Self publishing for children on a shoestring

by Angela Cater
(Manchester, Lancashire, UK)

Cover illustration for "The Adventures of Sailor Sam"

2005 was a truly awful year for me so I began 2006 determined that it should be better and to achieve my dream of publishing a children’s picture book. At first, I had planned to work with another author on the text, but in telling her what I wanted, the story somehow wrote itself. I spent almost every evening and weekend of the summer months in creating the illustrations and had great fun, using my handsome tabby, Samson as the main character ‘Sailor Sam’ and my other cats, friends and family as the supporting cast.

I first published ‘The Adventures of Sailor Sam’ through a ‘self-publishing company’ or what I now know to be ‘the vanity press’ and learnt the hard way about the potential problems of such a route.

The following March, I received a fair bit of money for my 40th birthday so decided to take the foolhardy step of republishing the book from scratch in the full sense of ‘self-publishing’. I bought myself a batch of ISBN numbers and Samson became the proud co-director of ‘Tabby Cat Press.’ Internet searches taught me how to submit a new title to the British Library, I discovered where to download free barcodes and also gained ideas for marketing. Research showed me that Lightning Source is the main print-on-demand printer. I approached them and they agreed to work with me providing I could format the documents to their specific print-ready requirements. Thus started a steep learning curve!

After more googling, I purchased Adobe Indesign for download only (around £35 and considerably cheaper than the full software package), and likewise Acrobat Professional. I found Indesign and absolute devil to use, despite being familiar with many DTP packages, so next purchase was a DVD training resource from Ebay. Somehow it came together, but when I first converted it to a PDF file, my illustrations came out grey. I spent days and days on Adobe forums until I rectified the problem. My next big trial was the cover. It was rejected twice! I just couldn’t get it the right size and got so stressed as the date I had set myself for publishing grew near that I gave myself shingles! And yes, it really is as painful as people say. But at least the two weeks off work that I had to take gave me time to persevere. One day, I suddenly saw the cover template with new eyes and realised what I had been doing wrong. I was overjoyed when I received the email that it had finally been accepted.

Next came two weeks of nail-biting whilst waiting for the proof copy. It exceeded my expectations and looked far more professional and better quality than the version that I had paid the vanity press to do. I ordered my first 100 copies, sent one to the British Library and put out the word that Sailor Sam was afloat.

The book was very well received by family, friends, the girls at the school where I work and through much effort online, I also began to start receiving comments from complete strangers, and Samson attracted fan-mail. I spent the long wet summer working on a second Sailor Sam story. I learnt a great deal from my previous mistakes, and this time, I had a much smoother ride.

I get a great deal of satisfaction out of seeing my work as a book, and love the pleasure that it gives children. The greatest thrill was hearing that a little girl in Canada now wants a tabby kitten that she can call Sailor Sam. My biggest bug-bear is marketing. I had quite good exposure in the local press but after a few weeks, it dies down. I have worked my way through a number of books for marketing your self-publishing book. They produce a small flurry of sales, but I can’t seem to maintain the momento. I’m not a great self-publicist in any aspect of my life. My first book has so far sold around 200 copies, which I read is about average for a self-published book (50% of these are to people I don’t know, so I must have done something right), but the second book’s sales have been disappointing, despite me having tried that much harder to promote it.

However, I still have 7 more ISBNs to use and a head swimming with ideas. So undeterred by how hard it really is, I am now working on my third book, “A Perfect Nest for Mrs Mallard”, which I hope to publish in October to celebrate Samson’s 18th birthday. Watch this space!

Visit Tabby Cat Press.