I had written and sent it in to Boyds mills press .... they gave me a nice friendly reply, that they can't at this time they are not looking for Rhyming stories. That was okay! Sucked to hear, because I had gotten my hopes up. But it was okay! I had already assumed it would be a no, so I had already begun making preparations to do it myself.
Found out the hard way ... JUST HOW HARD children book writing, illustrating, publishing REALLY is! One, I am not an artist, drawing is not my strong suit. BUT, I am not rich and I couldn't afford an illustrator. So do it myself was my only option!
I wrote this story for my kids ... they had given me a line or two and I went with it and made an entire story, they are happy with the illustrations. So I am too. I figure, it was for my babies, if they are happy I am happy and if we can make ONE other person out there happy. Then that is good enough for me!
So I drew the photos, took pictures of them with my phone ... imported them into photo shop, turned them into color pages and colored them. Went through Createspace "they have a formatted template to help you out."
They gave me the option to preview it ONLINE or in PRINT, or BOTH! I chose both. Reading it online I didn't even catch the few mistakes that were in there. Reading in print, I was so happy I didn't hit okay and send that puppy into the world!
FIRST ... I dedicated my book to my three perfect ANGLES .. lol, angles NOT ANGELS like it should have been. That didn't even pop out on me on the computer screen.
I think that we are so used to online, social media stuff and all the bad English with its bad grammar and punctuations that we look passed it unable to see the mistakes because we are so used to reading typos.
SO ADVICE, If you are going to self publish .. PLEASE get the print version!
Without the print, I also wouldn't have realized that I missed coloring in a few spaces. Not to mention when I had gotten lazy and used the blur tool to smooth out my erase lines. My gray blue sky printed out pink because of it.
Either way, mistakes found were fixed! I am just waiting for the print to show up, so I can double check again. Before I hit PUBLISH.
I did place it on kindle version. "I am so confused by the formatting of kindle." On kindle, when you read it from a kindle. IT IS PERFECT. Each picture is lined up with its words. BUT on my iPhone, and my android.... it seems to have a few pictures on one page. I tried to fix it and I hope that I have .... UNFORTUNATELY, because I bought a copy of the one where the formatting was buggered, it wont let me see the updated copy. So I have no idea. I figure, if it gets a bunch of bad reviews thanks to format, I will just take it down and keep it as print only.
If you are interested in the kindle versions for your kiddo's you can get them here.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KO7NV4Q (US store)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00KO7NV4Q?*Version*=1&*entries*=0 (UK store)
Either way, I am super thrilled and excited! Just wanted to share that! Thanks for stopping by and hanging out a few minutes. Wish you all a great day. xxDee
No comments:
Post a Comment