Self-publishing ‘Let’s Visit New Hope,’ Part 5: Publishing with Amazon’s Createspace

The new children’s book ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and illustrated by me, Pat Achilles, has just been released by the New Hope Historical Society. We used Amazon’s online publishing service, Createspace, to publish it.  This series of posts will follow the steps in the creation of the book.

Before I started the finished art for this project, I read as much as possible on the publishing process for Amazon’s Createspace, its online publishing division.  We had determined early on that we would use Createspace for our book, and it’s quite important to know how different publishers request art and pages to be supplied – the process varies from publisher to publisher. I definitely recommend Createspace, my experience with them was excellent and we’re all very pleased with the printed books.

Once all the artwork was complete and approved by the authors, I started the final stage of production, making the electronic file. I scanned each illustration and set up single pages for each of the 32 interior pages of the book in MS Publisher. (Many designers use other programs such as InDesign to create book pages, but even old-time Publisher worked fine for this project.) We had chosen to send the book to Createspace as a complete pdf file, which is recommended for heavily illustrated full color books. (Createspace also accepts word documents.) They would use my pdf to print from, so there was less chance of something going wrong. Createspace has excellent member forums to give tips on designing and for answering questions, such as this. Here is what one Publisher page looked like as I designed it:

I placed the words and pictures on the page, being careful to keep important art and text well away from the outer edges of the page.  Books like this are trimmed after they are bound, and trimming is not always completely precise – so you don’t want an important image like a character’s face getting trimmed off the page by accident.  However, for art that I wanted to bleed off the page – like the blue wind in the windmill illustration above – I left to trail off, knowing it would be trimmed. Createspace gives you clear instructions on how large a margin to leave to keep art and text solidly on the page.

I then made a Publisher file of all 32 pages and created a pdf from that.  I also designed the front and back cover as one large pdf, since Createspace asks that the cover is sent separately. This is how the front-back cover pdf looked:

I submitted the interior 32 pages to Createspace first (they request you do this before sending the cover) and after a day or 2 they sent me an email saying my file had passed their initial look-through – in other words, I had set up the file to their standards, sized pages correctly, embedded fonts as they requested, and so on.  I went through the same process in submitting the cover. At that point I could request a proof of the book, which I did after getting the authors’ approval.

Createspace produces an immediate proof of your book online – you can look at your book page by page on the screen, to check for mistakes.  This may be enough of a proof if the book were all type, as most adult-level books are; but for a heavily-illustrated children’s book, it is always recommended you request a printed proof as well. This is because seeing colors on a computer monitor is quite different from seeing the colors printed in ink on paper.  So we also requested a printed proof of our book.

I’ll mention, in looking at the online proof I noticed a mistake we made – a missing apostrophe in one establishment’s name in the text.  I called Createspace and the remedy was: I corrected the text on my Publisher file, made a pdf of just that page, and uploaded it to their site, asking them to substitute that new page for the old one in our 32-page pdf.  They made this switch with no problem.

Within a week our printed proof arrived at my door.  The authors came to my house and we all examined it carefully – the proof is created to look exactly how the printed book will look, and it is your last chance to request changes before Createspace prints your run of books.

We thought the color reproduction was excellent, and found only one problem with the proof.  On the double-page spreads, where the artwork spread continuously from left page to right, there was a noticeable white gap in the center – like the ink didn’t print all the way down into the gutter.

I called Createspace and they explained that since these book are bound with glue – they are not staple bound or perfect (sewn) bound – they do not print too deeply into the gutter. They have found that the glue does not adhere as well to inked paper as to raw white paper, and so the book pages would fall out eventually if the glue started to pull away.

We accepted that small defect because there was no other option, approved the proof and ordered our first batch of books. Initially we were told by Createspace that our fairly large order of several hundred books might take 2-3 weeks to be delivered, depending on the volume of other books they were printing at the time. Happily, our order was delivered in about 1 week, well before our launch date. And even more pleasing, the completed books were glued a little tighter than the proof, which closed up just about all of the white gutter gap.

I would certainly use Createspace again for self-publishing books. Their reps were consistently polite, well-spoken and quick with answers to any questions I had. I mostly spoke to the same few reps in my project too – an appreciated detail – so I didn’t have to re-explain every detail of the project to a new rep at the start of each call. Our finished product looks wonderful and we are extremely pleased with the speed and ease of the process.

Thank you for following along on the journey of this book project, I hope it’s shown you some of the ins and outs of self-publishing a children’s book.

You can obtain author-and-illustrator signed copies of ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’ by ordering through the New Hope Historical Society’s website at http://www.newhopehs.org. Previous posts in this series are on my blog, just scroll through https://achillesportfolio.wordpress.com/pencilled-in/ .  To subscribe to my blog, click on the +Follow box at the lower right of your screen and you will get email notifications when I have posted new articles.

Self-publishing ‘Let’s Visit New Hope,’ Part 3: Dummy Book

The new children’s book ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and illustrated by me, Pat Achilles, has just been released by the New Hope Historical Society. We used Amazon’s online publishing service, Createspace, to publish it.  This series of posts will follow the steps in the creation of the book.  

In my previous post I showed the thumbnail stage of designing this children’s book.  Once this step was finished I could further develop the basic sketches into actual-page-size sketches.  Our book’s page dimensions are 8.25″ x 8.25″, so I made double-page-spread sized sheets and drew the sketches with more detail than the thumbnails.  They are still somewhat loose because things can change once we see everything together.  Here are a few dummy book pages (you can click on each to enlarge):

You’ll see, these sketches will all change somewhat by the time the finished art is complete.  I also created a sketch for the front/back cover of the dummy:

Which was soon revised to this – can you see the change?

With the authors’ agreement, we decided to keep the title typeface reminiscent of M. Sasek’s wonderful travel books.  At this point I photocopied and stapled together several copies of the dummy book so that the authors could distribute them to potential donors to the project. This gave everyone involved a good idea of what the final book would include and look like.

Next I’ll show some of my processes to create the finished art for the book.

You can obtain author-and-illustrator signed copies of ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’ by ordering through through the New Hope Historical Society’s website at http://www.newhopehs.org. My next post coming soon: Sketches into Finished Art. Previous posts are on my blog, just scroll through https://achillesportfolio.wordpress.com/pencilled-in/ .   If you want to read future posts as they are published, subscribe to my blog by clicking on the +Follow box at the lower right of your screen and you will get email notifications when I have posted the next article.

Self-publishing ‘Let’s Visit New Hope,’ Part 2: Manuscript and Thumbnails

The new children’s book ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and illustrated by me, Pat Achilles, has just been released by the New Hope Historical Society. We used Amazon’s online publishing service, Createspace, to publish it.  This series of posts will follow the steps in the creation of the book.  

Before even writing the manuscript for Let’s Visit New Hope, co-author Gayle Goodman wisely talked to and surveyed a number of second-graders at New Hope-Solebury Lower Elementary School.  She polled them on which sites, pastimes and events in the town were their favorites.  This gave her excellent criteria for what to include in the book and what to leave out – a kid’s-eye perspective of what is most important in the town. From this information she fleshed out the story and then historian Roy Ziegler wove the history of the town into the narrative .

An illustrator needs a finished manuscript, or at least a very-nearly finished one, to start working on a project. When the authors brought me this manuscript it was approximately 10 pages long, typed and double-spaced.  We envisioned this becoming a 32-page fully illustrated book, since 32 is a typical (though not exclusive) number of pages for a children’s picture book.  (Createspace accepts as few as 24 pages for a book.) Throughout our design process the manuscript underwent editing, but the basic page count and storyline was established with the first manuscript.

The authors had suggestions as to what should be depicted on some pages, but they left most of the art decisions to me.  As I mentioned in my previous post, we wanted to create a pencil sketch dummy book to show to prospective donors to the project.  Gayle had tentatively broken the manuscript into page-by-page chunks of text, so from that I started the design process by drawing small, very loose sketches called thumbnails, and making small double-page spread layouts.

You’ll see how these thumbnail sketches changed through our progress – and some changed a lot.  But this basic layout showed us the flow of the book, and we could see which pages perhaps needed more descriptive text or more room for art. At this time I also started gathering a lot of photo reference material about the subjects in the book – I went to New Hope for an afternoon and took photos of the buildings from various angles, and collected pages and pages of reference from websites and books. After this step I felt I could start the dummy book, which I’ll write about in my next post.

You can obtain author-and-illustrator signed copies of ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’  at http://www.newhopehs.org. My next post coming soon: The Dummy Book. Please write any questions in the comment box below the post. If you want to read future posts as they are published, subscribe to my blog by clicking on the +Follow box at the lower right of your screen and you will get email notifications when I have posted the next article.

Self-publishing ‘Let’s Visit New Hope,’ Part 1: Inspiration and Timeline

The new children’s book ‘Let’s Visit New Hope’, written by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler and illustrated by me, Pat Achilles, has just been released by the New Hope Historical Society. We used Amazon’s online publishing service, Createspace, to publish it.  This series of posts will follow the steps in the creation of the book.  

The authors of Let’s Visit New Hope contacted me last summer to ask my availability for taking on a book project.  Author Gayle Goodman, who has worked with grade-school children in the area, was the motivator, having realized there are no children’s books devoted to the unique, historic town of New Hope.  Roy Ziegler is a local author and historian whom Gayle brought on board for his particular expertise in the history of the area.

Art (c) M. Sasek

At our first meeting Gayle brought along two books from her childhood that somewhat inspired her to develop this project – and they became my inspiration as well. This is Paris and This is San Francisco are two of dozens of children’s books created by the incomparable architect-illustrator Miroslav Sasek in the 1950s and 60s.  They are delightful romps through famous cities of the world, with a dizzying number of beautiful illustrations drawn by Sasek, with the skill of a master but a child’s eye for fun.

They made me eager to do a book in this same vein, for our lovely local town of New Hope. The authors and I needed first to rough out a timeline for its production.

The authors had notes for the book but not a finished manuscript, and they planned to approach the New Hope Historical Society and other resources for grants or donations to pay for the art and production of the book.  From their typewritten manuscript, I would lay out the book from page 1 to 32, deciding which text and what art would go on each page.  I would sketch the illustrations and paint the finished art. And then the whole piece would be turned over to Createspace for printing – Roy had used Createspace for his other books and found good customer service and easy navigation. So basically we had to estimate the time needed to write the manuscript, gather donors, lay out the book, create the illustrations and have it printed.

Our ballpark estimations were developed: a couple weeks for the manuscript to be written; a month to lay out the book; 3 months to create the art; and a month to get it printed.  The task of soliciting donors, we decided, would come after I laid out the manuscript as a dummy book with pencil sketches.  We felt it would be a big selling point for donors if we could show them an approximation of what the book would look like, and also, having a 32-page dummy book would prove that we were serious about getting this book made.

Art (c) Pat Achilles

While we initially hoped to have the book ready for sale in December for holiday gift-giving, this was unrealistic for a full-color 32-page book. Instead we targeted March 1, which is Benjamin Parry Day in New Hope, as our hoped-for launch date.

In discussing the events and family-friendly places to include in the book, Roy suggested the idea of having Ben Parry himself – known as the Father of New Hope – be the narrator of the book, leading the reader through the town’s history and culture.  The Historical Society celebrates Parry’s birthday on March 1 at his historic home in the center of the boro, so Benjamin Parry Day was indeed the perfect time to aim for in introducing our book.

‘Let’s Visit New Hope’ is available at http://www.newhopehs.org. My next post coming soon: The Manuscript and Thumbnails. Please write questions in the comment box below the post and I will answer them asap. If you want to read future posts as they are published, subscribe to my blog by clicking on the +Follow box at the lower right of your screen and you will get email notifications when I have posted the next article.

My new children’s book about New Hope, Pennsylvania

Since last September I’ve been working on the illustrations for a new children’s book, Let’s Visit New Hope by Gayle Goodman and Roy Ziegler. The authors, who live in New Hope, found no children’s book anywhere devoted to this unique, culturally rich river town, and so set out to create a book that would highlight its history and family-friendly sites and events.  I’m honored they asked me to provide the artwork!

I’ll be writing more posts about the process of developing the book and my illustrations here in my blog, and I’ll be happy to answer questions if you’d like to leave comments. We used Amazon’s Createspace to self-publish the book, and I can answer questions about self-publishing too since I’ve worked with other authors to self-publish.

Our book launch is on Sunday March 1, at the Parry Mansion in New Hope, and the public is invited.  It’s the perfect place for the launch since Benjamin Parry, the man who built the first ‘Hope Mill’ after which the town is named, is our narrator for the book.