone for awhile now, I believe myself to be an observational person - seeing people’s word choices and reviews to not only mine, but in fact other books. Children’s books have a lot of pressure put on them, and sometimes it is an unreasonable amount.
Pricing & selling your self published book.
What price should you sell your book at? How do you find that price? How much do you earn selling books? All the final questions swirling in your head about selling your self published book, I hope I have answered here.
Marketing your self-published book.
Everyone thinks that when you get your book into a physical printed product that the hard work is over, but that’s where it begins. Now its up to you to keep your self published book alive - because if you do not talk about it, nobody will know about it!
Illustrating your book or finding an Illustrator
Illustrating your children’s book can be just as daunting (if not more so) than writing the words. The illustrations hold A LOT of weight in picture books - so here’s my tips on getting started with illustrating or finding an illustrator.
Setting up your file to publish your book.
Setting up you file to print / self publish your amazing book can be harder (or at very least more confusing) than coming up with the idea of the book to begin with! At least for me it was anyway, so here is all the lessons I have learned about ISBNs, file sizes, page bleeds, etc.
BEWARE of vanity publishers!
What is a vanity publisher? Someone who is asking you for money to publish YOUR book! They justify the amount with hollow promises but trust me, you will not get what you think. Vanity publishers tend not to call themselves vanity publishers. Instead, they describe their services as 'joint venture publishing' or 'partnership publishing'.
Where do I print my self published books & why them?
You have the words written now to your amazing, important, and needed story. What next? Most people jump to art / illustrations but its time to do some back end administration in my opinion! Step 2 is finding out where and how you are going to print your books, let me give you an insight to my places and processes.
Writing the words.
So I’ve given you the overview of how I self publish, now let’s get some details laid out - step one is writing the words. Here is what I think is the recipe for success (complete personal opinion and not fact, but experience and also being a lover and collector of children’s books).
“How do you self publish a (children’s) book?”
The authoring and self-publishing world can be a pit of snakes keeping secrets. Here is an overview of how I have created my books (with the backing they are best sellers so maybe SOME of my expertise is useful - fingers crossed).