Try Again, Picturebooks

[Lex DeVille]

What can I say, I've tried things and failed. Tried more things and failed. But... I'm getting closer.
I'm not certain my latest failure was actually a failure. More like its on the back-burner for now.
In the meantime I want to learn a new process and see what happens.

To start I've written 6 children's books that I'm currently illustrating.

My goal is to have 5 of them published by the 15th of next month.

I'm learning from scratch how to work with fixed file formats.

HTML isn't my strong point but I've found two templates that might help.

These books are for early learners, so they are short, but will be bundled with an add-on if possible.

If not I'll build a website and link to the add-on from the book.

I realize many are writing novels and making it work, but I'm trying something different for now.

I've listed about 250 additional titles to create once the process is figured out.

For now I just want to get something published to celebrate a small victory.

Here are the two templates:
Template Site 1
Template Site 2

 

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[DennisD]

You're onto something with the genre. I think it can catch-on in a big way. You can get on Opera, you can get on the Today show, youc an get on shark tank, you can kill on shark tank.

If you continue with these projects, you will make a lot of money and a huge impact.

That being said.
Your books need some MAJOR work.

I don't want to be a bad guy...
but I just think that they're not that great.
They're 'off

For a time, I worked with PBS and was immersed in children entertainment.
I've read a few books on kid-lit, I regularly listen to Kid-Lit podcasts.
I'm no expert, but I'm more informed than your average joe.

I've read both Monster Match and Dubble.
There's a LOT of copywriting you need to brush up on moving forward.
Make sure that instead of absolutely speeding through these books, that's you're using each one as an opportunity for yourself to learn something new.

What's your age range you're aiming for? Dubble was filled with sentences that are way too complex for children. The whole thing needs to be deconstructed and simplified to be understood by your target demo.

You need to "dumb it down" even further. You need to make each page a masterpiece.

MARKETING
Let's talk about your marketing efforts.

You should put your call to action at the BEGINNING of the book.
Something full page that says:
!WARNING PARENTS!
This isn't any ordinary picture book,
Only let your child read this if you want them to get all they can out of life.

Hidden in this book's words are powerful lessons that teach your child:

• Interpersonal communication
• Negotiation
• Responsibility
• Reciprocity
• Salesmanship

For a complete outline of the hidden messages in this book and what they teach children, download the Parent's Guide Here.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE PARENTS GUIDE

Make it send them to a page where they have to Opt-In first before they get the guide. Then you send them to a download page that contains thumbnails of each book, plus a short description of the lessons learned inside. Similar in style to my most recent sales page: www.castleforgemedia.com/ultra-savings-package/

Your homepage already looks a bit like this, but it's not very skimmable, especially when you start releasing dozens of books. It needs to be organized differently.

How are you currently promoting your books?

 

[DeletedUser2]

here is a video of an example of whats on youtube.com

if you spend some time on youtube, you can get educated quickly on what is possible, and HOW to do certain things fast.

Z

 

[Lex DeVille]

First book is sold!

I honestly thought there wouldn't be any sales until the cover is updated and even then not for some time but apparently I was wrong!

 

[Lex DeVille]

Update

This morning I finished a book that I had planned to finish several days ago. It was originally supposed to be around 5000 words but somehow magically transformed into over 22000 and 100 plus pages with images. Luckily I was ready to hit publish this morning.

I also made it about halfway through designing two new picture books. They're taking extra time since I'm making them all longer and more interactive than before.

I created an account with Smashwords and the book released today will be my first trial run.

Still haven't moved forward with any audio recording. I'm getting there but haven't made time. Maybe I'll get to it next week once the two picture books are released.

Sales are still climbing and if they continue as they have it will be the first month of more than 1 sale every day. Also I haven't ran any promos this month and all sales have been at full price so this is my highest sales month so far.

I'm intending to release a total of 3 picture books and 2 short guides later this month so things are about to get very exciting!

 

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[Lex DeVille]

I've always enjoyed doodling, but never put much into character features (or attempted to sell drawings for that matter). I think the illustrations need to be dynamic, but maybe not quite as articulate as other books which focus on captivating children with images.

I'm not selling to children, but to parents who truly care about giving their child a headstart, so while the images need to be good they aren't the actual product. The product is an idea (or feeling) that their children will learn highly advanced concepts through simple text and pictures. In other words "my kid will be the smartest", "my kid will be smarter than yours", "this will give my kid a jump on life".

I've never taken a physical drawing and changed it into a computer graphic before so this is also all new to me. Here is my first attempt!



The process goes like this:
1. Sketch a picture.
2. Darken the lines.
3. Take a picture of it and save to your computer.
4. Edit the picture to increase contrast and brightness and save a copy.
5. Open the picture in Photoshop or Inkscape (I'm using Inkscape which can be downloaded for free HERE.)
6. Trace the bitmap. In Inkscape click on the photo then go to: --Path -> Trace Bitmap.
7. Play with the settings in "Trace Bitmap" to make the background white, lines darker, and to clean it up.
8. Color the image.
9. Save as a .svg file and also export as a .png file for later use.



I'm pretty happy with this bit of progress considering my limited time this morning. I picked up some part-time work at a Natural Grocers so I'm off to sell some health food for now. Can't wait to jump back into this later though!

 

[Paul]

Have you considered using a Wacom tablet? That way you'd save yourself quite a lot of time and you could draw your illustrations directly in Inkscape. The drawing experience is quite similar to drawing on paper.

 

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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.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Check it out! Went from having never used a Kindle before to this:



Okay, so this is just a simple cover and title page, but at least the book is showing up and the images are working correctly with good quality. Detail can be added later, but for now I'm on the right track. That's a fake name by the way.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Update

Well I did it! My first picture book is officially published and live on KDP.

Later than originally planned but a few kinks had to be ironed out. The main one was that my fully converted ebook was originally 36 MB which would have cost $5.4 in delivery fees for each sale. That's on top of Amazon's cut if I chose the 70% royalty option. After trying about 10 different things I was able to reduce the file size to 4.4 MB which comes to .66 cents per sale.

The website with the downloadable add-on wasn't quite ready, but I launched anyway and left the site as basic as possible for now. Over the next few days I'll enhance it and make it look better.

I also signed up with mail-chimp and will work on setting it up in the morning.

One thing I noticed is that my cover looks a bit grainy in the store until you click on it at which time it becomes crisp. I'll have to figure that one out in the morning. Something else I notice is that it looks like it is angled slightly. I can't tell if this is an optical illusion or if it is actually crooked! I may have to switch a back-up cover in.

The price is set at $3.99, so we'll see what happens.

For anyone who may be curious you can check it out here.

Next Action Steps
- Finish editing book and profile info in Amazon
- Build character templates using current illustrations
- Begin book two
- Set up mail chimp
- Update website

I think things will move much faster now that I understand the process. Instead of spending a ton of time learning how the various programs work I can focus on character, book, and story design as well as a little bit of marketing.

I'm a total newbie to this stuff, so any feedback, suggestions, or criticism is very much welcome!

 

[ChickenHawk]

I notice that the "look inside" feature isn't available for any of your books. I e-pubbed a few kids books within the last year and found it made a significant difference, sales-wise, when customers could look inside first. Maybe it isn't possible in your case since they're pure picture books, but it's something to consider.

Also, I tried to download your free book, and Amazon gave me an error-type message that indicated I couldn't get it for my kindle. I'm guessing because my kindle is kind of on the older side, so maybe your book is formatted for the newer ones. All this to say, you might be able to make just a few tweaks and see better results. I wonder how many people are like me, with older kindles. (Mine might be the paper-white variety.)

Your books look interesting! It would be nice to see them really catch on. On a sobering note, my kids' books showed some initial promise, but then seemed to fizzle. That might be a challenging genre. But of course, some people are making money on it, and let's hope you quickly join the successful ranks!

 

[evanwebb]

You're onto something with the genre. I think it can catch-on in a big way. You can get on Opera, you can get on the Today show, youc an get on shark tank, you can kill on shark tank.

If you continue with these projects, you will make a lot of money and a huge impact.

That being said.
Your books need some MAJOR work.

I don't want to be a bad guy...
but I just think that they're not that great.
They're 'off

For a time, I worked with PBS and was immersed in children entertainment.
I've read a few books on kid-lit, I regularly listen to Kid-Lit podcasts.
I'm no expert, but I'm more informed than your average joe.

I've read both Monster Match and Dubble.
There's a LOT of copywriting you need to brush up on moving forward.
Make sure that instead of absolutely speeding through these books, that's you're using each one as an opportunity for yourself to learn something new.

I agree. I bought Monster Match. I thought it was okay, but not great. I like your illustrations, and the new ones you posted, I like even better, but the flow of writing was just a little off.

I was really interested in your project, because a couple of years ago, I wrote a Children's book that taught economics and entrepreneurship (a decidedly unchildlike topic). My skills and talents are more on crafting the words. If you want to send me your projects, I'd be happy to provide suggestions and feedback or rewrites. Writing rhyming books it tough stuff. If you want me to, I'll PM you a copy of my book. Or you can buy it on Amazon! Ha! Nah, I'd send it to you for free.

Tips from a parent of three:

I wouldn't say, "Warning Parents," I would say, "Attention Parents." Because it really isn't a warning, it is a "hey, look here and read this!"

Rather than saying, "Click Here to Download the Parent's Guide," pitch the benefit: "Click Here to Ensure Your Little One Get's the Most Out of This Book"

Also, for your target age, parent's don't really think about their kids "getting all they can out of life," at least not in the sense that the warning page presents it. They're just trying to get them to say, "yes, ma'am" and not hit their siblings or pull the dog's tail.

What are parent's looking for? How about:

"This is a very special and unique series of books that gently and carefully introduces your little ones to deep subconscious subjects that will help them actually want to share on their own, will enable them to overcome fear and sadness, and begin developing a strong mind that will serve them their entire lives."

Man, that sizzles! Sign me up for the boxed set!

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Thanks to LisaK for the motivational nudge to move forward with createspace. I'll try to figure it all out this week. It looks like I just need to move my finished images into a PDF document in order to upload as a book. There will be formatting issues to work out, but after learning the rest of this stuff a little more should be a breeze.

Some other thoughts:

The Luna Lingua series is taking up a lot of time (in my opinion). The stories are taking two to three weeks mainly because of formatting issues, and coming up with illustrations. Right now I think I can put out two books a month, but I'm wondering if that is too many for this series. Instead I'm thinking about dropping down to one LL book a month and using the rest of the time to create less interactive books that translate easier to createspace.

I have an idea for a second series that targets a slightly different audience than LL, but covers similar material. My goal for both of these series is to dominate multiple categories in the children's section so that in time they pick up steam and receive more views / purchases. This new series won't need the level of interactivity that LL has since it may have other ways to hold the reader's interest.

Somewhere in between all of this I'll attempt a second EF book though I don't really want to shift my focus at this point. Many picture book authors have failed, but my books are selling, and from what I can tell they aren't doing too bad compared to others. I suspect the experience gained from continuing when others quit will eventually be my greatest asset.

 

[Michael Raphael]

Been reading your progress. Keep it up. I would promote it on facebook, perhaps go to forums (use Alexa) and promote this book on a couple. Spend a full day or two to just post. Hopefully in one day you can get 50 sales. That would pay off in the long-run!

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Michael, thanks for the suggestions. I've been promoting a little on FB but hadn't heard of Alexa before so I'll check it out this week.
Updates:

Website Redesign
- Made Parent Guides accessible again instead of requiring mailing list sign up.
- Added a free downloadable coloring book. Must sign up for mailing list to access it.
- Redesigned the book pages on the site to make flow easier.
- Designed layout to work with mobile devices.
- Updated main scrolling imgs to reflect currently published books and added links to their corresponding Amazon pages.
- Added a "FREE NLP Report Special Report" to help parents understand more about this subject. It requires their email for list purposes.
- Still need to make the FREE NLP Special Report... I'll get it done, just haven't had time yet.

Books- Still working on illustrations for book 5.
- Ordered a cover for book 4 on Fiverr. (See it below)
- Rebuilt book 1 in reflowable format which should allow it to be read on the Kindle Cloud Reader, and should also make it a lot easier to move to Createspace.
- Finished designing the first two characters of a second series.

Left = My Design //// Right = Fiverr Design

 

[Lex DeVille]

Updates

Luna Lingua - Fun in the Sun --- Book 5
1. Finished Illustrations
2. Finishing coding today
3. Will publish this evening or tomorrow.
4. Will try to have a couple reviews on it before Intro. Luna Lingua goes on .99 cent promo on Monday.

Tales of Milton's Modern Magic --- Book 6
1. Undecided on the name still.
2. Finished 16 pages of the story. (Not illustrating at all until story is complete.)
3. No rhymes. This is an actual storybook series.
4. It is my intention to take plenty of time with this one and do it right.
5. Each page will still be a complete picture as well.
6. Each page is in landscape and is split in half, so it looks like a book and you get two pages in one. This will save a lot of space which will cut the MB fee in half.
7. This series will focus on a very slightly older age group than the other books and the lessons will be far more subtle.

The Monster Match
1. Today I received the first proof from createspace!
2. The formatting turned out almost perfect with two exceptions.
- The writing on the cover top is slightly lower than it should be, and extends into the yellow.
- The writing on the back extends into the yellow.
- All of the inside pages turned out perfect with no issues.
3. This one is pretty much ready for createspace publishing.

 

[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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[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.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Before paying for a template like those in the sites above I decided to search around more and came across this site which has a downloadable guide for fixed layout children's & comic books specifically for the Kindle - $7.99. He also offers 2 inexpensive templates, but the guide has a code for the templates included for free. The guide is 297 pages and appears to have a lot of great info, so now I need to do a little reading.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Coolcool I'll be following. let me know if you find anything interesting.
My gal is a professional artist by trade and is very interested in releasing her stories to kindle.

I'm a little over 50 pages in and so far it walked me step by step through every part of creating a fixed layout ebook for the Kindle, including detailed info breaking down each part of the first template, meta data, screen resolutions and more. It also includes links to several free downloads that seem essential for effective picture book creation. The info up to this point has made the purchase worth it. I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to quickly create and publish this type of book after finishing the guide.

I don't know what your girl's experience is with html or computer programs, but with your knowledge the two of you can probably pick this up pretty easily.

One bright idea I hadn't considered is that it may be beneficial to actually own a Kindle device if you plan to write Kindle books! Guess I have more shopping to do today.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Half way through the guide and so far it covers most if not all of the "need to know" stuff as well as a walk through of the "Simple Template". The second half of the guide focuses on the "Advanced Template" and gets into a lot of finer details for creating unique texts, layering, and other cool features.

For now I have what I need to create an image-only, fixed layout book so I'm going to get back to the illustrations and start adding them into the code. I think the Simple Template will work well enough to get the first books published, and I can work on enhancements later on.

The guide says Amazon charges a .15¢ per megabyte bandwidth surcharge to all ebooks sold on KDP with the 70% royalty option so for every 10 MB of file there will be a $1.50 charge. I'm not really sure how much space the illustrations will consume, but it definitely seems like something to keep in mind since images take up more space than text and the entire book will probably be made of images.

 

[Lex DeVille]

I decided to go ahead and jump in and picked up the Wacom Intuos Creative Pen & Touch Tablet along with a Kindle Fire HD 7 this morning. I think this will streamline the process and should be the largest costs of the entire venture.

Now to see if I can figure out how to use it!

 

[Paul]

Why not use layers in inkscape?

From top to bottom:
1. Outline & Mouth
2. Shadows
3. Fill Color

 

[funkj25]

@SinisterLex I'm cheering you on. I among almost everyone else I know has said at some point "I bet I could write a children's book." I've even gone as far as even writing the story out loud (my lady and I tell stories about our cats, this albino squirrel that lives by us, etc. all the time and say we could make kids books). However, I never put ink to... computer screen? Ha. So you're way ahead of all the action fakers out there.

Mainly I just wanted to give you some encouragement and say keep up the good work. I think you're doing something really cool and its got great possibilities.

As an aside, from my work with photoshop, layers are a godsend. Especially the more detailed you get into making your books in the future. You'll be able to swap colors, backgrounds, etc. in a blink without having to re-do the whole picture.

 

[R. Scot Johns]

Congrats on getting your children's book series underway! I'm pleased to hear my book and template have been of help. I wish you all the best in all your ambitions.

You mentioned in post #30 that you had an issue adding pages to the template. What type of issue was this, and is it something I can better clarify for you? I'm always trying to update and improve the book to make it as easy as possible for first time content creators to follow, since a great many are authors and illustrators rather than technophiles (if not technophobes).

By the way, you're completely right in using each new page as a template for later pages, and you will soon find that you have a bank of "page types" that you can use to quickly produce additional content, based on your current project and personal preferences. I have standard page templates for copyright page, table of contents, indices, chapter headers, promo pages, author info, etc., and these can just be slipped in and modified with each new project. This is particularly useful for a series, such as yours.

A promo page, for example, can be added to each volume, with an image of each cover in the series, so that you only need to swap out the current title's image for another, and update the external link to your sales page, if one is provided - which it should be, since that's the whole point of promotion! You'll find that marketing is 9/10th's of the challenge of succeeding in publishing, so put those links in anywhere you can! To do this, of course, you'll need to create a store with product pages, and/or create title listings on Amazon, etc. in order to procure the links in advance of publication. I mention this because it's during the content creation process that these things need to be addressed, rather than later when the book is "done".

Let me know if I may be of assistance. I'm always glad to help other entrepreneurs in this exciting field.

R. Scot Johns
Author of "How to Make Kindle Comics & Children's Books"

 

[HardParked13]

Awesome illustrations. But I think comic sans screams a little too much "Windows 95".

With how much typefaces have grown in the past 5-10 years I'm sure you can find a more fitting font that complements your amazing art style

http://www.fonts.com/browse/classifications/kids-fonts#product_top

 

[Lex DeVille]

Update

- I've started the 4th book which will be the 1st in a new series.
- Lead character is a girl with more detail, shading etc.
- Pages are being formatted into landscape to allow for a variety of angled images.
- Story is being told through simple catchy rhymes and the pages should invoke imagination and draw the reader deep into the story.
- I discovered a secret trick that gives the pages an added flair. I haven't seen this in any other children's book on Amazon, so it might be just what the doctor ordered to set the pages over the edge.
- Lastly, I'm giving myself 2 weeks for total design so there will be plenty of time to do it right.

I haven't finished the main page of the website, but that's mostly because I'm not going to be advertising the first 3 books there and I need to make several new images for the new look. This will take a few more days, but will ensure the site focuses almost entirely on the new character / books.

 

[Lauryn]

Great approach to this. Children's books are rumored to be a "tough" market but so what?
You're doing things according to your path and using your skills. Keep it pushing.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

Update

I finished the rough draft story & rhymes, didn't like it, and scrapped it. Started over from scratch and think things are much better now. I also completed a first round of illustrations, though I'll scrap a couple scenes and replace them with better material. This week I'll fine tune each page with shading, and small details along with some things to help draw the reader into the images.

I hit a small problem with the texture on the pages. Apparently it significantly increases the page size from around 150kb to over 3MB. I think I found a workaround so the texture should still be a go.

In the meantime I've started preparations for basic marketing and this time will submit the book to the free ebook sites while it's on a free promo for a few days. I'll also submit it to some other forums where I think I can get some early purchases/review. I've got a few more ideas for marketing that I haven't seen many authors using so I'll give them a shot as well and report back later. Oh and I also have a super secret idea that could turn into something big but that remains to be seen!

So far this book feels like a big step up from the other three. I've set it up as an introduction to the main character and her life and will advertise follow-on books at the end. The idea is to show readers the power Luna has over her world because she utilizes basic interpersonal, financial, and survival skills. The follow-on books will then explore each concept in detail one at a time and will branch out into other characters and concepts.

I really think this one could be big for a children's book, but I'm still figuring all this stuff out so who knows. I'll be happy if a single copy sells.

Here are a couple new sample images. These are unfinished rough drafts. I haven't added details and other things. No words because the words aren't attached to the images anymore. They're a separate layer now so they can pop up when clicked.

 

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[evanwebb]

I read monster match to my 2 1/2 year old and she liked it. She even started mimicking the monster too, so I think she kind of got the concept. One thing you might watch out for in the illustrations is too many faces per page. The extra characters distracted her from the story, especially the moon.