Down the Self-publishing Path I Go……

I knew that I wanted to get Bear’s adventures published but the burning question was, just how was I going to do that?

Creating the book was fantastic, but I wanted to do something with it. Something more than the achievement of creating it and leaving it to dwell on the [ever growing] pile of things on my desk.

I wanted to share Bear’s books with families, with children and with animal lovers. Sharing this was especially important to me as it had helped my kids to grieve and to heal as much as they could from losing him. It enabled us to talk about things that happened and how amazing he was. Things like this gross, but hilarious event that happened on an innocent walk to school.

There we were, just walking along with Bear on the school run. Bear had a drool problem, he slobbered and then he slobbered some more! Think Turner and Hooch and you get the idea. Anyway, he decided it was time for one of his mega head shakes. These were classic and sent globs of drool flying everywhere. My daughter shrieked, and….I make no apology for this, I could do nothing but laugh. There she was, with a huge glob of drool hanging from the end of her nose like Gooey Loui!

But that was part of Bear and something we remember with laughter now. It was important to share those moments so that we could laugh a little more and cry a little less.

As the text of the book was ready and the illustrations were well underway, I started looking at ways to get it published. There is lots of ‘Traditional publishing v’s Self-publishing’ advice and pointers out there, but for me, on a budget of buttons and fluff, options were limited.

Every writer dreams of sending a manuscript to a big publishing house and they snap it up …. suddenly you’re the next JK Rowling or David Gemmel, but how realistic is that? Being that golden book in an ocean of volumes would be incredible, and does indeed happen. However, the prospect of being rejected before you had even pressed send on your submission, is a bit of a mood killer. Plus, when you rake through the advice online, seemingly having little or less control over what happens to your precious work….. well, it would be a bit like making the most beautiful cake, and someone else standing there saying ‘Thank you, I worked really hard on that, I hope you like the taste’.

So, cowardly as it may be, I didn’t even try that route. The [very real] possibility of rejection for something that means so much to me emotionally, was just a bit too daunting. Cowardly as I say!

I decided that self-publishing was the road I would take. Turns out, that’s not as straight forward as I thought it would be either! Again, scouring the internet for companies that accommodate self-publishers led to a vast number of websites. It seems that to self-publish through these companies requires upfront costs and I have to say, it is VERY off-putting when the first thing on their website is the cost and payment section.

I wanted to know what it was they were actually offering first, what support, and advice there was. I wanted to see honest testimonies from those who have used their services. I didn’t want to know how to part with my hard-earned pennies before any of that. So those particular companies were noted down as not for me.

As it turns out, the seemingly decent companies are not so cheap, from about £750 upwards. Which seems a bargain if you know you are going to get that back in sales of your hefty tome but when you are starting out, it seems like a lot to shell out.

Obviously, it’s a personal choice over which company is better for your needs and your book’s, but I turned to Amazon KDP. Having read more than during my entire time at Uni [yes, I was that student who read all of the books on the book list!] I took the plunge and went for it. Oh blimey, was that a wade into the world of formatting, placement, bleeds and margins.

If I’m being honest [a quality not always found in the human being] I’m not known for my IT prowess or my patience. I’m better known for tantrums at the laptop when something doesn’t go right – and this didn’t go right!

I watched the tutorials [ever the student] and read the ‘how to’ advice but still I floundered when it came to sorting the cover out. There is of course the option to use their cover creator but as I had illustrated mine, I obviously wanted to use that.

Little Tip: Don’t create your front and back covers separately because you have to knit the images together. Also, realise that the back cover goes on the left of the page as you’re looking at it – it will save you time and a fair few tears!

And then there is the matter of flattening images….. I’m lucky, my son-in-law is far more IT minded than me. Some grovelling along with the promise of a bottle of something, he set to and sorted the cover for me.

It was at this point that I realised just why the aforementioned companies charged so much to sort all of this out but a bottle of something for the son-in-law still worked out a lot cheaper! But again, it’s personal choice.

The main body of the book has a lot of images, it is after all, a children’s book. I believe that they bring the story to life, they present a visual image that engages the reader and non-reader alike. I’d gone over and over mine, discarded and redone them more times than was probably decent but I was finally happy with them.

Ensuring they were positioned on the page so that they wouldn’t get caught in the gutter [middle bit] or spill into the bleed [edge bits] wasn’t that hard, they weren’t full page images. However, setting the text to stay with the appropriate image was a pain in the neck. Little Tip: I must have missed this in the demo’s…. I was using Word, so naturally you press return to send your cursor to the next page or paragraph. For the purposes of formatting the main body, use page break. It should save you from sitting there uttering rude words wondering why your once lovely pages have tumbled into the abyss.

Anyway, there I was, all set with the documents uploaded and I was nervous as hell! Ridiculous. As I pressed submit, I actually held my breath! I’m not sure whether I was expecting the screen to display ‘BAHAHA, not a chance, call that a children’s book?’ but I did have a mild shaky hand moment!

So I submitted and ordered the proof copy. There’s no way I was publishing without seeing what I had produced, how it actually looked on paper. Cheekily, there was a flippin’ postage fee almost as much as the print copy fee, but like I said, ordering the proof copy was a must.

Like an expectant parent, I nervously awaited its arrival…… had I made the right decision choosing KPD? Well, I’ll let you know what my bundle of book joy looked like when it arrived in the post, soon ….