Try Again, Picturebooks

[LisaK]

I've been looking at some of the Fiverr gigs for the purpose of reviews.

The books don't need a lot of reviews, but most of the promotional sites require at least 3 to even bother with a book.

Some of the Fiverr gigs have an option that allows you to submit the $5.00 payment plus the cost of your book and they will buy a copy so it shows as a verified purchase.

There are also some gigs on Fiverr that will submit books to many sites.

I may give this a shot too and see how things go. If the results are any better than my own efforts, and it saves a bit of time, it may be well worth it.

It is worth it.

 

[Karla]

What are you planning for your youtube channel? What kind of videos? Are you doing this to get the word out more? Congrats on publishing your book .....always a nice feeling, isn`t it?

 

[Lex DeVille]

I don't really know much about language learning books, but may check it out.

Linguistics focuses on communication itself (verbal, non-verbal, subconscious etc.) and not so much on individual languages.

Some Linguists speak multiple languages though so there could be opportunity.

I think one of my biggest obstacles right now is educating my readers.

Most people I've asked have never heard of Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

I can write "NLP Picture Book" on the cover all day, but people who don't know what stands for aren't going to care.

So I guess I either have to educate, or focus marketing efforts on reaching those people who already care about the fields of Psychology, NLP etc.

In time I think I can educate through blog/newsletter posts and quality books.

The rest may come from submitting to bloggers in related fields.

 

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[Lex DeVille]

With my most recent book "Nine Dragons" I integrated some of what I think you are talking about.

Not with a foreign language, but I was teaching words and numbers and working on memory recall by making certain words certain colors.

I think I understand what you're talking about now and this could be a fun idea with growth potential.

Especially with interactive books.

 

[Lex DeVille]

Hi Mialove,

Thanks for giving my book a look!

The look inside feature isn't available for fixed format books at this time.

I'm trying to work around this by adding photos to the Amazon page, and by publishing the books through CreateSpace, but this is taking some extra time.

I think there is an option to download a sample, but I don't know if anyone actually uses it or not.

 

[Mialove]

Ah, ok. I didn't knew about the fixed format.

I am also going to publish 4 kids books now, and i must tell i am a bit worried after seeing your thread. (with 20$ a month), as the cost of creating is near 1000$
Maybe we are in the wrong niche

 

[ChickenHawk]

On Monday I started a new pen name for fiction books. I began typing at 3 am (my normal waking hours) and wrote for roughly 8 hours total, hitting just over 8,000 words. I've done this every day this week and when I finish tomorrow I'll have about 41,000 words typed and the first installment finished.

Holy crap! Those are some seriously impressive word counts. I'm in awe!

 

[Lex DeVille]

Thanks!

It helps being among the top .001% of typists in the world.



Now I wish I started writing in high school!

 

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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.

 

[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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