I Self-Published A Rhyming Children’s Picture Book After Spending A Year Working On The Story And Illustrations.

After harboring a long held passion for illustrating, I was inspired by my own children to release that pent up creativity into a children’s picture book. Like most parents, I was forced into story time before bed, whether I liked it or not. As story time became more popular in our household, reading the same few favorite stories over and over became quite predictable. My kids and I started telling our own made up stories to one another and each night brought a whole new level of craziness and laughter. The louder the laughs the better the story. I realized this was the story that I needed to tell. A year in the making, A Trip to Outer Outer Space is my first illustrated book and we could not be more pleased.

Through trial and error, struggles and unanswered emails/phone calls/letters, I decided to self publish my book. The control was in my hands and although that was very satisfying at times, it was also the scariest part of writing and illustrating a book. I took to the internet and library for most of my research. Now that I have successfully created my book, there are many things I would have changed about the process but I could not be more pleased with the outcome. I used Amazon’s Createspace for the softcover book and IngramSpark for the Hardcover book. Minimal fees were required for these print on demand services and they offer great opportunities for marketing and selling your book. Now for the leg work. Getting the word out about the book can be quite difficult but I find that getting off the computer sometimes and doing community events really help get the book noticed.

All in all, if you are interested in creating your own book, I say go for it! Self publishing can be very rewarding, especially when happy readers send you photos of their copy!

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