The Publishing Journey
As soon as the idea came to me, sometime in February, I knew that I had to write it, but I put it on the back burner to focus on more practical and pressing matters: housework, making money, etc. One of my favorite YouTubers said something that struck a chord in me, "You're going to be stuck forever" (if you don't act on your goals and dreams now). The next time the inspiration nagged at me, I instinctively tried to shove the idea back into a drawer for later, and a funny thing happened: I heard her say that line in my head. Again, I tried to tell myself that I had other, more important things to do, and again, I heard her voice calling me out, "That's a scarcity mindset." So I sat down and wrote the first draft, and then I cried because I had finally done it, finally written a children's book as I'd always dreamt of doing--and finally found my voice.
Writing the book was the easy part. As a survivor of trauma myself, I knew already what words people needed to hear to find peace. I just wrote the words that I needed to hear. It did get a bit tricky as I moved towards preparing the print edition of the manuscript, as global distributors prefer a certain number of pages and I was about 20 short. I had to come up with another ten affirmations, which led me to choosing some quotes from writers who came before me for Wings. ChatGPT even offered up a good suggestion or two, and it contributed a couple of the images, too.
Most of the images came from Midjourney, although a few were generated in Canva, I think. The $15 tier just did not product the same results so I invested in the $30 plan, as the personalization it offers can't be beat. I also paid $9.99 for Adobe Express and $15 for Canva monthly. My subscription to these software suites was the bulk of my production costs, and they were well worth it. After generating the pictures in Midjourney, I used Adobe Express to edit and touch them up, ran them through an AI resolution upscaler and file compressor, and designed all my page layouts in Canva.
The first step was to get the ebook out on Amazon, which was easy and free to do in Kindle Create via a PDF that I extracted from Canva. Getting it to other outlets was trickier, as Draft2Digital's formatting was alien to me at first and took some getting used to. I used Google Docs to make a simple docx file, which was much less of a pain than PDF formatting at least. There was a small learning curve, but once I got the hang of it, D2D was almost as easy as Amazon--and also free!
I thought I was ready then to get print copies into bookstores, but I still had a lot to learn. I tried several PDF editors and fumbled around before ultimately choosing to assemble the manuscript in Scribus, which is free. I struggled with random errors for the first week or so, and by the second week, it was a breeze. ChatGPT helped quite a lot with overcoming the different error messages that Scribus threw out at me as well with formatting files to the specific standards of different distributors.
I thought the various distributor platforms would be difficult to work with, but it was fairly straightforward to work with Lulu and Bookvault (IngramSpark not so much). This is where the rest of my product costs went, as Lulu has a small fee and both companies requiring authors to order proof copies before distribution will go into effect. I don't blame them. Holding imperfect proofs in my hand made me notice things that I hadn't noticed on screen and made me more determined to perfect the books quickly before any orders were placed.
The majority of the imperfections involved the jacket, particularly the spine due to the low page count but also the sizing of the files and alignment of the text and images. This has delayed the release of the hardcover version by weeks. The ebook cover was easy to make, and I got the paperback jacket right the first or second time. It took a few tries to get the Lulu hardback jacket to look right. I finally finished the Bookvault jacket tonight, and it took 10-11 takes to get it right. I am confident that it is perfect this time and will be worth the work and wait.
The reason file formatting is such a complex task isn't because it's extraordinarily difficult or anything. It's not. It's because Lulu, Bookvault, and Amazon all have different guidelines. Lulu makes you add your ISBN barcodes to your book manually yourself, whereas other distributors don't. Bookvault adds the ISBN to the covers but wants you to leave a blank page for it to insert copyright information. Amazon insists that you use KindleCreate. They also use different printing equipment and materials, so the jacket sizing varies from platform to platform. Authors basically need a different manuscript and jacket for every distributor. For me, that was 3 manuscripts and jackets total.
Writers can publish through Amazon alone if we want, but their global distribution network isn't as strong as Ingram Spark, which is preferred by bookstores over Amazon. I found Ingram difficult to work with and chose to pay the small fee for the higher quality service offered by Lulu, which distributes through Ingram's network. Amazon didn't offer hardbacks in the size and shape I wanted, and Lulu is expensive so I also chose to distribute through Bookvault, which lets me offer the hardback to my direct customers at a lower rate than the bookstore Lulu version will cost.
Here is where everyone winces: the cost. The paperback is priced at $12.99 and the hardcover will be priced around $29.99. It sounds like I'm being greedy, but that's as low as I can get it. Merchants expect a 40-55% discount, and some distributors force that. The printing and shipping costs are low, only about $5-7 per book, but everyone involved in the sale has their hand out. I get only $0.83 from global distribution for paperback sales on Amazon. If I price it any lower, I get nothing. I wanted pricing to be as universal as possible, so that is the paperback price everywhere. I am taking a little more per book on the hardback because I'm marketing it as a premium product. It is, after all, eighty pages, forty of which are full-color, full bleed illustrations that span the whole page.
I think I deserve a little profit as compensation for my months of hard work and reimbursement for my monetary investments, especially considering that I am giving Never Let Go away for free at every major online outlet, have given away over 50 copies of Wings, and intend to ultimately donate as many copies as I can to schools and nonprofits at no cost to them once I have garnered the social proof needed to solicit corporate sponsors. That is the stage I am at right now: marketing, the final step of writing, the phase of book-publishing that never ends. Sales and downloads drive rankings. Reviews drive sales and downloads but also build trust the trust needed to secure donations. The first important milestone is 50 reviews, as this is the point at which algorithms at Amazon (and other literary corners of the internet) begin to notice, offer promotions and discounts, and recommend your book in suggestion carousels.
I have only four for Never Let Go, but I have not made much effort to change that as I have been focusing on the launch of Wings. Wings has at least 30 five-star reviews, a couple four-star reviews, and zero bad ones on Amazon for a rating of 4.9, which makes me feel very proud. It even ranks top 100 in one of its categories from time to time. I was so focused on Wings that I never really bothered to track Never's performance. Just this week alone, it has been #1 in two categories and top 5 in a third. It has slid up and down the ranks all week, nearly always staying within the top 10 for all three of its primary categories. I really can't describe what it was like to wake up to that. It really made me feel good about myself, like I'm on the right track and can succeed here. It is more success than most ebooks ever see and honestly the best outcome that I could have hoped for, much better than I'd expected.
The majority of comments have been positive. I have ran into a handful of people upset at the tools I used, but they are a loud minority that is easy to ignore--except perhaps on reddit, which is a cesspool of low-performing, misogynistic, psuedointellectual males who look for any opportunity to virtue signal or to devalue others, especially women, whose success makes them feel envious and insecure about their mediocrity. Whenever I login to my old account, I am inevitably reminded within days why I decided to stick to Pinterest marketing! Reddit indexes with search engines easily, driving traffic long-term, but you can get the same effect from Pinterest without all of the incel tantrums.
I am concentrating my marketing efforts on social media, specifically Facebook (my base), Instagram, and Pinterest, but a little on Twitter and Bluesky. I will branch out to TikTok, YouTube shorts, and FB/Instagram Reels as I learn more about making videos in the future. FB groups are a gold mine, but my "fans" have been invaluable. I have managed to curate a small following, and direct communication has yielded the best results, just messaging them directly, sending the book over, and asking if they'll read and review it. I also attend in person events, like markets and fairs, where I keep physical copies on hand for customers to read and review, if they're willing. These efforts helped get the ball rolling, and then I started getting organic, unsolicited reviews.
The hardcover should be available finally in a few weeks. By then, I should have racked up the 50+ reviews needed to be taken seriously, and my focus will shift to community outreach. I will begin with counselors, librarians, and nonprofits over summer and go on to include elementary and intermediate schools in the fall. With any luck, I'll eventually make enough progress for the media to find it newsworthy, and businesses will someday be comfortable trusting me with donations. Then I can gift my books to as many libraries as possible and get my books into the little hands of every child who needs them. We can't save them all, but we can fill their precious hearts with hope.
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