Tag Archives: The Stephanies

Sharing The Stephanies

Since The Stephanies came out last month, Lexi and I have been having fun sharing the book with as many people as we can. Here are three great examples:

Letter from Denver
One of the incredible backers of our Kickstarter campaign turned out to be a teacher at Metz Elementary in Denver. She shared the book with her third grade class and then sent Lexi a letter. Lexi has fan mail! She included a letter from one of her students. Beverly writes, “I think that your story is very awesome.” Lexi was pretty excited to get the letter and now we’ll be writing back to Beverly and the third grade class at Metz Elementary.

Here’s Beverly’s letter:

Lexi’s letter from Beverly.

South St. Paul Reading
Last week Abby had Lexi come to her second grade class and read The Stephanies. I was a little unsure how this would go. I thought second graders would be put off at being read to by a first grader. I thought Lexi would clam up and be too shy. Good thing it wasn’t my plan. It went great. The class loved Lexi. She did an amazing job reading the story and answering questions. While she’s often shy in situations like that, she figured out how to rise to the situation and shine. We’re pretty proud of her.

Here are a few pics from the reading:

Lexi reading to Abby’s class.
Lexi with Abby’s class.

Nigerian Reading
Then on Sunday we did a Skype call with another incredible backer of our Kickstarter campaign. These were friends living in Nigeria, so it was a great chance to connect, be goofy and read The Stephanies. Perhaps the best part of this international reading was that our friends in Nigeria had literally spent the day on the beach while we were bunkered down in the midst of a 10-inch snowfall.

Here’s a glimpse of that reading:

Skyping with friends in Nigeria.

You Can Make It Happen
All of which is pretty awesome. It kind of sums up what a recent review had to say about The Stephanies: “I love it because they made it happen.” That’s the cool thing about The Stephanies. We didn’t do anything outrageous or nearly impossible. New technologies have put this stuff in reach of the common person, and we just pulled it together to tell a fun story. You could do it too!

If you haven’t picked up your own copy of The Stephanies yet, you can get all the details and versions available here.

Stephanies & First Book Update

Screenshot of donation confirmation page on First Book's site.We launched The Stephanies last month and promised to share half our profits for the month of November with First Book. November is done and gone (and with it all those great Movember mustaches!) so it’s time to tally our sales and make a donation.

We sold a whopping 7 print copies and 8 digital copies, for a grand total of $30.38 in royalties. So we’ll make a donation to First Book for $15.19. Doesn’t sound like much, but it will provide six new books to kids in need. That’s pretty cool. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy!

Those sales can be combined with the 36-some odd sales from our Kickstarter campaign and that’s pretty great for a self-published book written by a 6-year-old. How many books did you sell as a first grader? I’ve got a big ol’ nothing in that count. Creating this book, sharing it with the world and giving back in a tiny little way has been pretty awesome. The numbers don’t sound like much, but we weren’t in it for the numbers.

More than anything I had a blast doing it with Lexi. I now owe Milo a book project of his own. And this is a great test case for how kids can make their own books (not to mention how to use Kickstarter).

While we’re no longer donating our profits (we’ll now siphon the cash straight to Lexi’s college fund), you’re welcome to grab your own copy of The Stephanies. We’ve got the original paperback, a “Color-Your-Own” paperback, and digital versions for the Kindle, iBook & Nook, and the standard PDF version. It’s a great little gift for the kid in your life, no matter how old they are.

The Stephanies & First Book

I Support First BookTomorrow is your last chance to grab a copy of The Stephanies and support First Book. We’re sharing half our profits from the month of November with First Book, and with tomorrow being the last day of the month, it’s your last chance.

First Book is an organization that gives kids in need access to books. What’s so great about books? Aside from being awesome, literacy is the best predictor of a child’s future success. If they can read, they’re more likely to do better in life. The biggest barrier to literacy is not having access to books. It’s kind of a simple—if a kid can’t get easy access to a book, they’re not going to learn how to read.

So First Book is about giving kids that first book, giving them access to books so they can learn how to read so they can do better in life. It’s simple, but it’s awesome.

For $10 they can donate four new books, so hopefully we’ll be able to give a few books. It’s kind of cool to not only write a book, but to help others learn how to read books.

The idea of not having books is kind of unfathomable to me. We have literally thousands of books in our house. The kids both have at least a hundred books in their rooms. We like books. I hope in some small way we can pass on that love.

So if you haven’t done it yet, grab a copy of The Stephanies. We’ve got the original paperback, a “Color-Your-Own” version, and digital versions for the Kindle, iBook & Nook, and the standard PDF version. We’ll donate 50% of the profits to First Book.

Thanks.

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?

Reaction to The Stephanies

Earlier this week we officially released The Stephanies, the book my 6-year-old daughter and I wrote together. We’ve been having fun spreading the word, adding new options (you can now download PDF & ePub files) and seeing the reaction the book is getting.

Here’s a sample:

  • “The kids and I were walking around saying, ‘My name is Stephanie! No MY name is Stephanie! Grrr….’ the rest of the afternoon. It’s a really cute book—made me LOL more than once.” -Victoria VanZile
    Victoria reads The Stephanies to her kids.
  • Ariah Fine says this photo was taken 10 minutes after the book arrived: “They loved it and are inspired to write their own.”
    Ariah reads The Stephanies to his kids.
  • Video review by 5-year-old Aryn:
  • “Imagine my delighted surprise to find myself laughing out loud with sheer joy. Out loud. Laughing. Really!” –Meredith Gould
  • “Telling other children that ‘this book was written by a girl just like you’ can be empowering.” –Bookwi.se
  • “Great reading for a great cause.” –Christa Banister

How to Make the Most of Kickstarter

I did a Kickstarter campaign last month to publish a book my daughter and I wrote together (now available!). I think platforms like Kickstarter are awesome, but only if you know how to use them. There are a lot of amazing stories about creative projects being, well, kickstarted with huge piles of funding thanks to Kickstarter. But you don’t hear the stories of all the failed projects that didn’t quite get there.

I’ve done both, a failed project about Como Park and a successful campaign for The Stephanies. Here’s what I learned about Kickstarter:

What’s the Project?
You need to have a clear, simple description of the project you’re going to do. Give us details: Who are you, why are you the person to create this, why is it worth doing, why do you need Kickstarter, etc. I’m shocked at how many people just throw up an idea and expect money to pour in. Doesn’t work that way. Show me what you’re going to do and how you’re going to get there. You should put enough sweat into the project before Kickstarter that I can see it coming to life. I’m investing in an idea. I’m not investing in you coming up with an idea.

Goals
Keep your goal realistic. If you don’t hit your goal you get nothing. But you can always go over your goal. What’s the bare minimum you’d do this project for? That’s your goal. Don’t put in lots of extra cushion room. Keep that goal attainable. The goal for The Stephanies was $300 in 30 days. Easy. Also, keep that time frame short. 30 days should be the max. We hit our goal for The Stephanies in three days.

Rewards
Rewards are huge, but easy to do wrong. Keep the rewards simple and don’t offer too many. Don’t make me choose rewards because one has the format I want and one doesn’t. Also, make sure they’re packed with value—these are your early supporters, willing to back you when no one else will. So treat them like insiders, not donors to milk. It kills me when I see Kickstarter projects I’d love to back but they’re asking $25 for an ebook. Seriously? I promised my backers they were getting the cheapest possible price. Be sure to offer something awesome for $1. My most popular reward was the digital copy for $1. It brought in the least amount of money but the most people (build your audience!). It builds a buzz and lowers the cost of entry. Also offer some cool high-end prizes. Well over half our income came from the $50 and up rewards. This is a way to reward your uber-fans with some cool stuff.

Video
Your video is important. Everybody talks about this, but I think it’s over-rated. Do a good job with the video, make it professional and tell your story. But if that’s you sitting in front of the camera, don’t sweat it.

Kickstarter is awesome. If you do it right. Do you have a project needing a kickstart?

The Stephanies is Available

The StephaniesAll the wild frenzy of the U.S. presidential election comes down to today. I’ve been blogging about it almost non-stop lately, but today it’s time to shut up and go vote. And then spend the rest of the day in a state of unnerved distraction, trying not to reload your favorite news site every 10 minutes (oh wait, is that just me?).

So today I’m launching an election distraction: The Stephanies is now available. You can go buy the print version, the digital version or the “color-your-own” version where you (or your kid) can be the illustrator.

The Story
The Stephanies is a short, goofy little story about two girls who are both named Stephanie. Sharing a name causes all kinds of problems and the two girls continually square off:

“My name is Stephanie!”

“No, my name is Stephanie!”

“Grr…” both girls grumbled.

It’s great fun. If you’re into children’s books, think more Robert Munsch than Margaret Wise Brown. This is the book my 6-year-old daughter and I wrote together and then published through a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Good Cause
Proceeds from the original Kickstarter campaign went to Lexi’s college fund, but for the month of November we’re going to share. Half the profits from The Stephanies will go to First Book, an organization that gives kids in need access to books.

Watch Lexi Read
We also put together a fun video of Lexi reading The Stephanies:

Thanks & Please Review
I’d be remiss if I didn’t send out a big thank you to everyone who backed our Kickstarter campaign and made this project possible. Thank you!

I hope you’ll check out the book, give it a review on Amazon and tell your friends. Thanks!

Last Chance for The Stephanies

Last month I launched a Kickstarter campaign to publish the book Lexi and I wrote this summer called The Stephanies. In less than three days the project was fully funded.

Awesome.

Over the last month the campaign has hummed along, raising more than double the original goal. That’s pretty cool, especially since extra cash goes toward Lexi’s college fund.

But the Kickstarter campaign comes to an end tonight at 9 p.m. Central. Today is your last chance to join our Kickstarter campaign and support The Stephanies.

But wait, if the campaign is already fully funded, why should I join?
Great question. At this point the goal is met and the project is going forward with or without you. We’re at a fun stage in the life of a Kickstarter campaign where there’s no more hoping and dreaming. The project is a reality and joining up now doesn’t carry any risk that the project might fail.

But two reasons why you might still want to join the campaign:

1) Get the Book Cheap
The Kickstarter campaign will be the cheapest way to get a copy of the book. You can get the digital version for just a buck and the print version for $15 (shipping included, plus a personal thank you from Lexi and me). If you want a copy, now’s the best time to get it. The Stephanies will be on Amazon later, but you won’t be able to get it for as cheap.

2) Cool Rewards
We also have some cool rewards available now. Along with the book, you can also get some cookies, Lexi artwork, join Lexi’s book of the month club or some other fun extras. My personal favorite is the book of the month club. It’s a little pricey at $250, but considering that you get a book shipped to you every month for a year, it’s a pretty great. Today’s your last chance for any of these goodies.

You have until 9 p.m. Central tonight. Ready? Go!

Let’s Publish the Stephanies

This summer Lexi and I wrote a children’s book called The Stephanies. Lexi drew the pictures and we want to publish it. We need your help.

The Stephanies is a short, goofy little story about two girls who are both named Stephanie. Sharing a name causes all kinds of problems and the two girls continually square off:

“My name is Stephanie!”

“No, my name is Stephanie!”

“Grr…” both girls grumbled.

It’s great fun. If you’re into children’s books, think more Robert Munsch than Margaret Wise Brown.

Tonight we launched a Kickstarter campaign to make the book a reality.

What’s a Kickstarter?
Good question. Kickstarter is awesome. It’s a site that allows creators to go straight to their fans to raise support for their projects. Creators come up with a fundraising goal and a deadline. If they can raise the money before the deadline, people pay up and the project goes forward. If the goal isn’t met by the deadline, everybody keeps their money and the project doesn’t happen (You may remember that I tried a failed Kickstarter project back in 2010—we didn’t meet the goal, so all those great backers kept their money). Creators also come up with rewards to encourage people to support their project, like a copy of whatever is created, behind-the-scenes access, limited edition items and more.

It’s an exciting development for creators and fans alike. Last year Kickstarter brought one of my favorite bands, Five Iron Frenzy, back from the dead. It allowed indie artist Shaun Groves to fund a new record without a label. It enabled a sequel when a publisher balked. Just last week it funded the new Molly Danger comic book from Jamal Igle. And it’s two-thirds of the way toward funding a new book and album project for Justin McRoberts. And those are just a few of the projects I’ve supported. It’s for plenty of other awesome ideas as well, like smarter consumer electronics (they’ve already raised over half a million dollars!), an ad-free future for the comic Penny Arcade, and even a space elevator.

It’s great fun to become a patron of what you think is cool.

Back to The Stephanies
So yeah, we’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to get The Stephanies published. We’re trying to raise a modest $300 by Oct. 3 to help defray the time and effort of publishing the book. We’re going to do three versions—digital, “color your own,” and full-color paperback. Back the project at any amount and you get a copy of the book ($1 for digital, $10 for “color your own,” and $15 for paperback, shipping included). Pony up $25 and you get all three versions, plus Lexi will create some custom artwork for you. We’ve got some higher end rewards for the big spenders, including a cookie package, Lexi’s book of the month club and your very own custom book written by Lexi and I.

Lexi helped me every step of the way on this project, including coming up with the rewards. She didn’t think anyone would pay a lot of money for this project, so we tried to keep all the reward prices as low as possible. By backing the project you’re getting the family discount. This isn’t about making money, it’s about sharing our story.

The Stephanies has been a fun summer project for Lexi and I. We’d love to turn it into a real book and share it with the world. We hope you’ll help.

Say Hello to The Stephanies

It’s only the second day of Lexi’s summer vacation and she already needs a project to keep her from being bored. OK, I need her to have a project to keep her from being bored.

A while back we wrote the outline of a book together. I asked Lexi who she wanted the characters to be, what she wanted to happen and kind of made up the rest. She drew one picture and it got filed away for another day.

Today was that day.

The Stephanies
We pulled out The Stephanies and started work on our book. I’m the writer and Lexi is the illustrator (apparently on Saturday we’re going to switch roles for her Star Wars book). I had to explain how illustrating works, how you have sketch things and draw them and redraw them and draw them again to get it just right. I explained how she had to practice drawing each Stephanie so they looked the same in each scene. I also explained how this wouldn’t be a quick project that we’d finish up today—it’d take a while. (All of which would probably make me a horrible art teacher)

So I spent the afternoon writing and Lexi spent the afternoon drawing. I have most of the story, though the ending needs some work and it needs lots of polishing (my last children’s book was Mike, The Cat, written when I was a child). Lexi has a lot of good drawings, though I think we need to pick some new colors or figure out what’s wrong with the scanner (the girls should be wearing dresses that are highlighter pink and yellow).

So that’s your preview of The Stephanies. It’s going to be awesome. I’m hoping we can release it later this summer, probably as an ebook and maybe as a full-color, printed book (I’ve been wanting to experiment with that for a while).

What About Milo?
And why isn’t Milo involved in this little project? Mainly because I insisted the kids clean their rooms on the first day of summer vacation and then keep them clean. Lexi finished after an hour or so on the first day. Milo kept procrastinating, not doing it and somehow completely avoiding it. For two days. He finally finished the half hour job tonight, so maybe I’ll have to find a role for him tomorrow.

Maybe he can be our publicist.