Another Major Milestone Reached

Thank you all for reading and sending encouragement along the way! It means a lot! This has been quite a journey so far!

🗓️ 61 Days Until Publish
^{(Wait…did that number go up?)}

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last email. And needless to say there have been a lot of changes in my world. I will share some of those at the end but first wanted to let you know of another major milestone I hit this week.

I created my first “official” printed copy of the book! On Sunday, I finished the last illustration so I printed out all the pages and bound them together. This is a step that I have been eyeing for some time. I could have done it sooner, but I wanted to wait until I had completed all the illustrations. Why? (Keep reading)

Now, first let me clarify what I mean by ‘completed illustrations.’ This doesn’t mean that all are at print-ready status. What it means is that I have at least created the final black and white versions of the scenes and spreads. Some will still need color and some will need additional backgrounds. But as for drawing them, they are done.

Some authors I spoke to create these first printed copies very early on and simply used rough pencil sketches. I wanted to wait until I had both fully drawn and laid the text into it before I took this step. Here’s why. I am planning on going through the words one more time before I send to my copy editor. In a kids book, the words and the illustrations tell the story together. I needed to see them side by side to identify if there were words that needed to be added or cut based on the final images. There are other ways to do it, but this seemed logical to me.

And while I am really excited about this milestone, it is coming about 3 weeks later than I had planned in my original timeline. Some of that is due to it just taking me longer to lay it out (see my previous post). And some of it was due to the life things I mentioned above.

The first was Spring Break. I forgot to factor it in and that was a week where no work was done on the book. Oops. Who cares though? We had a blast at Disney.

The second was that I left my job at the end of February and am currently looking for a new one. This one occupied my evenings leading up to my last day and a lot of my mental energy then and now is focused on securing new employment. (As I don’t think I will be able to live off the proceeds of this book alone. 😅)

So, even though I hoped I wouldn’t have to, I am going to move the publish date back a few weeks. This will give me a chance to spend more time on the final final illustrations plus it will give me some more time to work on the launch marketing plans that I still haven’t gotten to yet.

For now, new launch date is May 22!

NEXT UP:

• One More Pass Through the Manuscript with Illustrations

• Send off to Copy Editor

• Finalize Cover

• Make Edits

• Finalize Launch Plan

More to come. Thanks for reading.

Kacy