Tag Archives: publishing

How Kids Can Create Their Own Books

Working on the StephaniesThis summer my 6-year-old daughter, Lexi, and I wrote a book: The Stephanies. It was a much-needed summer project and this fall we raised money through Kickstarter to publish it and released it on November 6. A lot of kind folks have applauded this daddy-daughter project, but anyone could do it.

First of all, writing stories is awesome. Kids should have that opportunity to create stories and tell wacky, funny, unique tales. Every kid has these stories and turning them into a published book is just a process.

Old School Publishing
I did this myself as a first grader with my epic masterpiece known as Mike, The Cat. In 1986 we didn’t have print-on-demand publishing technology, so they just handed us a blank book and told us to get to work. That means there’s only one print copy of Mike, The Cat, but it still has a cherished place on my shelf.

That’s one way of making a book. Another way is to simply get crafty, print out your story and create a construction paper cover. In fourth grade I “published” another epic story, Fred and I the Spies, using one of those three-tab folders. You can also go up a notch and take it to a copy place for one of those spiral plastic jobs.

Print-on-Demand Publishing
But today we have new technology that makes it even easier and cheaper to print (and sell!) your book. It’s called print-on-demand publishing and it basically means that they don’t print your book until someone orders a copy. It’s more expensive per copy, but it saves you from having a basement full of books you can’t sell (as awesome as your book is, 79% of books don’t sell more than 100 copies).

We used CreateSpace for The Stephanies, a service of Amazon that I’ve used before. They have reasonable royalty rates, you don’t have to pay up front (this is big; you shouldn’t have to pay to publish your book—you should only pay for the copies you buy) and best of all the book goes on Amazon, which is really the only place you need to be.

The process was pretty easy: Lexi drew the pictures and I scanned them, doing some basic resizing and very minor photo-retouching in Photoshop. Then I did the layout in Microsoft Word and created the cover in Photoshop. I uploaded both files to CreateSpace and that’s about it. They have an online proofing option and you can also order a proof copy (highly recommended). Keeping the design simple helped. The more complicated you get, the more things can go wrong.

Digital Publishing
So far The Stephanies has sold more digital copies than print copies. Creating a digital version is even easier.  I used Pages to create an epub file, uploaded that along with a cover to Amazon’s digital publishing site and it’s available on the Kindle. Digital is a little more complicated than print since the text size and screen size can vary wildly depending on the device. Basically it means you lose a lot of control for how the final product looks and that can be hard with a picture book. But it seems to work well enough.

An Easier Way?
If that all sounds a little complicated, don’t worry. You can also check out Scribble Press. It’s a fun way to create and publish your own books online or using an iPad (though you can’t sell them—you can just share them and order print copies). They also have fun templates and fill-in-the-blank stories if you need help getting started.

Do you have a book you want to publish?

Clean Water for Elirose

Clean Water for EliroseI’ve talked about clean water a lot, so it should be no surprise that I’m loving Clean Water for Elirose. It’s a children’s book explaining to kids what it’s like to not have clean water that comes out of the tap. It’s written by a fellow Twin Citizen, Ariah Fine, and the book itself supports clean water.

Right now a Kickstarter campaign is wrapping up that has so far raised nearly $4,000 of a $3,500 goal to enable cheaper publishing of the book so it can help more folks. Ariah is not only raising money himself for clean water, but he’s enabling other people to raise money. If you want to support the project, $3 gets you a copy of the book. If that’s not a good enough deal, you can donate $100 and get 50 copies. Perfect for your own water-generating fundraiser.

It’s a great little project and you can even read the book online. Check it out and support it. They’ve already hit the goal, but more help is even better.

Open Our Eyes: Sales Report

Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of HomelessnessThis fall I released the book Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness. The little book tells the stories of homeless people—families, kids, grandparents—and supports the work of homeless advocate Mark Horvath and his site, InvisiblePeople.tv.

All profit from the book goes to Mark. All of it. Here’s a quick report on book sales so we can be an open book:

  • October sales: 2 copies, $7.68 profit (we didn’t launch until November, so you folks were ahead of the curve)
  • November sales: 57 copies, $218.88
  • December sales: 30 copies, $77.59

These are only numbers for print copies and we earn roughly $3.84 per copy from Amazon sales (the numbers don’t add up because sales through other channels have a lower royalty rate).

Ironically, payments for digital versions come later, and I received the first one today:

  • November sales: 30 copies, $99.20 profit.

So far I’ve sent Mark two payments. The first was for $226.56 at the end of the year (October & November physical sales) and the second was for $176.79 that I sent this morning (December physical sales & November digital sales).

So to date Open Our Eyes has earned $403.35 to support InvisiblePeople.tv. We’ve also sold 119 copies, which puts us in the top 21% of books published. It’s not vast riches to solve all Mark’s problems, but it’s something. And hopefully it will grow.

Thanks for your support and thanks to everyone who made this book happen. I’d love to keep these payments going for a long time, so please buy a copy if you haven’t already and spread the word.

Book Sales By the Numbers

Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged when you’ve published a book. We’re not all Seth Godin. Books don’t fly off the virtual shelves. So I thought it might help to take a look at the numbers and try to keep them in perspective.

Addition by Adoption officially released on May 11 with a pre-sale in April. A few numbers to date:

  • Copies sold: 185
  • Copies in circulation: 212 (we’ve handed out 27 freebies for publicity, promotion and to friends/family)
  • Total donated to charity: water from book sales: $568
  • Total donated to charity: water by others: $1,478
  • Total raised for charity: water: $2,046
  • Number of people receiving clean water so far: 102
  • Amount we still need to raise to build a well in Ethiopia: $2,954

That’s all pretty incredible. Namely that a self-published book by an author with no platform (love my Twitter friends, but 1,600 followers is not a platform) could sell 185 copies. Even more incredible is that folks have pitched in nearly $1,500 to help build this well in Ethiopia with charity: water. That’s awesome.

What’s a little less awesome is that my net-profit is currently negative. People have told me that writing books is not a good way to make money, and I’m seeing how true that is. Though in all fairness, part of that negative profit is due to unsold inventory from an event that wasn’t very successful. If I can sell that unsold inventory I’ll be back in black (want a multi-copy pack or an Awesome Edition?).

Yes, I’ve become the self-published author with a box of unsold books in the basement.

Though they’re not in a box in the basement, they’re sitting on a shelf in my office. And now I’m thinking a shelf full of my own books in my office is a little narcissistic.

Then again, it’s a Twitter book. Maybe that fits.

So 185 books and $2,046 for clean water in Ethiopia! Those are good numbers. Thank you.

Promotion or Obscurity

I’m struggling right now with how hard to promote my book, Addition by Adoption. Or at least I would be if I weren’t so busy. With another adoption (an 11-year-old, no less!), another book project and the end of summer, I’m not sure my life has reached this level of busy before. So the book kind of gets forgotten.

And that’s the struggle. Do I let it slide into obscurity or do I work even harder to promote it, keep it on the forefront of people’s thoughts and sell a few more copies? Or is it already in obscurity and I should just give up now? Or is all that promotion just annoying?

I worked relentlessly in April and May to promote this book and get it out there and the response was pretty incredible. The sales for a self-published book were spectacular. Of course spectacular sales of a self-published book don’t account for much.  When I look at my expenses the book hasn’t even broken even yet (let’s not even talk about the time involved). And we still need to raise $3,000 to build that well in Ethiopia.

Publishing is a harsh mistress.

Of course for all that promotion there are still people who have no idea I published a book, let alone a ground-breaking book of tweets. Nevermind a book exploring adoption. There are still people who said they’d do some kind of promotion and never did. There are still people who said they’d buy a copy and never did. Sometimes people need to be reminded again and again and again. And sometimes that just gets old.

So I guess we’ll see what happens. This post serves as a handy (and lame) bit of further promotion. So don’t forget that we still have ‘Awesome Editions’ of the book available ($12 goes to charity: water!) and you can always buy it on Amazon.

Seth Godin Gives Up On Traditional Publishing

Marketing guru Seth Godin is giving up on traditional publishing, according to a teaser to an upcoming interview. We’ll let Godin explain it himself:

“I’ve decided not to publish any more books in the traditional way. 12 for 12 and I’m done. I like the people, but I can’t abide the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread … I really don’t think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work. I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically. No, it’s not ‘better’, but it’s different. So while I’m not sure what format my writing will take, I’m not planning on it being the 1907 version of hardcover publishing any longer.”

On one hand I think this is kind of funny. Poor Seth Godin, it’s so much work to sell those books. There aren’t that many authors who have an easier time selling books than Seth Godin. He could publish a book of blank pages and it’d top the business best seller list.

On the other hand, I see where he’s coming from. One year from author’s brain to bookstore shelf would be considered lightning fast in the publishing industry. The emphasis on making a big splash can be pretty overwhelming. And if you can spread your ideas in other formats (assuming spreading your ideas is all you’re after), why not go for it?

The reality here is that Godin can do whatever he wants. He can sell hardcover 1907 books if he wants, and he could just as easily sell digital 2010 books. If speed is his concern he could write up a manuscript and have it on Kindle in mere days. He could even have a hardcopy version available on Amazon in about a week. It’s not hard (I’ve done it).

Finding My Novels a Home

I’ve been thinking about novel writing lately. You can blame Jonathan Blundell and the little video chat we did a few days ago about my post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel, Least of These. You see, I’ve written three novels. Two have been self-published as rough drafts and one has seen a few re-writes and I’m wondering what to do with it.

Last night I pulled out my non-sci-fi novels and started reading through the first chapters. I liked what I read. I saw a few things here and there to improve (I’ll probably always feel that way), but I didn’t have that impending sense of way too much work to do to find anything salvageable. I enjoyed what I read, perhaps out of nostalgia for my own creation, but I also thought it was pretty good.

But the question I kept coming back to is what do I do with these novels?

Continue reading Finding My Novels a Home

I’ve Got a New Book: Least of These

Author Kevin D. Hendricks with his published creation, Least of TheseMy post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel Least of These is now published and widely available (the e-mail newsletter subscribers got the early word last night: subscribe now to be in the know). So much to talk about, I don’t even know where to begin.

What’s post-apocalyptic sci-fi? Think Mad Max’s Road Warrior. It’s the genre I go on and on about all the time. The world has barely survived some apocalypse (duh) and the survivors try to piece together an existence in the aftermath. There are usually recurring themes of boiling life down to its simplest elements, both in day to day survival and in bigger picture terms.

What is Least of These like? It might be comparable to the recent Denzel Washington flick The Book of Eli. Sort of. Mine has some action, some stock villains, a heroic female. But no iPods, swinging machetes (but arrows!) or utter desolation (or Denzel). I wrote Least of These in 2008 as a part of National Novel Writing Month. It’s been very lightly edited and published as a rough draft (hence the lame-o cover). It’s not deep literature, but hopefully it’s good for a rainy afternoon bit of fun (do people still consider reading fun?).

Why is the Internet so cool? Because I published this thing in three days. I got the idea on Tuesday. I went through the manuscript and made minor proofing edits (and missed loads, I’m sure), I did the layout in Microsoft Word, slaved over the cover in Photoshop and by Thursday was uploading a PDF file to CreateSpace. Three days. On Friday I ordered my proof copy. It arrived on Tuesday. You could buy a copy online that night. It was up on Amazon about a week later. Of course it helped that I had a manuscript lying around and had already read through it making editing notes. Go Internet. It’s a cool time to be creating stuff.

Why does the cover suck? Remember ‘published in three days’? Yeah, I have lots of friends who could design something better. Heck, Lexi could design something better (brainstorm!). But I wanted to crank it out quickly. Plus there’s that whole rough draft thing. It seemed disingenuous to put a lot of effort into the cover when I haven’t put a lot of effort into the editing (except for the last time I did that). It’s a rough draft, all the way around. I kind of like the idea of publishing rough draft versions like this. Get it out there, quick and dirty.

Where can I get a copy? You can score yourself a print copy of Least of These for only $9.99 or download the free PDF if you want to take it for a test read. For the record, I get a bigger royalty if you buy through CreateSpace. But buying through Amazon is pretty swell, too, since you can use your shipping deals and throw my book in with your regular shopping.

So there you have it. I had hoped to announce this a week ago, but that’s how things go.

An Awesome Book

An Awesome Book by Dallas ClaytonBarney Stinson would be proud. An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton is, well, awesome. It’s beautifully illustrated, clever and fun. If you don’t believe me, go read it for yourself. Seriously. You can read the entire book, cover to cover, online. From rocket-powered unicorns to musical baboons.

It’s a book about dreaming. About big ideas. It has pictures and is short, so we call it a children’s book, but it’s really for anybody. I think it might be better suited for adults.

Not only that, but for every copy of the book they sell, they give one away. That’s a pretty sweet set up. The video below gives the full story.

What is perhaps most awesome about this book is that it’s not just a good book, but it has an incredible story. The author has traveled the country giving away copies. He’s set up a nonprofit foundation to enable this vision of giving away one copy for every copy sold. It’s also an example of a successful self-publishing venture. I love that you can read the entire book online—another example of how we win by giving it away.

All around awesome. Just watch: