Make our own dreams come true

(part 2, Serendipity doo da)

Toward a real live picture book

November 7, 2023 — With illustrator, Jenny Kalejs, on my team, we were ready to turn my manuscript into a real live picture book. This was really getting exciting! There were at least 28 illustrations needed and so, with Jenny already working a full-time job, we planned on her completing about one illustration a week. This was January 2022 and I was targeting a late fall 2022 release.

I shared my manuscript and some of my ideas for the illustrations with Jenny. Generally, she’d draw a rough sketch, share it with me, and then she’d complete it with her own ideas, creativity and watercolor magic. As it turned out, Jenny worked better in clusters. So, all of a sudden, there would be several new illustrations. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole process — seeing my words come to life in full color.

Art brightens tough days

In 2022, my publication year, I had open heart surgery for a too leaky mitral valve. The chances of everything going smoothly were over 99 percent, but even so, I asked one of my sons, who had gone through the self-publishing process himself with my Mom’s book a few years prior, if he would be willing to see my book through, just in case. He agreed, “of course, Ma,” he so sweetly said. There were, unfortunately, several serious complications and altogether, I was in the hospital followed by inpatient physical rehab for two months. During my recovery (I became so weak in the coma that I had to learn to walk again), Jenny’s artwork brightened some difficult days.

Pieces falling together

I toyed with the idea of trying to do the book layout on my own, but it’s not my area of expertise. I wanted the layout to look professional and to ease my stress, I opted to hire a book designer. I contacted one of our former IT guys who referred me to John Gouin of Graphikitchen, a small, Ann Arbor company, which worked out great. I only interviewed one designer and was comfortable enough to choose him, saving me time of further searching.

Little by little, the pieces fell together and after some initial research to know where to begin the next stage, I began investigating Amazon Author Central and their Kindle Direct Publishing sites. I haven’t used the sites enough to be totally sure of what each one encompasses so I’m doing some research for this blog post, which also benefits me. I’ll admit, I usually just log in and click around until I find what I’m looking for.

There was so much to learn. I’m not even sure that my brain was back to full speed at this point. I didn’t know yet about the need for heart surgery when I decided to publish my book in 2022. As with many situations, it’s helpful to break your tasks into smaller pieces and tackle them one at a time. Fortunately, Amazon has good support available (I just sent them a question and got a returned email within minutes!) and practically everything can be Googled.

Here are some of the next major steps:

Create your Amazon Author Central account — this is where you set up your author page. The information you enter here (like your bio) shows up on your amazon.com book page, edit the book info here (not the book itself), and more.
Create your Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account — this is where you’ll upload your book and book cover, order proof copies, get sales reports, and more.
HOT TIP: I had difficulty when I uploaded the PDF of my book layout for my Kindle version. Fonts changed, text and images moved. It was a hot mess and I thought I’d have to redesign the book for the Kindle version. I’d joined Facebook community groups of fellow self-publishers. I posted about this problem and lo and behold — I got my answer! Within KDP Help (a great resource), go to Book Formatting > Kindle Kids’ Book Creator. The same PDF worked perfectly here! Phew.
In our case, Jenny hand drew and painted the illustrations. She scanned her original art and it was high resolution for the book designer to use in the book layout.
Once the illustrations were mostly completed, I started working with the book designer. We had to do some tweaking to get pages in the book to flow as we wanted them to. I’m starting work with an artist on a second book (more on that in another post) and first, he is mocking up how the spreads will flow. So, there are different ways to approach these steps.
If you’re planning to sell a hard copy of your book, you’ll need to obtain an ISBN (International Standard Book Number). Amazon can assign an ISBN to you for free but that comes with limitations.* If you’re going to acquire your own ISBN (I did) Bowker is the official ISBN agency in the U.S. Bowker charges $125 for one ISBN or if you’re planning to publish more than one book, you can get 10 for $295. If you think you will sell books in brick and mortar stores, you’ll also need a barcode for each ISBN (Bowker sells those too). E-books don’t need ISBNs. (If you’re using Amazon, they will assign e-books their own identifier, they call ASIN.)
You’ll decide on a publication date and will want to allow at least a few months to promote advance sales of your book.
Once you get Author Central and KDP pages set up and your finished book and cover uploaded, Amazon will take a few days to check and approve your book. Once it’s approved, you’ll receive an email and can order an author review copy to check everything out before the official publication date. Receiving your author copy is a thrill — to actually hold your book in your hands!

Remember that Amazon help and support are your friends. You can ask me questions that I’ll do my best to answer. As a first time author, I learned some important tips for marketing your book that I’ll share in a future post, including some things you might not think of and some things I wish I’d known.

*More about your own versus a KDP ISBN from weekend Publisher