Self Publishing a Children's book

by Emerson Colwell, Jr
(Peoria, AZ)

Thanks for this great site! I wish we had found it months ago!

The idea for the children's book came from a dream in August, 2008. That morning, I wrote out the story as best as I could remember which was rhyming tale about a sea gull traveling throughout Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island.

Once I finished the story, I began working on the illustrations. The drawings took about 3 weeks to complete. I scanned everything onto the computer, added the text and realized I needed about 5 more drawings to complete the story. Another couple of weeks went by and the drawing were complete.

My wife worked on editing the rhymes and formatting them for all the pages. This really was a joint project as she was able to do all the behind the scenes work for the book. We printed out the book and started showing it to friends to get their feedback while sending it out to publishers, too.

We found publishers online through search engines and by looking through our children's books. With out busy schedules, we were only sending out a few every month. There were no takers and in hindsight, it may have been because I sent along the illustrations as I have read that they can be a negative for a publisher.

By the end of March, 2009, my wife and I decided to go ahead and self publish the story. We started by creating a company name, website, and getting registered with the state.

At the same time, we were contacting printing companies for quotes on the book. About six weeks later, we had 4 firm quotes for printing. This process took a while for several reasons.

Some companies had never printed children's books before so they were not sure if they could perfect bind such a small quantity of pages (14 sheets) or if they could do the cover & pages sturdy enough for children. A couple of larger companies who we knew were familiar with children's book printing never got back to us. Ultimately, we chose to go with a local company who outsourced the binding process. Their price was not the lowest, but the customer service was great and they were excited to work on the project.

We were also busy scheduling the books "debut" in Rhode Island through author appearances and book signings. Our first few scheduled appearances were at locations where we knew the owners and they were happy to help us get publicity. A few e-mails to book store owners resulted in a few more appearances. In total, we scheduled 7 appearances over 5 days.

My trip to Rhode Island was 8 days long and the other 3 days were filled with visits to local stores to see if they would like to carry the book. Today, four months later, we have 20 stores carrying the book.

Back in Arizona, I have scheduled appearances at book stores, schools and special events to share the book with children. We are still at the very start of our journey but we are happy to share with anyone who is interested in learning more. There is information on our website and our blog that we hope will be useful for others, too.

Thanks you for the opportunity to tell our story!

Emerson & Mona Colwell

Visit Emerson and Mona at Tink Ink Publishing -
Teaching, Inspiring, Nurturing Kids