Hello Everyone! I am a recently retired elementary school teacher who loves spending time with her family, reading books, writing books, singing, dancing, and laughing. I hope you enjoy my anecdotes, my experiences, and my sense of humor as I share my point of view on various topics in my blog.
Three of the five paperback books I ordered arrived yesterday evening, and I’m quite impressed. The cover was way more impactful than the first edition. The story was deeper and more insightful than the first. All the tinkering and tweaking I’ve done really paid off. This time my dream of writing and publishing a book was more real than surreal. I can envision this product being sold in a bookstore, sitting on a shelf in a library, and then selected by a child eagerly waiting to read my book. Yes, I said it my book.
I thought of all the books I read as a child and all the books I read as an adult. I could see in my mind the many libraries I’d been to throughout my life and imagine what others would think when picking up my book from a shelf to read. Wow! What an amazing feeling! It’s a feeling of pride in one’s work I’m experiencing this time around. I wish I could share this feeling with the world!
Now it’s your turn to live your dream and develop your passions. Go for it!
Here is the cover of my Kindle ebook.
Leave comments below about how you think I can advertise my book for free outside of placing it on Amazon for sale.
Now that I have finished making revisions on my children’s book; I want to promote and advertise it. So I have to decide how much to spend on promotions. Promoting the book for free is also an option. Right now I will start tiny and just give out some bookmarks I designed. Since the book is for younger children, I know younger children will use bookmarks. Later, I can expand my promotion by creating an ad about the book. On the bookmark, I’ll include a link to my Author Central site. The author’s site has links to Amazon, where my book is on sale.
I am also working on my second children’s book. So I will place polls on my blog to get feedback about the children’s books in demand. I took a while last night to figure out just how to add a poll to my blog. I edited my last post just so I could try to include a poll on the page. However, I took much longer than I thought it would. So I will place the same poll under this blog post again today. Answer the questions as I will monitor your answers for feedback. I’ll use the feedback data when starting my third children’s book this summer. Thanks again to those who like and follow my blog.
I did it! I finally published the revised second edition of my children’s book. My Author Central page is up and running, too. If you’d like to look at it, click on the link below. Wish me luck!
Click this image of my book cover to see my Author Central page.
At of this moment I don’t have my copy in my hands. I’ll have it soon, though. I’ve learned so much more about writing and publishing a book this time around. I know my next book will be easier to publish because of the knowledge I’ve gained. Remember my goal was to publish at least two books in 2019, so I’m well on my way to achieving my goal.
My proof arrived in the mail just two business days after I purchased it. I quickly opened the envelope to find my treasure, I thought, wrapped in bubble wrap. My first impression was, Wow! How professional this book looks! Then I looked inside the book and found the spacing was not right. So I quickly closed the cover and examined every inch. I took a photo of it and sent it to one of my friends who agreed the old cover was more appealing to children. However, I wanted the cover to look more professional than the first edition’s cover. I could easily fix these two items, I thought. Well, one day’s work quickly turned into 3-4 days of work.
About four days later after editing my spacing and reinserting new illustrations into the text, I searched for a photo that would bring my book cover to a new level. Ironically, I already had it in my photo files. So I uploaded the picture, changed the layout and Voila: I had the perfect professional looking cover I dreamed of. Next, I uploaded all the files I edited and previewed everything in the previewers before saving them. So I was ready to publish my book again.
Days later, I created my author’s page and saw the icons for paperback and eBook on Amazon. I was so excited. Then I looked for a way to make an audible book. After much research I decided I’d rehearse and try narrating the book myself. After my first rehearsal, I flipped over my book and found a letter missing from a word in the book summary on the back of the book. So I went back to the book cover online and added the letter to the word. While doing this, I found I needed to edit my author’s photo. I quickly edited it and uploaded the edited photo to complete the cover. Now, the book is ready for the world to see. I sure hope it’s ready! Writing is hard work!
I ordered the proof of the second edition of my first children’s book on Friday. Later, I received an email stating it will arrive on Monday, which is tomorrow. I can’t wait to hold it in my hands and leaf through its pages. There are great feelings of enjoyment and empowerment when holding your own book in your hands. When you create something, you feel more deeply for it. I’m just hoping I won’t have to redo the illustrations, but I’ve been working on sharpening my sketching skills just in case I need to.
Illustrating a children’s book can be difficult work, because you need to study the anatomy of the animal or people you intend to draw. You also need to capture each character’s expressions based on their emotions at a particular point in a story. Then you must decide how many illustrations to include in your book. You don’t want to make the book too long depending on the age range of your audience, so you are constantly counting and limiting everything in the book.
Finally, you must decide between using color illustrations or black and white illustrations. Color illustrations cost more to print, so your book price may be higher. The younger the reading audience is, the more they rely on pictures to comprehend the story, so illustrations become very important when doing this kind of book. So do I revamp all the illustrations, add more illustrations, or just leave the illustrations as they were? Seeing the proof will help me answer that question.
Below are some YouTube videos about illustrating children’s books:
This guy shows how difficult it is to illustrate a children’s book. He is quite talented!
Some people hire illustrators like this one, however, it can be very costly to hire a professional illustrator.
For the last two days I’ve been working on revising and editing my book. It’s been difficult work, but I’m passionate about getting my new edition out soon. The editing process can be tedious and time consuming. If you’d like to have a little help with speeding up your editing process, you can use free tools like Grammarly or ProWritingAid. You can also hire an editor to do the job for you. By now you know I like to do things on my own, so I’ve finally finished editing my book. Now I have to format it.
I hope you find those links to be helpful. Oh. I just finished formating my book. I’m ordering a proof right now. I’ll publish after I’ve read the proof. So wish me luck!
You might have noticed I took a day off from blogging yesterday. I wanted to work on my manuscript for a few hours instead of blogging. So, I located my file on an old USB and opened it. Then I proceeded to read through my story more than ever before. My eyes were like lasers doing a detailed surgery on my text. The main thing I noticed was the text needed better character development.
So, I zoomed in closely on my main character’s traits. I wanted the audience to feel like they might know him or at least understand his point of view. I needed to use more adjectives, only I didn’t want to overdo it. I am not writing this book for adults, so I have to control the level of the vocabulary I’m using. I also need to control the length of the text in terms of the number of pages it will be when I’m done enhancing the characters.
Here some YouTube videos that you might find helpful if you’re developing the characters in your book:
This YouTuber shows how to create characters for childrens books.
This YouTuber shows you how to brainstorm character traits to build a strong character for your book.
My first book was self-published on Createspace years ago. As of 2019, Createspace has merged with Kindle Direct Publishing. So I’ll revisit my first manuscript today and make a decision about whether or not I want to pay for editing, formatting, and a new privately owned ISBN number. I want to take my book to the next level this time. So it’s time to take the book out of the attic so to speak, dust it off, and make it ready for resale.
For those of you out there who are considering following suit, that is you are trying to publish a book through a free source you can watch the video below for a few tips.
Here’s to happy writing! I’ll be back with updates on how far I’ve gone in the process soon. Until then keep writing!
I was on a natural high after my mother’s event, but what was I going to do next? Well, I’d self-published a book a few month’s after my father passed away, however, I’d kept the release of the book pretty secretive and low key. I was a bit afraid of the criticism I might get from people who knew me directly. So I only disclosed this venture to a few of my closest friends and family members. My mom wanted to take a truckload of the books no matter what their condition to sell at a family reunion she was attending that May. You know how mothers are. Anything that their children create is considered a masterpiece no matter what other people think of it. Well, I was able to convince her not to take the books with her. I said I don’t think my book is ready to be released to a large audience yet. I just want to do a trial run on Amazon for now.” As you can imagine my book didn’t sell well. However, I didn’t take it personally. I was just beginning to focus on an old passion I’d had since my childhood. In addition, after losing my dad I just felt like giving birth to something. I knew I wasn’t going to have another child at that age, so why not give birth to a book. I digress.
So one of the things I intend to do now is really working on my writing. I want to rerelease my first book and also publish my second children’s book this year. Writing this blog will also help me to improve my writing by actually writing almost every day. I’m also planning to build a bigger network, audience, and readership so my coming publishing endeavors will be more impactful. I want to encourage people who are beginning new chapters in their lives like me to pursue their passions. Pun intended for the use of the word chapters.
Well, the RSVPs were rolling in quickly and everyone seemed excited about attending my mother’s 80th birthday celebration. I was so thrilled with how the planning was going. Then things started to take a few turns for the worse. My order for the first set of favors had to be canceled due to the company stating they didn’t have any more of the favors I’d ordered in stock after I’d paid in full. The favor company then wanted me to choose a different favor altogether when I had my heart set on getting the color, design, and style of the favor I’d originally chosen. So I had to have my credit card company fight to get the money back from that company while I frantically searched the internet to find a similar favor to order from another company. Luckily the turn around time on that glitch was quick.
The next bump in the road came when my mother’s first cousin became very ill and could not travel to our town to attend the event. He was one of the key speakers listed on the programs that I’d already designed and printed. So I had to become a speaker in his place on my mother’s birthday. Little did I know that there would be more bridges to cross on the road to planning such a meaningful and deserving event for my mom.
Do you remember the dance to My Girl by the Temptations that I mentioned a few days ago? Well, that became the next problem to be dealt with. You see my vision was to have my nephews, each of my sister’s husbands, and my son to perform a dance to the song for my mother on her special day. There was a dress code agreed upon and a rehearsal schedule created to be followed by everyone. However, most of the parties involved could not find time in their schedules to meet together at my house for rehearsal each week. So a few weeks before the event only my son and myself had the dance routine remembered. In an attempt to salvage the performance and have it still be an all-male dance group I asked an old friend of the family to step in because he could come to rehearse more often. However, even he could not remember all aspects of the choreography. So I decided that my son and I would perform the dance for my mother as a duo.
Do you think I would let any of those obstacles stop me from accomplishing this goal of planning and celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday in a major way? Well, you don’t know me too well if your answer is yes. I don’t just walk around obstacles in life, I soar over them always landing on the wings of angels. One cousin from Maryland, another cousin from Philidelphia, my oldest sister and myself all spoke at the event. My son and I performed the dance we’d rehearsed, and I sang a solo to my mother, my angel, on that special day. The ambiance, the food, the favors, the video montage, the dancing, the conversation, and most importantly the memories made that day will never be forgotten by those who attended the event I am most proud of planning: My mother’s 80th birthday celebration. The memory of her smiling the entire day while dressed to the nines and being surrounded by loved ones as we all danced and celebrated her life will always be with me. She will be 81 years young this spring.
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