Getting the Book(s) out Part 2

A while back I wrote part 1 on this subject:
Part 1

Long story short I wrote a bunch of short stories and I've partnered with a friend who is a talented artist to illustrate my books. In August/September 2009 we released the first book: Hal the Unwashed Dragon.  We have just released a second book: Teevert the Little Green Leaf.

So far we've sold a little over 50 copies of Hal through direct sales to people we know, or know our parents etc.  This has given us a good base to start with.  Some of the sales were to libraries in the town where I live now and the libraries in the area I grew up.  The libraries were easy sales and have the added advantage of being perpetual free advertising.
I contacted a number of local bookstores.  Most didn't bother to return my emails - I'm not sure if they got caught in junk mail filters or what.  One responded more than a month after I sent the email.  I've so far managed to get Hal carried by Black Bear Books here in Creston, Mik-L-Maxx Books, Teas and more in my home-town of Dauphin, Manitoba, and soon the Lotus Books store in Cranbrook which is a small city close to the town where I live now.  But the biggest coup is getting the book carried by the local Overwaitea. Overwaitea is a large chain supermarket in this province (British Columbia).  I contacted their corporate offices and hey got me set up in their computer system as a supplier, then I hooked up with the local manager.  The book will only be in the local branch, but even so, there is a huge amount of traffic there every day and the manager is happy to help promote the book by having some copies near the registers and allowing me to a book signing.  They will also distribute bag-stuffer flyers to promote the signing for the week ahead of the event.  That will be our first book signing.
After that we have a table at the local Christmas craft fair later this month.  I am hoping to have copies of the second book as well by then.
Then we have a reading and signing at Black Bear Books the same evening as the Santa Claus parade.

We have also started up a Facebook Fan page (see ink in side-bar) and started promoting through there.
For media exposure I first got myself into monthly employee newsletter for the company I work for.  It has a circulation of about 3000 employees or so.  I thought it would be great, but while I liked the article, I have only had one email inquiry out of it. However, after I posted a screencapture of that article on Facebook I was offered an interview on 730 CKDM radio which is in my hometown of Dauphin Manitoba.  The interview ran about 7 minutes and was a lot of fun.  Plus we got the MP3 and were able to match to a slide show of artwork and put it up on Facebook.

Once I had all these dates lined up and the book available at a few retailers it was time for the press release.  I sent it out just last week and so far a local magazine and the local paper have both indicated they'll be writing articles for their publications.  In fact, I'd better get to bed because I have an interview with the newspaper in about 9 hours.

That's about it so far.  Learning lots and having fun.  When you have a product with broad appeal you have a large potential audience compared to marketing to a niche.  That can be difficult sometimes.  But when you start out selling a book you've written there is one niche every author has: local.  Promote your book locally and the fact that someone in their own town has a book i print is enough of a motivator for many people to buy the book.  This the market in which we learn how to promote a book, how to work with retailers, do book signings, etc.  And who knows where it will lead! 

Both books can be previewed and purchased on Lulu: Marc Archambault's Lulu store or you can purchase directly from me.

Chapter 2: the Fairy the mushroom and the Medicine Woman

The Fairy, the Mushroom and the Medicine Woman

by Marc Archambault

Copyright.  All rights reserved.  No copying without permission, etc. etc. 

If you haven't yet read chapter 1, go here: Chapter 1: Home


Chapter 2: Surprise!

Gwen's parents were overjoyed to see her when she finally arrived back at their cottage after collecting the medicine ingredients.
"Welcome back Gwen!" they said through large smiles. They embraced her warmly and kissed her on both cheeks. Gwen was happy to see them too, but she had work to do. She explained to them about George's mother and the medicine she had to make.
"Yes, of course," said Gwen's father. "We heard that Annia had taken ill. The table is cleared. You can work there. Is it all right if we watch you make the medicine? We're so very proud of you. We want to see what you've learned."
"That would be fine, Father." Gwen sat down at the table and began unpacking her mortar and pestle and her medicine bag.
"Is there anything I can get you?" asked Gwen's mother.
"Could you put a kettle on, please, Mother? I'll need to steep the medicine in hot water to make a tea." Gwen went through her medicine bag, examining each of the ingredients she had collected in turn. When she came to the mushroom, a puzzled look came over her face.
"This is very odd," she said to her father, who was watching her work. "There are holes in the mushroom that appear to have been cut." She looked closer and her father leaned in for a look as well. Gwen saw through a tiny round hole that there was a room inside the mushroom. There was a bench along a wall and a doorway leading to another room which could be seen through another small hole on the other side of the mushroom.
"It looks like a little cottage has been carved inside the mushroom," Gwen explained, looking at each of her parents. "What could it be?"
Gwen's mother came over to the table to inspect the mushroom herself. "Fae," she whispered. Gwen's father gave a deep sigh and leaned back in his chair. "I'm afraid, my child, that your mother is right. What you have there is a fairy dwelling."
"A fairy dwelling!" Gwen was shocked. "I've picked a fairy's home from its place in the forest? Oh, no!"
"It's bad luck," explained Gwen's mother. "You must beware. Fairies are tricky folk. The fairy will be angry and will seek revenge on you. It may torment you your whole life." She twisted her apron nervously.
"This is very bad indeed," agreed father.
"But I meant no harm," insisted Gwen. "I must make amends!"
Before her parents could protest, Gwen put the mushroom back in her medicine bag and fled into the woods.

Celia gave a last great sob and then sat quietly. She was numb, not feeling anything any longer. She just sat near the stump of her mushroom. Her fiery green eyes were rimmed with red from crying. Her face and hands were wet with tears. She was exhausted and could do no more. She lay down on a patch of moss, curled herself into a ball and started to drift off. Just as sleep and peace approached, she opened her eyes. A sound. She had heard a sound. Footsteps. Quickly, she hid inside a hole in one of the fallen branches and waited. She saw a young human woman, not much more than a girl, approach the mushroom's stump. She had long brown hair and bright green eyes, not unlike Celia's. Pretty... for a human. She sat on the ground beside the stump and opened a bag that hung at her side. She brought out an object in her hands and placed it gently on the stump. It was Celia's mushroom! Celia's eyes narrowed. She felt her little fairy heart race like a hummingbird's and heat rose inside her. She was angry, she thought. But it didn't make sense. Why would a human pick her home and then bring it back? She waited and watched, suspicious. What's that? Tears? The human was crying. A drop fell from her cheek and dropped onto the mushroom. As it splashed, it split the moonlight like a crystal, casting motes of rainbow light for a brief moment.
"I'm so sorry," the human said. "Please forgive me, forest spirit. I meant no harm. Truly I did not. I am a medicine woman. I was gathering ingredients for a medicine to help a friend’s sick mother in the village and I needed a mushroom like this one. I did not notice that it was your home until it was too late. Please forgive me. I don't know what I can do to make it better. Perhaps you can use your magic to fix it. I'm so, so sorry, dear fairy." The young woman sobbed again, more tears splashed onto the mushroom. Celia thought for a moment, then made up her mind and marched out of the hole to stand in front of the girl.
"Well, not only did you tear my mushroom from its stalk, but now you're getting it all wet and salty. It really won't be any good to me now!"
The human's eyes went wide, she opened her mouth to speak, but Celia cut her off by flying up and hitting her on the nose with her tiny fist.
"What kind of a medicine woman picks a mushroom without checking it first?" she demanded.
"I... I'm sorry," stammered the girl, rubbing her nose. "I have only just finished my training and I've just returned to my home village this very night. My teacher never told me that fairies might live in such mushrooms. I..."
"Well, now you know!" Celia interrupted angrily. "Who are you anyway?"
"My name is Gwen, dear fairy. What is your name?"
"A fairy does not give her name, except to her friends. You may call me fairy."
"I hope we might be friends," Gwen said softly.
"Friends with the stupid girl who ruined my first home before I could even move in? I think not."
"Please forgive me, I didn't know. I would never do harm to such a gentle forest spirit as you. Not knowingly."
Celia harrumphed and flew into the boughs of the great evergreen.

Getting the book out

For those new to this blog, I am a children's book author. I gave up trying to find the right publishers for my stories and instead partnered with a talented young artist friend of mine to do the illustrations and self-published my first book "Hal the Unwashed Dragon" through the print-on-demand service Lulu.com.

Now I am at the stage where I received the proof copy of the book and approved it for retail distribution. Within the next 6 to 8 weeks it will become available worldwide on Amazon's international sites as well as through the largest book wholesalers. BUt I am not counting on retail sales. For one thing, because of the mark-up, my royalties on retail sales are very small.
Instead I have ordered 125 copies for myself to sell. Because there is a bulk order discount, and shipping is less for large orders, and there happened to be a sale on when I ordered, I've brought my cost per unit down considerably. I'm also shipping it to a store just across the border in the US so that shipping is cheaper and faster. There are advantages to living just 5 minutes North of the Canada/US border!
I have begun offering signed copies of the book to family and friends for $20 Canadian plus $5 shipping in Canada. Note that I am no allowed to sell the book for any cheaper than the set retail price - that's part of the publishing agreement I signed with Lulu. The retail price $18.98 US - so roughly $20 Canadian.
I have a number of pre-orders, some paid, some not.

My next steps are:
1. Get the local library their copy and offer to do readings.
2. Get local bookstores on board with buying copies directly from me, and doing book signings and readings. By local I mean Creston, Nelson, Cranbrook, Trail, etc.
3.  Provide a press release to local media outlets about the book release once the first signing has been arranged: area newspapers. Free papers. local radio, etc.
4. Get some copies to my parents and other relatives willing to distribute to people who know me back in Manitoba and other places.
5. Get a table at the Christmas craft fair and sell copies there.
6. Go a little further abroad to bookstores in cities a little farther away and into the US. Sandpoint, Coeur D'aelene, Spokane, Kalispell, Kelowna, Calgary, Lethbridge, Vancouver, Edmonton. etc.

Looks like an exciting adventure. And this is just the first book. Many more to come in the future.  Like Teevert (pronounced T- vare) The Little Green Leaf.

If you're interested in a copy for yourself, just email me at mzadragon@gmail.com
You can preview the book online here: Lulu Bookstore: Hal preview.

Wish me luck.

The book is out

My First Book: Hal the Unwashed Dragon is now available for sale on Lulu.com. My last post I talked about the process of getting it ready and how everything seemed to come naturally until the phase of publication. Figuring out how to use Lulu proved to be rather complicated. It's not exactly the most user friendly of sites - though it obviously tries to be.

Putting the hardcover up was easy - that one can't be mass distributed, so it doesn't have an ISBN number and doesn't have to meet any particular requirements. So no problem. Once I figured out how to upload the stuff and make the cover it was OK.

The hard part was trying to get the soft cover to fit all the right detailed specifics so it could be eligible for distribution. But it's complicated with tables, and different sizes etc. And once it's ready you have to order a proof copy, review it and then approve the book before it can become widely available through Amazon, etc. Here's where I screwed up. First I get to the "you're finished" page which has a bunch of upsells including "buy a copy of your book to proofread". So I do, figuring that's the next step because that's what I read.
But nope - that's wrong. First I had done something wrong so it wasn't eligible for an ISBN for whatever reason, so this proof copy will be useless souvenir. Second is that you are supposed to have the ISBN assigned first - so I dd that and ordered it. Oops, another wasted order. You're supposed to put the number into your book before ordering. Sure wish they had a checklist for you to go through...

So I've got 2 souvenir "oops" copies coming to me. I only pay the wholesale price, but shipping costs suck!

Then I realize there are 2 distribution packages (well 3, but one is no longer available). I chose the wrong one. The one I chose only gets me on to Amazon.com - the US site. Not any of the international Amazon sites and not available to libraries or bookstores. What's the point in that? How am I supposed to promote it???

For some reason the book sizes and binding you need for one distribution are different than those needed for another. So I change my book again. Actually up to revision number 7 now! But even though I've followed all the FAQ instructions to the letter, it's not showing me the option to purchase the expanded distribution which I really need. So that's where I'm stuck, waiting to hear back from Lulu.

Another weird thing about Lulu is that if you submit a help request via email, you get an automatic reply with links to their help pages and a note saying we assume these links will solve your problem, so we're closing the ticket unless you reply. How weird is that?

So far I'm not terribly impressed with Lulu, but they are rated the #1 self-publishing web site, they're cheaper than the competition and they're the ones everyone I talked to has heard of, so...

I'm sure it will be easier next time.

I'm in promotion mode now. I've let all my family, friends and co-workers know about it etc. But though I've gotten lots of positive comments and I can see that at least 50 people have actually checked out the book's web site, not a single purchase has happened yet. I know it's not priced too high - I've checked around. I know the book is good. So, what gives? Nobody shops on-line? Nobody wants to pay shipping? They're waiting for Christmas?

It seems to e the same thing with any sales thing I do (except a garage sale). It's easy to get people to look. Easy to get people to admire and say "that's great". But converting that into actual sales is a secret I have ye to discover. Especially on-line.

I'll be very disappointed if sales don't work out. My confidence is already fading fast. But even if it doesn't pan out, it has still been fantastic experience and I've learned a lot.

Getting the book ready

Somethings things are self-explanatory or intuitive and you just pick them up easily. Until now that was the case with getting my children's book ready. (See previous posts on this subject - I'm getting ready to self-publish a book through Lulu.com).

The idea for the book - one of many stories I've written but the first to be published - came to me from a remark one of my daughters made. Once that seed of inspiration was planted the story sprouted almost of it's own will. Then it sat for a couple of years, languishing. I did send it to 3 publishers, none felt it was a good fit for them. Finally, I asked a friend from Kung-Fu class - Lorna Foot - if she would be interested in illustrating some of my stories. She took up the challenge with enthusiasm and started making pictures right away.
Then I realized that I had to venture away from being just a writer to being an editor/publisher. I had to storyboard the book - deciding which scenes to illustrate, what text to put on which pages etc. My wife Niqi and I did this together and it was a lot of fun. We've both read so many children's picture books to our daughters over the years (librarians know us by name!) that this part of the process was comfortably intuitive. It was easy to envision what we wanted and divide the story up so I could give Lorna direction as to what to illustrate.

Then once we got the pictures, another intuitive creative process came in putting the pictures and words together. Choosing the font, placing the text just so, placing the pictures just so, etc. Again Niqi and I did this together - we make a good team - and it was wonderfully exciting fun and came easily to us.

I also have a marketing and publicity plan that came to me intuitively and that I'm excited to put into motion. More on that in future posts.

But, before I can do that I have a hurdle. The actual publishing is giving me a headache. Now, if I had the capital, I could hand things over to Lulu for a fee and get them to do the rest. But I don't have that kind of cash just now and I would really rather learn as much as possible. But though I can grasp the concept - ISBN number gets you into catalogs and enlarges distribution, hard-cover vs. soft-cover, etc etc. - the details are frustrating. File formats, embedding fonts, binding types, blank page insertions, copyrights, doing the spine for the hard-cover, full-bleed print, non-bleed print, pricing, royalties, mark-ups etc. etc. There's a lot to learn. And none of it is coming with the same ease as the rest of the project has.

I feel I'm so close. If I can just get it on-line in the right format with everything in order so people can buy the book (Lulu is print-on-demand so books are produced as they are purchased) then I can relax and focus on telling everyone to buy my book (hint, hint :o). After that I don't even have to handle any physical sales - Lulu takes care of that. I just promote it and wait for the checks to come in. My Kung-Fu Sifu sells some instructional books the same way and they've provided him with some fairly stable long-term passive income. As he says - once it's out there, it just keeps making money for you forever. That's exactly the type of passive income with low start-up and overhead Ive been searching for. And not only that, but this is just the first book. I have many more already written, and hundreds of potential books in my head. I now have an enthusiastic and talented illustrator I've partnered with who brings the products of my imagination to life on paper. And lastly through the internet and print-on-demand self-publishing the means for a solid, inexpensive, low maintenance sales vehicle. The potential is just enormous!!! It's so close I can almost touch it! And unfortunately that eagerness is getting in the way of me calmly concentrating and learning how to do these last steps.
The good news is once I learn it, I'll have a new skill that will hopefully serve me well for many years to come.

There's an exhilarating sensation of hope and possibility that comes along with this point. I'm trying to savor it and remain confident. Because at the edge there is always some doubt.

Wish me luck. I'm about to push my sled down a new hill and see how things go!

Self-publishing a picture book part 1

It's happening...it's really happening!

I asked one of Kung-Fu "sisters" Lorna Foot, who is an artist, to illustrate my children's books and she is taking up the challenge with great enthusiasm. I asked her just yesterday and she's already done a cover for one of them.
We will be splitting the costs and profits.

We intend to start by paying for a small print run first and selling it ourselves through local bookstores, on the internet and I'll also have it at craft fair booths etc. We'll see how that does before pursuing any other options.

Apparently there are companies who can get you an ISBN number and make the book available through Amazon etc. but it appears these don't tend to do well.

If we do fairly well on our own, we'll look at option after that. Perhaps we'll try to get a traditional publisher to take it up. Or maybe we will do larger runs. Who knows.
Right now all possibilities are open to us.

It's very, very exciting to see one of my characters come to life in artwork. This will be a very enjoyable endeavor regardless of he outcome.

The first of my books we are working on is called "Hal the Unwashed Dragon". It's a pretty simple but funny tale of a friendly dragon who wants everyone to like him but his poor hygiene makes everyone ill. Until he is advised to wash.
I've always had a vision in my head f what the scenes in the story look like so I can't wait to see how my illustrator (I can't believe I get to say that) will interpret them.

Here is the cover of the book!