‘As a full-time mother of two
gorgeous pre-schoolers. . .’ blah-blah-blah – that's what my
Author Bio is supposed to say, but basically, without the pretentious
fluff, I'm a self-published children's book author/illustrator based
in Auckland, New Zealand (NZ). I sell over 60 kids' ebooks in Amazon's
Kindle Store and have over 180,000 (yes that many zeros) copies of my
ebooks out in the 'verse now. Not bad for a mama of two with no
formal training in writing/illustrating/publishing/social marketing –
yes that is right – I have no English-Lit Degree, no Fine-Arts
Degree, and no idea what I am doing half the time!
I started over a year ago tripping
up over my own two feet as it were, learning how to illustrate using
freeware photo manipulation and desktop publishing programmes,
learning HTML editing, and learning to spell correctly! I went
through every online resource that I could find that wasn't going to
charge me a million dollars, and eventually – with the help of my
aaaamazing technical manager/husband – we figured out how to get
a book idea with funny looking images into a fully developed MOBI
file ready for publishing on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP)
platform. My first ebook was a basic concept ebook teaching
pre-schoolers their colours using some of the most amazing space
images NASA has to offer.
60 ebooks, a website and a million
social networking pages later and I still have no idea what I am
doing half the time. :) I have over 30 ebook ideas, three
half-written scripts, five un-illustrated books, and one that was
published but needs to be reworked because I've discovered how to
sell it better. :)
Next week my Technical Manager
(please don't make me do it!) will be digitally formatting five
ebooks for clients from all over the North Island of NZ. And that is
what has lead to this blog. I've discovered how cool it is to help
other authors and illustrators get their ebooks published, and it gives me a buzz seeing their work selling online too. The coffee
might be contributing to that though – don't get me started on the
coffee! I never used to drink it and after a year of self-publishing
I can't seem to get through a day without a caramel latte!!!
So this blog is all about how you
can learn how to get your finished story/book published by either
digital publishing (ebook), print-on-demand publishing (PoD) or
through vanity publishing. If you have any
questions regarding anything that is posted here, please email me at findlaybooks@gmail.com.
My websites are:
