Publish an early reader book

Chirstmas Time Is Here....

2008-12-22T10:38:00.003-05:00

Okay, where did the last couple of months go??!! Our second book has been out about a month and things are going well. We did a book signing at Sauder Village in November and two signings in December. We have a couple of events planned each month for the next few months! I have to get busy on polishing up my educational presentations since over half of our appearances involve that aspect.

Richard and I have started working on our third book about a combine, the second in the farm series. It is really exciting to see what he comes up with for illustrations. It is really odd how often he reads my mind in terms of what I am thinking?!!

Our presentation at the Mazza in October went well and we are working on putting together a short clip to post on you-tube. It was fun to work with all of the preschoolers that were there.

Hope to see some of you out at the upcoming events!
Merry Christmas,
Stacey

August is here and things are rolling!

2008-08-02T12:01:00.004-04:00

Can you believe that August is here already??!! I have been back from vacation for a few days and am finally feeling caught up with things. In mid July, Richard and presented for 2 days at the Mazza Summer Institute. We had good attendance at our presentations and did well selling our tractor book. It was also great to talk with all of the different people who attended, teachers and librarians especially! I am really looking forward to kicking off the Funday Sunday program in October with our "Down on the Farm" gig.

We sent in all of our book files for the bulldozer book. I will need to call the publisher early next week to run through the checklist of items but at least this is the final leg. We are hoping that the book will be ready in late October. It is a little later than we wanted but working with things on the tractor book has kept us busy. We also needed some technical assistance with this book in the bulldozer cabs and with the technique of building a pond. Fortunately, we found a couple of good men that helped us with both. Now, on to thinking about the next book......

Hope you enjoy the last few weeks of August! I know that I have a "Stacey Do" list that just keeps growing!
Stacey

Summer is here and the tractors are busy!

2008-06-19T11:48:00.004-04:00

Yahoo for summer! Although the area in which I live has received a lot of rain, all of the farmers have their fields planted. Most are showing new plants popping up through the soil. A great time for kids who love to see tractors!

Being a teacher, this is one of my favorite seasons...summer! I love to be home spending time with my family and not having to plan 1-2 hours a night for MY homework.

The second book that Richard and I are working on is coming right along. The bulldozers have a lot of intricate parts to draw and we hope to have it ready to be sent to the publisher in about a month. We are gearing up to take part in the Mazza Summer Institute in July. Richard's part is already finished, mine needs some polishing. I need to delve back into the world of self-publishing and marketing to be able to share more information in those arenas for our presentation. I am also pursuing some ideas for conferences and trade shows in the fall. I still am interested in spreading the word.

Hope your summer goes slowly so you can enjoy every minute,
Stacey

Spring Has Sprung and Time Has Flown!!

2008-04-28T20:20:00.002-04:00

Wow! How can it be the end of April already??!! I have a lot to share so keep reading!

The Literacy in the Park event in late March was a lot of fun and what a busy time! They tell us that around 500 people attended and a whole bunch of them stopped by our booth. We were unable to use the Kidpix program to color Richard's drawings but the tractor and barn cutouts were a hit. We also brought along some sunflower seeds, dirt and biodegradable cups for all of the children to take home a seed. I think some snuck in two :)

Richard must have tired hands since he has been drawing up a storm of bulldozers for the new book! Things are progressing right on track. Most people that hear the news that a second book in is the works are giving us positive feedback.

This month, we were invited to Birchard Public Library in Fremont, Ohio to celebrate National Library Week where they were showcasing local authors. I hope you were able to see the photo posted on our website. It was fun meeting the children and parents who stopped by.

Richard and I also were honored to be asked to make a half hour presentation at a local church for their Mother and Daughter Banquet. We discussed my story of having a son in love with tractors and construction, how Richard and I met up, how we published the books as well as how Richard creates his illustrations. Overall, things went very well. It was fun to try our hand at this new piece of our puzzle.

Hoping Spring has sprung for you, too!
Stacey

Second book, this one is on bulldozers and a pond!

2008-03-17T18:43:00.003-04:00

This second book now has a title, "The Bulldozers Dig a Pond". Richard has finished all of the initial sketches and has started his craft of turning these sketches into his wonderful illustrations. This book will be about two bulldozers, one large and one small, that dig a small pond for the same family from "The New Blue Tractor". My son came up with the great idea to use the same farm house setting from our first book! It is starting to really take shape!

We are hoping to have this second book published by early fall. Of course, there are many factors that play into that date so time will tell.

We are busy planning the Literacy in the Park event where we will get to see and hopefully meet Steven Kellogg. We are using the Kidpix computer program to have the children "color" some of Richard's illustrations. I have created a couple of cut-out activities in which the children will make a tractor and a barn putting together 8 pieces. Richard has printed up some small magnets using images from "The New Blue Tractor" for us to hand out and I have put together a packet of activities to hand out for those people who purchase our book that day. Last year, Marc Brown was at this event and it drew around 1500 people. I am hopeful that we will get some great exposure here!

Hope the Easter bunny is driving your way on a TRACTOR!
Stacey

We were on TV and Space with the "Greats"

2008-02-01T09:23:00.000-05:00

Yes, we were! How exciting, at least for me. I had emailed and phoned a local TV station that has a Saturday morning show back in December. I finally heard back from them the second week of January. I received the call on Wednesday and they wanted us to be on that Saturday. Wow, just about put me in a tailspin! While this wasn't really something I had ever wanted to do in my life, the opportunity occurred.

Driving to the station on Saturday morning, Richard informs me that he has been on TV before! Well, many sides to this fellow. While doing the craft show circuit a few years ago, he had been on TV multiple times. It was a fun morning and I held up even with the "jelly legs"! It was a good thing that I got to sit down while doing the interview!

Currently, we are still pursuing other avenues for our book. We are going to be part of a literacy day at a local state university this March, we have a book signing coming up within the next few weeks, and finally the WOW event.....Richard's work has been accepted at the Mazza Museum in Findlay, OH! For those of you unfamiliar with this museum, it is a pretty prestigious honor! His work will be among those of other fantastic illustrators like Jan Brett, Marc Bown, Eric Carle, Steven Kellogg and Chris Van Allsburg just to name few. We are also kicking off a presentation there this fall with our book "The New Blue Tractor".

Things are also rolling along with our second book. We have a potential layout finished and Richard has begun working on the initial sketches of the pages. I am still messing around with some of the text but it is essentially finished. We met last week with an insightful gentleman about this whole process of pond-building. I certainly don't want to make any technical errors! It was fascinating to learn all of the "ins and outs"!

Keep "plowin' into reading"!
Stacey
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A Great 2007 for The New Blue Tractor

2008-01-02T19:56:00.000-05:00

Wow, what a fantastic year 2007 has been! I met a wonderful illustrator to make my book idea a reality. He has also become a true friend. I have truly been blessed this year in this area of my life.

I had wonderful local sales the month of December and things were a little crazy in my life. I now have 5 local stores carrying my book on consignment and the holiday season was a good season for my tractor book. I have sold almost 500 copies locally. I wonder how many have sold on the internet? It would be great if my publisher had a way to check this online. We won't know until April how many sold between October and the end of December, that is a long time to wait! Not really, but it feels like it.

My illustrator and I are set to meet next week and go through the monetary aspect of this business. I think we have cleared our initial investment with just our local sales but am still in the process of finalizing a total. We are also going to meet to get started on our second book about the bulldozer. He has some things sketched up for me to look at and the whole process starts over again! How exciting! At least this time, we are a little wiser about the whole process.

We are considering looking at a different publisher since I would like to have a perfect binding instead of the saddlestitch. I have found that some of the brick and morter stores will not accept books that have a saddlestitch binding in their stores. I would like to be able to sell my books in the bigger stores, so something to look into.

Some of the other local children's authors that I have met have published their books locally. If we went that route, we would have to sell on Amazon but I am not sure how we would get into the large distributors like Ingram and Baker and Taylor. I think this bears looking into. Would we hire a distribution company? If so, I wonder what the cost would be? It could lower the cost of producing the book but then would we be stuck with hundreds of copies sitting in my living room? Lots of questions and lots to think about. Onward and upward with this whole children's book process.

Thankfully things have slowed down, but hopefully not TOO much!
Stacey

Tractor Fun

2007-11-25T19:50:00.000-05:00

I have had a great two weeks meeting new people and discovering new things while marketing "The New Blue Tractor"! I now have 3 stores selling my book on consignment and am hoping to contact two more this week. My book is now available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, Borders and Target! How exciting to search and see it pop up! I am working on getting the large, local stores to carry it as well. I have only had one disappointing contact, one of the local libraries. The person I met was concerned about the binding holding up although there were many early reader books there with the same type of binding! I checked them out for my kids a few years ago. The same person also shared the many things that they thought were wrong with my book, in their opinion. Oh well, I don't expect everyone to appreciate or like the book. I took it with a grain of salt, not my favorite library anyway!

I met with a fantastic lady at my local university and she really enjoyed my book. She has many ideas on the marketing angles and also invited me to speak to a class of undergraduates in which they are required to write a children's book. I am VERY EXCITED!

I did another book signing at a local store this weekend for a Christmas promotion. There was a fair amount of traffic in the store, but not a lot of interest in my book. It is, however, selling fairly well without me there :)

I have now completed two more interviews for local papers. One in particular was quite enjoyable as the reporter was also a children's book author. We traded some stories as well as tips.

I have begun working on my second book. The story is about a bulldozer and it will start my construction series. The text has been a little more challenging. It is difficult to keep the short, simple text while writing about the work this machine can do! I'm sure the text will come along. I have shared it with Richard and our next plan of action is to meet with someone, a professional, who is familiar with bulldozers to check the technical "stuff".

I am hoping to capitalize on the holiday purchasing for my book. I am glad we were able to get it published by this time.

More another day,
Stacey

Having Fun Going to the "Market"

2007-11-15T21:16:00.000-05:00

I'm still expanding my list of places to visit, widening my circle. Most people I call are very pleasant and welcome the chance to meet. It is a little intimidating (is that the word?) asking people to look at my book to see if they might want to purchase it. However, I feel I am getting better at it. I have completed one interview (with a photo here at my house) for a local paper and have another scheduled in a few days. I am kind of surprised that writers are so willing! It is a good thing that I have a couple of days off next week for the Thanksgiving holiday since I don't know how I would fit in these meetings.

It is fun to watch the ranking of my book on Amazon fluctuate. Some days high, some days low.

I have been able to add a word search puzzle to my site for people to print off. It is simple and just right for a young child to complete. I have just begun setting up my author profile on Amazon. It is kind of fun!

Stacey

Marketing has begun

2007-11-05T06:26:00.000-05:00

Just last weekend I experienced my first children's book author signing event, as an author! I met a wonderful children's bookstore owner that happened to be having a local author book signing on Saturday and she invited me to participate. We didn't have a lot of people attend but it was a good experience to meet other local authors who like me, are publishing books. I saw a couple of neat books and made a few contacts while there.

This week, I plan to visit a few local places on my list to sell my book. It is pretty easy to talk about The New Blue Tractor since I think it just looks fantastic! I'm hoping others think so as well.

Amazon now has the cover picture up when you click on my title and boy does it pop! Those great primary colors really call attention to the book. We have had a couple of wonderful readers leave some nice posts. Richard made a "how to" list and I touched it up a little to pass out with the books I am selling requesting people to post comments for us.

Some days I feel like my life is just a little too crazy working full time, promoting this book and being a mom full time but....I try to remember the big picture. Also, dust has always been a friend in my house so why chase it out now!

More to come.....

Stacey

Books are here!

2007-10-26T16:50:00.000-04:00

The books are finally here from Dog Ear and they look fantastic! I have had them for about a week and it has been quite fun. I have received many positive reactions and comments, but then the people that I have shown it to are a little biased :) Many people that I work with have purchased a copy and many friends have as well.

Dog Ear produced a quality book for us even though it took a little longer than expected.

Now, on to the marketing plan to get this book "out there"!

Final Proofs, Finally!

2007-10-14T21:23:00.000-04:00

Who could have guessed that it would take almost two months to get to the final proof goal??!! While I usually consider myself to be a relatively patient person, this entire process has been a test! Could it be the publisher that I have chosen? Dog Ear Publishing out of Indiana is a small publisher but I had hoped that they would have more of a personal touch. However, the process with them has taken 3 times longer than I was told!! Maybe it is that way with every publish on demand publisher. Any thoughts out there?

Richard and I had very few changes to make from the first proof pages so I did not anticipate a long process to get the final proof pages. Last I heard, our book was almost through the "quality control" phase and would be ready for the presses. I'm hoping to see them arrive at my door within the next couple of weeks. However, this whole process has taught me to not get my hopes up.

Many people have asked me when the book will be ready so I hope this points to a few sales. I am trying to map out how I will be able to make the many contacts that I would like to make in my area. I would like to visit area schools, libraries, daycare centers, etc. in the hopes of promoting my first reader. I also hope to get a newspaper article out of the deal with a book signing at a local store.

Will post again when something new develops....hopefully the arrival of the books!

Proof Process Has Begun

2007-08-10T09:13:00.001-04:00

I can't believe it has been this long since I have blogged...so sorry about that! Vacation and down time on the book ate up the days.

Anyway, the proofs have finally begun to arrive from my publisher, Dog Ear! I have seen the cover and the first few pages. DE had the incorrect title page so we are still trying to sort that out but they look almost identical to what Richard and I submitted. This process has been a much slower process than I anticipated but since all I can do is wait, that is what I have been doing.

Being a teacher means that my time will soon be consumed by school and I had hoped that I would have some time this summer to begin marketing the book locally. Now that time will have to be squished in between the many other things that normally make up my days 9 months of the year. Oh well, everything happens for a reason, right?

This week, I have begun the text for my next title in the readin' machine series. It involves bulldozers, so I have been reading up on them. I am hoping to meet with a gentleman who works with bulldozers to nail down some ideas. That, at least, I can do before I start teaching!

Many thanks to the blogger who posted that they are looking forward to seeing the book on Amazon. I am looking forward to it as well! Be sure to check back and I will keep you updated on the process.

Stacey

Watching the illustrations become a book

2007-06-27T10:36:00.000-04:00

Do you know what it is like to envision an illustration for each page of your text and have a creative graphic designer understand, create and build each page into a book? Richard, my illustrator, has been able to complete this project for me. As we worked together building this early reader book, he seemed to be able to read my mind and illustrate the exact picture that I could see in my mind. Sometimes, his illustrations were even BETTER than what I had envisioned!

We worked together for approximately 2 months creating this 24 page book, The New Blue Tractor. He would send me illustrations and I would show/share them with friends and family. Occasionally, we would think of something to add to the illustration but most times Richard nailed it. At one of our last meetings before submitting the book to the publisher, he had put together the illustrations in a book format so we could see a mock up of what it will look like.

At this point, we have not heard from Dog Ear Publishing but hope to this week. It is hard to be patient but at least it is summertime and I am busy with family things to keep my mind active.

Stacey
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Staying Positive During Publishing

2007-06-18T08:44:00.000-04:00

Thanks for your question/comment last week, blogger! I try to stay positive during this process by remembering that I am working with a reliable partner, my illustrator, and by trusting my publisher. I think we have a great book to publish that children will read when they first start to read on their own. I am a little nervous about getting the word out though that we HAVE this great book! This blog and my website are attempts to bring awareness to The New Blue Tractor.

This is the first blog that I have ever done as well as the first website I have ever set up. If interested, my site can be found at http://www.readinmachines.com/. It is sure a learning process for a person who hasn't ever done it! I have been working through Google using their services for web design as well as the blog. I have a wonderful sister who is more active in both of these areas that has been, and continues to be, a great help! I have to say that working with the website has caused a little stress. I was trying to add a link to this blog and apparently hit something different and I thought I lost my home page! I was really in a panicked state! Fortunately, I had to leave to go to my son's baseball game so I logged out and the program just reset itself with my old home page. What a relief.

Richard, my illustrator, just sent me some coloring pages to put on the site so I will be adding those in today. Hopefully all will go well.

Stacey

Quiet Time Continued....

2007-06-11T14:15:00.000-04:00

Still in "quiet time" mode. I haven't heard from the pubisher about any problems so that must be a good thing. Richard and I chose a small publisher that uses publish on demand technology named Dog Ear Publishing. I read, printed off, and emailed many publishing companies on the web and was impressed by DE's friendliness, professionalism and lack of bad reviews! Some other companies are a little too big for my taste. I was even able to contact a couple of authors of children's books that were published by Dog Ear and they had positive comments.

More history of this process.... After Richard and I agreed to work together, I set out as the research partner to find a publishing company. We equally agreed to give Dog Ear a try. I had sent Richard my text for this early reader book and he began to work up some drawings. He created a page layout of the book pages. We were meeting approximately every two weeks and discussing/sharing information. We emailed every couple of days with information or questions to each other. I don't know how traditional authors survive during this process! Some NEVER even meet their illustrators!!! How could you communicate your ideas if you never even meet??!!

We also were trying to make cost effective decisions with size of book, hardcover vs. softcover, number of pages, cost to print and submitting print ready files. Richard is a graphic designer so he is able to work with the type of files needed. I was also researching a marketing plan and looking up early childhood learning objectives to target our market of readers.

That takes me through months one and two of the process. More on another day.

Stacey

Publishing an early reader book

2007-06-04T20:02:00.000-04:00

My author contact at the publisher calls this the "quiet time". I am waiting to see what they think of the book files that I have submitted. While the process up to this point has seemed long to me, it is short by traditional publishing standards. I began this discovery process with an illustrator back in January of 2007 and we sent the files of the book to the publisher just last week. It has only been about 4 months in the making. We have chosen to self-publish our early reader book. I had tried the traditional publisher path and deemed it too long and restrictive.

I am working with a wonderful illustrator whom I met by chance (or fate) that takes my simple text and adds life. I had briefly met Richard at a craft show when I purchased some of his construction machinery art for my son's room. When I was searching for an illustrator back in January, I looked him up on the web. I fired off a hesitant email asking if he had ever illustrated any books. I never thought I would even get a response. But, within days he contacted me and replied that he was most interested in illustrating a book but had never had the opportunity. He wondered if I had any ideas on the subject. We met shortly after and decided to go into this project as partners. He has since become a treasured friend.

Many things happened in these four short months, those items are to be continued......

Stacey