Writing Words for Nerds #AtoZChallenge--U is for Unique

“My book is fantastic!” he said. “And it’s unique! There’s no way anyone has ever written anything like it.”

I rolled my eyes, which was okay, because no one can hear you roll your eyes over the telephone. I think.

This was a friend of my husband, and he needed to talk to me because he had just written a children’s book, and he wanted someone to publish it.

Unlike me, he didn’t have a literature degree and he wasn’t published even once in some local magazine, forget about having years of experience as a newspaper and magazine writer and illustrator. He was just a dad who had made up a story that entertained his kid. But in his heart he knew it was the best thing since The Cat in the Hat, only better.

Too bad he wasn’t a celebrity. Then maybe his story would have had a shot.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “How many picture books have you read?”

“I don’t need to read any picture books,” he said. “I just need to you to tell me how you get a publisher.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” I sighed. “You have to read children’s books to make sure it hasn’t been done before.”

“I know it hasn’t, because it’s unique.” There he went again.

I wasn’t about to ask him what made it unique. The way he skirted the subject, I could tell he was afraid that I was going to steal his fantastic and unique idea.

Yeah, it doesn’t work like that, either. Real writers like me have more ideas than we know what to do with. We don’t go around stealing them.

Eventually, I gave up and told him to buy a copy of the latest Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market guide. I felt bad about helping someone add to the world’s slush piles. Stuff like that gives the rest of us a bad name. It makes publishers close their doors to submissions, which makes everything harder for those of us who know what we’re doing. Sometimes we even give up on the submission process, which means the slush piles get worse and worse, and the door openings get narrower and narrower.  

But there wasn’t anything else I could do. In his eyes, his story was amazing. He said so, so it had to be true! Why couldn’t I just take his word for it? And why was I standing in the way of his obviously brilliant idea? So I didn’t. I gave in. I wasn’t about to destroy his day-old dream of publishing a picture book and becoming richer than J.K. Rowling all because of his brilliant and unique idea that took him all of five minutes to come up with. I left that up to the publishers.

So I how do I know his story wasn’t all that he thought it was?

Because he made it clear that he didn’t read children’s books.

That means his story had either been written a hundred times before, or it actually WAS unique—but only because there was something so horrible wrong with it that no decent editor would allow it to be published. 

This isn’t to say that it’s impossible to write something unique and worthy of publication. It certainly IS possible, and it’s something every writer should aim for.

But the way to get there isn’t by refusing to read the books that already exist in your intended genre.

No, the way to get there is by reading and reading and reading some more in your chosen genre. It’s by analyzing those books to figure out what works and what doesn’t and why. It’s by reading nonfiction books that show you how to analyze and understand your chosen genre. It’s by reading until you discover there’s a book you need to read in that genre but can’t because it hasn’t been written yet. Only once you’ve made that discovery, will you have truly found the seed of something unique.

But that’s just the seed.

To help it grow into a beautiful and unique flower, you’re going to have to plant it in good soil, water it, feed it, and nurture it.

Because a story isn’t just an idea. That’s why you can’t copyright an idea. A story is an idea expressed in a unique way. Only the way the idea is expressed can be copyrighted. 

J.K. Rowling wasn’t the first person to write a kids’ book about a school of wizardry, but she was the first person to create Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley and all the things that make Harry Potter one of the most popular series of all time.

So how do you come up with a unique way of expressing a story idea?

It starts by reading and reading and reading some more. By analyzing those books to figure out what works and what doesn’t and why.  By looking for the things you can say that no one else has said—not because they’re horribly wrong, but because no one with your unique way of looking at the world and expressing what you see has ever tried it before.

That’s how you develop the one thing every editor and every agent says he or she is looking for: a unique voice.

All of this takes time. If you just decided to be a children’s book writer yesterday, trust me, you’re nowhere close. Pick up a bunch of children’s books are start reading.  Analyze what you read. How many pages are there? How many words are on a page? How much of the story is told through the text, and how much through the illustrations? Is there dialogue? Who’s the main character? What age? Is there something on the right-hand page that makes you want to turn the page to find out what happens next? To quote Mem Fox, “Writing a picture book is like writing War and Peace in haiku.” This job is a lot harder than it looks.

Or as Pablo Picasso put it, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

You first need to learn what a voice is before you can develop one that’s unique to you. You need to understand the rules before you can break them, or at least make them your own.

So what exactly is a writer’s voice? More on that in my next blog post. 

Everything You Wanted to Know about Publishing a Picture Book (But Didn’t Know Who to Ask): Part 4—Publishing

Everything You Wanted to Know about Publishing a Picture Book (But Didn't Know Who to Ask):

Part 1—Introduction

Part 2—Writing

Part 3—Illustrating

Part 4—Publishing

If you've followed the instructions in the first three articles in this series, you should now have the text and the illustrations you’ll need to indie publish a picture book.  Great! This last article will show you how to combine all these elements into pdf files that you can upload to CreateSpace, so you can finally publish your book.

Create the File for the Interior of Your Finished Book

Until now, you've probably been creating or scanning and manipulating artwork in a pixel-based art program, like Adobe Photoshop (the industry leader) or Corel Photo-Paint (what I use, because it’s great and much cheaper than Photoshop). At this point, you'll probably want to transfer your illustrations to a vector-based design program, like Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. This will make it easier to turn your illustrations into a multi-page PDF, which is the format your book will need to be in so you can upload it for publishing.

Click File and then New to create a new document in your vector-based design program and format it to fit the correct size, number of pages, color format (CMYK), and dpi (300) for your book. Here’s an example of a file setup from CorelDRAW for a 40-page book with an 8.5” by 11” trim size:

Import your finished artwork page by page to the correct page it’s meant to go on in the finished book and fit it so that it exactly fills the page. (Using “Snap to Page” can help you make sure that you reach the edges exactly.) Once you've done this for all of your pages, save the document before continuing.

Insert Text

Open your Word document with all the lines of text for your story (as well as the copyright page and any other extra pieces of text that are going to go into your book) already formatted in the font, size, and leading that you want in your finished book. As I mentioned in the second article of this series, I asked my writing friends about font size, and most of them said that 16 was the right size font for picture books. I went with 20, because anything smaller seemed to disappear on the page, but 16 is certainly acceptable. It’s also recommended to use a san serif font, like Helvetica or Arial, for picture books, because younger eyes find these simpler fonts easier to read. (I chose Arial Rounded, because the rounded look seemed to fit the fairy-elephant look that I was going for.) A wide leading (space between lines) also makes text easier to read, so a leading between 1.25 and 1.5 should work well. Copy and paste each piece of text from Word into the page it’s meant to go on, and then save the file again.

Layout Your Book

Make sure text is legible and contrasts with the background. Make text on dark backgrounds light, and make text on light backgrounds dark. If the background has a variety of colors, it might help to put a partially see-through dark or light background between the text and the part of the illustration where the text goes. You can also use the opposite of the color that’s in the background. For example, if the background is dark blue (which is a combination of cyan and magenta), yellow is the color that will best make the text stand out.

When I was a layout artist for a newspaper, I learned that black and red don’t work well together. Give it a try, and you’ll see how red text seems to disappear against a black background, and black text seems to disappear against a red background. Switch one of the colors for white or yellow, and you’ll also see how much better these colors work with black and red.

You can also apply drop-shadow to the text to make it stand out a bit more, like I did in this page from Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem:

A page from Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem

Add the text for the inner title page, copyright page, and any other extras that are meant to go into the book (like a dedication, a note about the author, or added information about the book or other picture books by the same author). Except for the copyright page, convert each finished page into a bitmap. (In CorelDraw X7, for example, that requires clicking on Bitmaps at the top, and then “Convert to Bitmap” on the top of the drop-down menu.) Once you do this, the text (as well as drop shadow and any other elements) will become a fixed part of the illustration. Later on, you won’t be able to undo it, so don’t convert your pages to bitmaps until you’re absolutely sure the page is the way you’re going to want it in the finished book, text included.  I recommend saving the file every time you convert a page to bitmap, just in case the program crashes at any point. It probably won’t, but large 300 dpi files take up a lot of memory, so it’s best to play it safe.

You can also convert the file containing your cover, back cover, and the spine of your book to bitmap, although I highly recommend you first give it a new name, so you can still make changes to the original file later on if necessary.

The copyright page has to be done last, because it will need to include the ISBN that CreateSpace will give you later on.

Alternatively, if you don't have a vector-based design program, you can select all of the objects on a page and then hit “combine all objects” in your pixel-based art program. I suggest doing it the other way, because most pixel-based programs don’t let  you create multi-page documents, which means you'll have to insert each page into something like Word before you can convert it into a PDF. There is, however, one advantage to doing it that way: Amazon Kindle prefers Word documents to PDFs, so creating your file in Word might make it a little easier to convert your print book to an e-book. Either way, you'll have to reformat all of your pages later on to fit a Kindle, which means you'll have to convert all of them to RGB color at 96 dpi and the right size for Kindle, which is 800 by 1280 pixels for all of Amazon’s color Kindles to date. (Black-and-white Kindles use a different format, but it makes more sense to format a full-color children’s book for the Kindle Fire) There are, however, much easier ways to format a picture book for Kindle. Download Formatting Children’s Books and Comics by Charles Spender (the fifth file on the list you'll find here) to learn more. Another option is to use Kindle Comic Creator, as this video explains: Creating a Picture Book Using Kindle Comic Creator. CreateSpace does allow publishers to publish to Kindle easily, pretty much with just the click of a button—but I have learned from experience that this doesn't work with full-color, fully illustrated books. It’s just best to format and publish your print book and your Kindle ebook separately.

Why, you might be asking, must you convert all your pages to bitmaps or “combine all objects” on each page? You have to do this because it will lower the size of your book’s interior PDF file. That’s important, because CreateSpace can only take interior files that are less than 400 MB. That might seem like a lot, but 30 or more pages at 300 dpi with layers can really add up. Combining layers into one bitmap makes the file a lot smaller, so you can upload it to CreateSpace.  

Publish It!

 So now you have almost everything you’re going to need to put together those two PDFs and publish your picture book! You still have to get an ISBN, and you’re going to have to put it on your book’s copyright page. You can buy your own, but CreateSpace will give you an ISBN for free, and using CreateSpace’s makes it easier for CreateSpace to distribute your book to more markets.

So let’s head to CreateSpace.com now.

Sign in on the left, or click on the orange “Start a title for free” button if you don't have an account yet and need to create one.

Once you've created an account and logged in, you'll be taken to your dashboard, which show “My Account” on the left, your member ID number, the CreateSpace Message Center (where you can find the emails that CreateSpace has sent you), your royalty balance for the current month, a list of your books with their ID numbers and a place you can click to order copies, and information about how many copies each of your books have sold so far this month. (Yay, I just found out I sold another copy of Why My Love Life Sucks! Thanks, paperback purchaser with excellent taste. You just made my day.) Click on the button that says “Add New Title” near the top middle of your dashboard. Or if you've already started creating your book, click on the book’s name. This will take you to the Project Homepage of that title. 

Here’s one for a picture book I'm working on called Click the Dog:

 Let’s ignore the Create and Sales & Marketing sections for now and focus on the three columns in the middle: Setup, Review, and Distribute.

This shows the Project Homepage of a picture book I’m working on called Click the Dog. The green check marks mean that I've completed these stages. The red circles with white lines mean I haven’t done these yet. And anything marked with a clock icon is currently under review with CreateSpace. Note: once you have acquired a CreateSpace ISBN for a project, you cannot change the ISBN for that project.

Click on “Title Information” under Setup. Fill in the required information on the next page (you can tell it’s required because it has an asterisk after it). This includes your book’s title, the primary author, and the Language of your book. You’ll also want to click on the drop-down menu for “Add Contributors” to select “Illustrated by” and then click on the blue “Add” button to credit the illustrator, too. Look over all the other fields to see if there’s anything there that you need to fill in because it’s relevant to the particular book you’re publishing. When you’re done with that, click on the blue Save & Continue button at the bottom of the page. This will take you to the next page, which is the one where you can add your own ISBN (if you have one and want to use it) or get an assigned CreateSpace ISBN.

Setup, Review, Distribute, and Sales & Marketing pages on CreateSpace have this on the left. Here it is with the Setup menu open. This makes it easy to access the particular page you need to go to while you’re working on a book. You can make changes on almost anything while you’re still setting up your book, except for the ISBN. The ISBN remains fixed after CreateSpace assigns you one.

Once you have your ISBN, you can copy and paste the number into your copyright page. And once you've done that, you can turn that page into a bitmap. And once you’ve done that you’re now ready to turn the file of your book into a PDF. Yay!

The vector-design program you’re using may have three ways to do this.

1. You might see a “Publish to PDF” option in the File drop-down menu.

2. There might be a PDF option in the Print menu.

3. And you might be able to choose PDF as a format under Export.

Whichever way you do it, make sure to check all the options to verify that your PDF will have 300dpi, be in CMYK, and (if that’s available) made up of bitmaps. Once you've published, printed, or exported to PDF, open your PDF file in a PDF reader to make sure that it looks the way you want it to. If it doesn't—for example, if it's in grayscale or the illustrations don't go all the way to the edges of the page—go back to your file, try to create a PDF again (possibly using a different method), and try to see where you might have gone wrong. Eventually you should be able to create a PDF that’s exactly the way you need it to be. You’ll also need to create a PDF of the file with your book's front cover, back cover, and spine. (For more information on creating this file, check out the article about illustrating in this series. You can also check out the CreateSpace article on formatting your book's cover.)

Now that you've created the PDFs for your book's interior and its front and back cover, you’re ready to move onto the next step: uploading your book's interior.

                        

Select “Full Color” under Interior Type, and then click on “Choose a Different Size” to select the trim size for your book. Then select “Upload your Book File,” click the blue Browse button, find the PDF of your book’s interior that you created, and double click on that.

You'll be asked to select whether or not you want the interior pages to bleed. “Bleeding” means that the artwork will go past the trim size, so that when the book is trimmed, the artwork will go all the way to the edges of the page. For most picture books, you'll want to click on “Ends after the edges of the page.”  Leave “Run automated print checks and view formatting issues online” checked. Scroll down and click on the blue Save button. Your book should now upload. This step will probably take several minutes, since you are going to be uploading a rather large file.

When it's done uploading, you'll have the opportunity to review the file online. Look over each page very carefully to see if there's anything you've missed. There could be a missing period or a word accidentally written twice. Maybe the text doesn't show up against the background as well as you'd like it. Use the double page view to check how the odd and even pages that will go together look side by side. Make sure that everything is exactly how you want it—because if it isn't, this is the last time you'll be able to easily fix what needs to be fixed.

The Interior Reviewer will automatically tell you about certain issues, like if parts of your books are less than 300 dpi, and which pages have these issues. Make sure to click on each issue so you can figure out what needs to be fixed and where. If anything does need to be fixed, you’ll have to upload a new file. Jennifer from CreateSpace put together a list of the top 10 file specification challenges publishers seem to run into when trying to upload their books and covers to CreateSpace’s website, so you might want to check it out if you run into any issues.

The Interior Reviewer from "Members' Top 10 Specification Challenges" from the CreateSpace forums, article by Jennifer, CreateSpace PrePress. Here you see what happens when an image appears to be placed too close to the edge of a page.

When the Interior Reviewer no longer finds any issues and you're completely satisfied with how your picture book looks online, click the blue Save button at the bottom. If you don't see a Save button at the bottom, try uploading your book's interior with a different browser. I ran into this problem with Chrome, but everything was fine when I switched to Firefox.

Once that's done, it's time to save your work and move onto the cover. You can go there by clicking the blue Save & Continue button at the bottom or Next at the top or of the Interior page. You can also go there by clicking on Cover under Setup on the left.

Select glossy or matte. (I don't recommend ordering a sample copy, since this will not be a copy of your book and it will cost over $6 with shipping, but that is an option.) If you're not sure which to choose, look at picture books that you have at home or from your local library. Do they have glossy or matte covers? If you see both kinds, which do you prefer? I went with glossy, because that seems to be standard, and I like the way my cover came out, but it's up to you.

Now it's time to upload the PDF you made with your book's back cover on the left, the book's spine in the middle, and the book's front cover on the right. Under “Choose how to submit the cover of your book” select “Upload a Print-Ready PDF Cover.” Click the blue Browse button, find the PDF of your cover on your computer, and double click on that.

The maximum size for your print-ready PDF cover is 40 MB, and if you converted your file to a bitmap (or combined all objects in a pixel-based art program), your file should be below that. Once you've successfully uploaded your cover, click Save & Continue.

This will take you to Complete Setup, where you'll be able to check everything over and then submit your book for review. Once you've done that, you'll see a little clock icon next to File Review on your book's Project Homepage while CreateSpace is reviewing it. When the review process is done, that clock icon will turn into a checkmark. You can then order a proof of your book. It's highly recommended that you do so, but if you’re in a hurry and you're absolutely sure the book looked perfect when you reviewed it online, you can skip this stage.  I did that with Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem, because I needed copies of the book for a street fair and couldn't afford to wait. (Unfortunately, it still didn't arrive in time.) The book looked exactly as it did when I reviewed it online, so I don't regret skipping this stage. Your book's proof will look almost identical to what your finished book should look like, except that it will have a page in the back with the word “proof” written in huge letters.

And now you're ready to set up your book for distribution. Yes!

I'm going to speed through this last section, because—unlike the process of putting your book together, converting it to a PDF, and uploading it—it’s mostly self-explanatory.

 You’ll start by selecting distribution channels. You’ll probably want to select all of them: Amazon.com, Amazon Europe, CreateSpace eStore, Bookstores and Online Retailers, Libraries & Academic Institutions, and CreateSpace Direct. 

Some of these channels are only available to those with a CreateSpace supplied ISBN, which is another reason why you’ll probably want to use theirs instead of buying your own.

One thing worth noting about the CreateSpace eStore is that you can give people the link to your book's page there, along with a discount code that will let them get your book for less. For example, if you go to https://www.createspace.com/4807674 and enter the discount code JHCCQCWM, you can get Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem for 30% less than the retail price. For the most part you'll be buying your own books at cost, which is currently $3.65 for a 40-page full-color picture book, but the link and discount code might be useful if you're trying to give a wholesaler, bookstore, or school a special deal. Of course, you can also purchase the books yourself at cost and have them shipped either to you or to the wholesaler, bookstore, or school.  

  

Once you've selected your book's distribution channels, it's time to set the price. CreateSpace takes all the guesswork out of this, by telling you what the minimum list price is for your title is in US dollars, British pounds, and Euros. It also tells you how much you'll be making in each of the distribution channels based on the prices you've set. While it might be tempting to set your price high so you'll make more money for each copy sold, be careful you don't price yourself out of the market. Paperback picture books tend to be cheap. On the flip side, don't worry if the minimum list price seems too high. Amazon and other retailers (excluding CreateSpace's eStore) will almost certainly sell your book at 10% or more off the retail price.

Finally, you enter the required information in your book's Description page. This includes the book's description (up to 4,000 characters and with limited HTML coding, but watch out for problematic characters, like apostrophes and ampersands); the BISAC category of your book (probably a subcategory of Juvenile Fiction), which you’ll select from a menu; your author biography (up to 2,500 words about your qualifications or reasons for writing this particular book); the recommended grade reading level for the book; the book’s language and country of publication; and the five most relevant search keywords for your book.

And that is how you indie publish a picture book with CreateSpace.

I hope you've found this helpful, and if you have (or if you still have questions), I hope you'll let me know in the comment section below. 

Happy writing, illustrating, and publishing!

Everything You Wanted to Know About Publishing a Picture Book (But Didn’t Know Who to Ask): part 1 of 4

So I recently published my first picture book, Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem, and I learned a few things (or to put it another way, I ran into a few big problems myself and was able to find out how to fix them).

I figured it would be a good idea to put together a series of articles about the experience, since it doesn't seem anyone else has really done that. There are a million and one blog posts about how to indie publish in general, but when it comes to publishing picture books, the information seems to be scattered in little answers to little questions all over the 'Net. This post will hopefully help me get it right from the start next time, and hopefully it will also help anyone else interested in indie publishing a picture book avoid some of the problems I ran into. 

First, why would you want to publish a picture book?

There are so many good reasons not to publish a picture book. Picture books are the most expensive books to create, because full-color books cost more to print (and most picture books have to be full color). If you’re not an illustrator, hiring a good one should cost you minimally a hundred dollars per page. Minimally. Per page. It can cost a lot more than that for good art, and you want good art. There are just too many picture books out there with bad art, and no one needs that.

So if you're thinking of publishing a picture book because you think they're easy to write and you can get your six-year-old to supply the illustrations, well . . .   

I'm not saying you shouldn't, but don't do it thinking you're going to sell a thousand or even ten copies. Do it because it sounds like a fun family project. Otherwise, don’t do it unless you’re an illustrator yourself.

Okay, so let’s say you're a writer-illustrator, like me. I was an editorial cartoonist, a newspaper illustrator, a layout artist, an arts-and-entertainment writer, and even a consumer columnist. Of course, you don’t have to have been all of that. You just have to have some talent in writing and especially illustrating, and you have to enjoy putting words together with illustrations. Illustrations are more important to a picture book than writing, because you there are lots of picture books that don’t have words or that have very few words; but there’s no such thing as a picture book without illustrations or some sort. Let’s say you're going at this with a realistic understanding of the rewards. You know you're not going to sell a lot of copies. Sure, it might happen, but that's not your expectation or your goal. You know your book will be competing against The Cat in the Hat, and Winnie the Pooh, and whoever Disney’s latest princess is for a book buyer’s dollars. And you can’t expect to win against that sort of competition.

So why are we doing this?

We're doing this because professional picture-book writers and illustrators know that the real money that’s to be made in picture books doesn't come from selling copies of books; it comes from paid school and library visits. Professional picture-book writers and illustrators also know that one leads to the other. Do a reading at a library, and chances are that some of the parents will be interested in buying copies of your book. Yes, there are author visits in middle schools, and sometimes even in high schools, but it’s generally easier to get gigs like this with picture books. It's also fun.

That was my reason for deciding to publish a picture book after having published four novels for kids, teens, and adults who like books for kids and teens. I wanted something for a younger age group; I wanted something for library visits, school visits, and parents with small children at street fairs. And I understand I’m still not finished, because during the last street fair I participated in, I met some kids and parents who were looking for early chapter books, the kind of thing suitable for third grade. I actually have one of those I started to work on, Gloria Turkey: Biggest Bird on Broadway, a funny tall tale about the creation of the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. It’s on the backburner (along with several other books), because it will require a hundred or so more illustrations than I've already put into it (about 50 or 60). But at least I've now expanded my potential audience with my first picture book.  

Getting back on topic, let’s say you have what it takes to make a picture book, and you’re going into this with reasonable expectations. Since youve decided to go it on your own, the first thing you’re going to want to do is find a service that will print and distribute your books.

I picked CreateSpace for Fay Fairy’s Very BIG Problem.

Why CreateSpace?

CreateSpace and Lightning Source are the two most popular printers for indie published books. CreateSpace belongs to Amazon, which makes it super easy to get your book published with them available on Amazon. Lightning Source belongs to Ingram, which is one of the world’s largest distributors of books to schools, libraries, and brick-and-mortar bookstores, which means that using Lightning Source makes it easier to get your books into schools, libraries, and brick-and-mortar bookstores. I use Lightning Source for my hard cover books, because CreateSpace has yet to offer hardcovers as an option; but I use CreateSpace for everything else because it’s just easier to work with—and it’s free.

“Easier,” however, doesn't mean trouble-free, hence the problems I ran into and the need for this series.

Okay, so now you know the why, who, and where. The next article in this series will deal with the most important question: how? The next article will be all about writing a picture book for publication. Don’t miss it!

Everything You Wanted to Know about Publishing a Picture Book (But Didn't Know Who to Ask):

Part 1—Introduction

Part 2—Writing

Part 3—Illustrating

Part 4—Publishing

Want to turn your picture book into a multi-media iBook?

Like many writer-illustrators, I've long been fascinated by picture-book apps, and I've been wondering how I can take advantage of this new technology. David Fox (along with Carisa Kluver) co-hosts a weekly Twitter chat with Brooks Jones on this topic. It's called #storyappchat, and it takes place every Sunday at 9pm EST. David is also the producer of a new picture iBook, entitled Are You My Friend? He agreed to answer my questions on how a picture iBook is made.

  

David, please tell us a bit about this project. Who wrote it? How did you find an illustrator? The drawings are delightful, by the way. And what about the voice talent? Who is she? She’s really good. Where did you find her?

Wow, that’s a lot of questions you snuck into the first one :-)

Annie Fox, internationally known children’s author and anti-bullying activist, wrote the book. She also happens to be my wife, which is how I lucked into the opportunity to turn it into an iBook. Annie has written books for Free Spirit Publishing, mostly for tweens and teens, including the Middle School Confidential™ series. More about Annie and her work at http://www.AnnieFox.com

Annie and David Fox

We first met Eli Noyes, our illustrator, about 18 years ago. At the time he was a director at Colossal Pictures. We told him about Annie’s Raymond and Sheila book series, and he offered to create a drawing for us, to help Annie show the book around.

Interestingly, this wasn’t Are You My Friend? but a different Raymond and Sheila story (which we can now publish as an iBook at some point in the future). Anyway, in 2003 we reconnected with Eli and asked if he might be interested in doing some drawings for Are You My Friend? Eli, wanting to expand his already very impressive skill set, happened to be taking a class on children’s book creation/illustration, so he saw this as a great opportunity. He helped us lay out the entire book, did sketches for each page, and did some beautiful watercolor illustrations for some of his sketches. But despite our attempts, even with an agent, we weren’t able to find a publisher then.

A year ago, we realized we didn’t have to wait to find a publisher... we had all the skills to publish it ourselves on an iPad! So we reconnected with Eli yet again, and this time he completed all the illustrations in color.

A few pages from Are You My Friend? on the iPad

Illustrations by Eli Noyes

For the narration and character voices, we knew we wanted to go the professional route. I contacted an old friend and LucasArts alum, Julian Kwasneski, and told him about our project. He loved the story and Eli’s art and wanted to make sure we had a great actor to play the parts. We worked with the Stars Agency and got back auditions from 10 voice-over actors. While they were all really good, Melissa Hutchison was perfect. She was able to nail all the voices in the audition. And Julian had already worked with her on other projects, so they had an established working relationship. Jory Prum was our sound engineer (another LucasArts alum), and Julian our sound director. Julian also helped with the sound effects we added to the iBook’s soundtrack.

Voice-over actor Melissa Hutchison, really getting into character

Why did you and your wife decide to turn this story into an iBook?

Our original plan was to turn it into an app. Having gone through that process once already, I knew how long it would probably take (about 2-3 months). And then I learned about Apple’s update to their iBooks bookshelf app that enabled background audio and synchronized word highlighting with the narration. That seemed like a perfect vehicle for our story, since we already had the art and narration. With the help of a beta version of RedJumper.net’s Book Creator app, I was able to lay out the book and text in iBooks format. Then I added the sound coding by hand.

What special features does Are You My Friend? have?

In addition to the read-it-to-me narration and soundtrack I mentioned above, and of course, the whimsical illustrations and fantastic narration, we’re using high resolution images so you can pinch-zoom in to see more details. There’s also a unique friendship skills/social and emotional learning guide for parents and teachers at the back of the iBook.

How did you add those features? Was it a lot of work? Did you have to do any coding? Do you think anyone could do it?

Adding the narration with synchronized word highlighting was a lot of work. I used the open source Audacity software on my Mac and imported the narration for each page spread. Then I selected each word and bookmarked it, naming the bookmark to match the spoken word. Audacity then let me export these bookmarks into a text file that contained each word and the start and end point of the sound (in seconds). I converted that data into the format that the iBook required, using an Excel spreadsheet to help.

I then exported from Excel into the pages of the iBook. Yes, there’s “coding”, very similar to the HTML coding of a website. But no programming. There’s no logic code (if-then-else statements), just XHTML statements.

I don’t know if anyone could do it. If you’ve ever built a website (even a small one) and did some hand-tweaking of the underlying HTML code, then yes, you could do this. If that sounds daunting, then hold on a bit... I’m sure that some tools will appear that will make this all much easier, without ever having to touch the code.

Tell me about Book Creator. Where do you get it? What do you need to run it? What does it do? How much does it cost? Is it hard to get the words to light up when they’re read? Did you encounter any problems along the way? How did you solve them?

I was fortunate to be accepted as a beta test for Book Creator. It’s made by RedJumper.net, and was just approved by Apple to go live. You can buy it starting September 15th in the iTunes App Store for $6.99. That’s an amazing deal!

Book Creator does not handle any of the sound features I added to our iBook. It does a great job of letting you position your art assets (jpeg or png files) on the pages, and add/position/resize the text. You can see a video demo of it on their website. http://www.redjumper.net/bookcreator/

How long did each step in the process take? What were the costs involved?

After having all the art assets and text, it took me a few days to resize the art to the best size for an iBook, drop it in, and add the text. But it took me a few weeks to do all the narration and word sync code, music, sound effects, and ambient sound for each page. Part of that was a learning curve for me. I could probably do it all in about 2 weeks now that I know what I’m doing.

Left to right: Sound director Julian Kwasneski, author Annie Fox, sound engineer Jory Prum

Using iPads to hold the database of each sentence the actor was to say

Costs for this last stage were minimal... really just my time, plus about $50 for the royalty free music we used, and some more for sound effects from Julian.

The biggest cost by far was the actual recording session. Of course, this depends on how much text there is to record (we recorded a lot of extra text for a future interactive app version of our book), how much the talent charges, the sound studio, sound effects, etc. Figure a few thousand dollars to do it all at a professional level. Maybe less if you want to cut some corners.

Author Annie Fox adding vocalizations for the last scene in the book

How do you get a picture-book iBook into the iBookstore?

First step is to set up an iBook publisher account. You do it through iTunes Connect:

https://itunesconnect.apple.com/WebObjects/iTunesConnect.woa/wa/apply

If you’re already an app developer, you need to register under a different account. There is no fee for this, but you do need a US bank account. You also need an ISBN number for your book. It should be a new one, not one already used for a paper version of your book (if it’s been published already). But it could be the same as an ebook version of your book.

If you don’t have one, you can buy them through Bowker at https://www.myidentifiers.com where the price is $150 for 1, $250 for 10, or $1000 for 100. But there’s a non-profit that bought a block of 1000 ISBN numbers and is reselling them for $5 each. http://www.epubbud.com/isbn.php - only downside is that in the Bowker database, epubbud is listed as the publisher. But you still have control over the meta data you send to Apple, so you can control who the publisher is there.

Once you’re accepted into Apple’s iBook developer program, you can download sample iBook files and their PDF guides on how to do it, like their assets guide. You also download a Mac program called iTunes Producer that walks you through the process of adding all the meta data (title, description, author and illustrator names, pricing, cover) and attaching your epub file. It then checks the syntax to make sure there are no errors, and uploads it all to Apple. It’s then live in the iTunes iBookstore within an hour or two!

Any advice to writers or writer-illustrators who are considering turning their stories into iBooks or apps?

Go for it! If you have any technical skills at all, work with Photoshop, and have an iPad, you can at least do a silent version using the Book Creator app.

If you have HTML skills, and want to invest in recording the narration, then you could go the next step and turn it into an enhanced iBook with sound. Or wait a bit until the tools catch up and it won’t be as difficult to add the sound.

Going the book app route only makes sense if you plan to add some animation and interactivity. Doing a book app is definitely more challenging, though there are several tools that make this easier as well. We list several in the right margin of the http://storyappchat.wordpress.com/ site.

There’s a huge range here, with some taking a percentage of the royalties and publishing the final app themselves, and others, like Kwiksher.com’s tool, where you also need to license the Corona SDK, have an Apple App developer’s license, and submit the final app yourself (but they don’t take a cut of the royalties).

So, unless you plan to do animation and really need a lot of interactivity to make your story work, I’d say stick with the iBook format. Much easier to create. You could always do an app as well.

Are you considering hiring out your services to other writers or writer-illustrators?

Yes, we have considered that. We do have more of our own content to produce, but we’re happy to consider taking on other projects, if they match the types of books we want to work on. The unifying feature of all our iBooks and apps are that they have to be entertaining as well as empowering for kids.

I’m also a consultant for app and iBook developers, and am happy to hand-hold someone through the process. I’ve always enjoyed helping people learn a new tech skill after I’ve successfully completed a project myself.

Anything else you would like to tell us about Are You My Friend?

I’ll let Annie answer that one:

I've been answering email from kids around the world since 1997. For children of any age, nothing matters more than having friends they can trust. Parents do a great job of teaching toddlers to "be nice." But as friendship conflicts become more complex, kids are left to figure things out on their own. The results don't often lead to constructive learning. By telling an engaging story about kids being kids, complete with a set of positive messages, readers can learn what it takes to have a friend and to be a real friend to yourself and others.

Thanks, David and Annie! And here's wishing you both the best of luck with the book.

Thank you for the chance to share this all with you and your readers! If anyone wants to contact us, you can do so through our website, http://www.ElectricEggplant.com

And for those who would like to learn more  from David and others about making picture iBooks or apps, check out #storyappchat on Twitter on Sundays at 9pm Eastern time.

Photos provided by David Fox