The first book I published was about Animals. My children were getting a bit older (and wiser) and were ready to learn simple sentences. Like most children, they loved learning about animals. I had already written and made some simple books at home (see my previous post- from humble beginnings…) so the text was ready to go. What I needed next were some amazing images to go with the text that would capture the attention of young readers- after all we need to engage them so that they fall in love books and reading and learning. It was really important to me that the books I was publishing would be visually appealing. After exhausting numerous options, I found some images that I was happy with. So then came the design options- this was my favourite part. I use a free, open source program called Inkscape for my design work. It was a fantastic program to use for these books. A big thank you to my husband for introducing me to it! 🙂
The search then began for an appropriate publisher. These days, we are endowed with so many options when it comes to self-publishing books. However, with many options come many hours of research in order to choose the best one. In the end, Lulu.com was the best option for me. Lulu.com publish Print on Demand (POD) books. That means you upload your book and when someone places an order, that’s when it gets printed! It’s a brilliant idea, as I didn’t want to print thousands of books if I didn’t have thousands of buyers. What if no one wanted to buy my books? What if I was the only one who thought this was a good idea? That was definitely a risk I didn’t want to take.
After many late hours and lots of support from my husband (thanks again my love), I finally managed to work through all the design and technical difficulties I was having, and was able to upload my finished book in the format that was required. Voila!
The end result is a beautiful book with cute, funny, unusual and realistic pictures of animals, with simple text that describes what the animals are doing. A simple book, yet a not-so-simple process involved in producing it. However, it was well worth the effort. It was a great learning experience that I (mostly) enjoyed!
I hope you enjoy reading this book. Happy reading! 🙂
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