Try Again, Picturebooks

[Lex DeVille]

Final August Update

- First month to break $100 in 31 days
- Roughly 1/3 of sales were picture books
- Standard books are doing better
- 18 Books published
- In July I made $33 so income has tripled since then
- Purchased new laptop for writing only.

 

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[MayaMagpie]

You probably saw this already, but just in case... Amazon has a new tool for picture books, looks good to me!

 

[Lex DeVille]

I hadn't seen this yet, but it seems very interesting. If it works well then it could save a huge chunk of time when it comes to formatting the books. Hopefully I'll finish a picture book this week and can try it out. Looks like Amazon has faith that their picture book readership will continue to grow.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Okay, I downloaded and tested the new Kindle Kids Book Creator and here is a quick breakdown.

When the program is opened a walk through wizard pops up to guide you.

- First you save illustrations and your cover as a PDF.
- Add title, author name, and publisher.
- Choose language
- Choose landscape or portrait depending on how your pictures are designed.
- If you choose landscape you get additional page options.
- The last step is verifying everything looks good and adding pop-up text.
- There are also some other options for adding things like metadata and changing text font.
- Save for publishing and your done.

It cuts out hours and hours of CSS/HTML coding that normally has to be done.

The only thing I see that it can't do is create pop-up images (other than text).

Overall it's very fast, and very efficient for a brand new program.

This is an excellent opportunity for anyone wanting to try their hand at picture books.

 

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[Mialove]

" Okay, I downloaded and tested the new Kindle Kids Book Creator and here is a quick breakdown. "

I tested this one as well, but i don't understand something.
If i want to add text under the illustrations, i can't do it, right? Only on the illustration itself (and i don't wanna do it).
So, the only option is to format everything including text and illustrations on word, convert it to PDF and than it will work.
I just don't get how it will save my time this way...as i need to make very similar process.
(It may be great for fixed format books, but not for the regular, or i am wrong? )

 

[Lex DeVille]

Once your images are created it only takes a few seconds to drop them in word and convert to PDF.

It's not much of a time loss.

I only build in fixed format, but this is the process I follow.

If you size your images at 1200 x 1920 (portrait) then it will take up the whole page perfectly.

If you resize down from those settings you can find a standard size that works for your pages so they're all the same size and the text will fit below.

 

[Mialove]

Thanks

My illustrations are all 3000*3000, so i can't make them 1200 x 1920.
I will try around 1300*1300 and will type the text below. (as text is not part of the illustration, but i want it to be on the same page)
I am stuck with this formatting stuff, lol
because every formatting guide say something different about picture books.

One say, that 600 *800 it's a max for kindle
Other says:
300*200 + 8 lines of text

300*300+ 6 lines of text

300*350 + 4 lines of text

300*400 + 2 lines of text
And it looks too small for me....

Confusing

 

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[Lex DeVille]

You can solve your problem with a photo editing program like Inkscape.

Open your picture in the program, then use the box tool to make a white square below your photo.

Add text inside that box, then export all of it as a new image.

Drop that into the PDF, add your pop-up text, and you're good to go.

You don't need the text to be on a separate page from the original image.

If it's on a separate page then people can use the text increase button, so pop-up text becomes pointless anyway.

P.S. I suggest resizing your photos. At 3000 x 3000 you'll get slammed with the download fee and will lose a lot of money on sales.

 

[Mialove]

Thanks! i will try this software.

P.S. I suggest resizing your photos. At 3000 x 3000 you'll get slammed with the download fee and will lose a lot of money on sales.

Sure, i will. It's just an original image, in case i would like to sells the book offline.

And your size: 1200 x 1920 isn't it to big ? or you just reduce the quality by 50-60% so it's doesn't weight a lot ?

 

[Lex DeVille]

You can reduce the quality, if needed depending on the length of your book.

I've used 60% on a couple of books and they turned out fine.

Once you set them up in Inkscape you can open them in Gimp or Photoshop and turn the quality down.

Also convert them from .PNG to .JPG for additional size benefit.

 

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[Mialove]

Take a look at this picture book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KJO14LQ/?tag=tff-amazonparser-20

It's also fixed format, but you can see the "look inside", we should figured out how to do it, as, this function is a MUST.
I believe it's a reason for your low sells in children books.

 

[Lex DeVille]

I'm not sure that book is fixed format.

To me it looks like it was probably originally built for fixed, but newly uploaded through KKBC.

That means it was probably sent to PDF, making it reflowable, but he left the words on the page.

The "Look Inside" feature is probably available for this reason if I had to guess.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Update:

The overhaul to my publishing structure seems to be working.
Already broke last months sales, and it's not even mid-month.
22 Books published.
Learned a ton about writing fiction.
About to take another big leap that hopefully leads to larger profits.
Hopefully my translator will have the picture books back this week.
About to start a new series of picture books, but they won't be a main priority, more for testing a theory than anything.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Update

First the bad:
- So far the German picture books are a bust. Not sure why and haven't had much time to look into it.
- Ran into a few patches of writer's block, and many days of lost sleep.
- Outsourced a book through Odesk for $50 that didn't sell as well as I hoped.
- Didn't work on the picture books at all (not a big loss)
- Dropped sleeping hours back to about 5. It seems I'm too excited to sleep 8 hours now.

The Good:
- Earned more than 5 times last month's profits without any promotion.
- More than 75% of it happened over the last 7 days.
- Multiple bestsellers dropping below 15k rank (never got below 70k with picture books.)
- "Personal Bests" are becoming a daily routine.
- Dramatically improved cover art and blurbs.
- Gained a much better understanding of market research.
- Utilized freelancers in addition to my own writing efforts to turbo-charge growth.
- Built a web-site to draw freelancers and other authors to me.
- Received about 700 site hits in 2 weeks. (This did require some promotion.)
- Obtained 31 mailing list subscribers (not from book sales, but I do plan to monetize them soon.)
- Quit my part-time job (1 to 2 days a week) to focus 100% efforts on self-publishing.
- If profits continue increasing at this rate I'll earn more income next month than any job I've held in the last 5 years!

Lastly... I'm beginning to understand what is meant by each book being a soldier that goes into battle for me.

I'm growing an Army and the tides are starting to turn.

I'll update again at the end of next month.

 

[SeanKelly]

R piktur boks 4 kids who cnt reed?

 

[FiveOone]

Congratulations on 'The Good', there are a lot of positives in there!

Outsourced a book through Odesk for $50 that didn't sell as well as I hoped

At least you could publish yours, I outsourced two books through E-Lance that came back as straight up garbage. Doubt I'll be going back down this road again. Even though I've heard people say that the content does not really matter, I still can't bring myself to release either.

Didn't work on the picture books at all (not a big loss)

So are you moving away from the kids books? Kind of a shame considering the all the work you have put into it.

Keep building that army

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Congratulations on 'The Good', there are a lot of positives in there!

At least you could publish yours, I outsourced two books through E-Lance that came back as straight up garbage. Doubt I'll be going back down this road again. Even though I've heard people say that the content does not really matter, I still can't bring myself to release either.

So are you moving away from the kids books? Kind of a shame considering the all the work you have put into it.

Keep building that army

For the books I outsourced I pretty much had to give them an extreme makeover. Otherwise they wouldn't be doing so well right now.
Freelancing is a tough gig because there are so many crap writers out there who will put anything on paper just to make a buck.

I guess you could say I'm moving away from children's books. They are fun to make but they simply aren't producing. It's been nearly six months and sales are still trickling. I've tried promotions, better quality images, better quality stories, and everything in between. The highest earnings month was $33 with six books, and almost no borrows.

I don't consider it a shame though. More like a pivot. Children's books aren't going to pick up for another couple of years at least and I'm not interested in waiting that long for income. Right now I have a system that can bring income and build capital so I'll have more resources to work on the kids books later if I choose.

 

[LisaK]

Congratulations - You are doing it!!