5 Mistakes I Made Publishing My First Children's Book on KDP

hi my name is heather and today i'm going to talk to you about five mistakes that i made when creating my first children's book [Music] the first mistake that i made when creating my first children's book is doing all spreads i'm not saying that every book with all spreads is bad disclaimer but i did all spreads and i could have mixed it up to make the book a little more interesting so i did all spreads because i kind of suffer from consistency disease or whatever you want to call it i'm like obsessed with consistency so i was like consistency in layout all spreads i did try to overcome my consistency disease a little bit by having the text in different places on each page and also having different points of view in each page and that's important too but if i could go back and change things i would definitely mix up the layouts so i would have somewhere it's like the image on one page and text on another i would have some where you know maybe there was like a blob of an image or an isolated image like without a background just stuff like that just to kind of mix it up and make it a little more interesting i may actually end up going back and making some of those changes so if you think a video like that would be cool let me know i could show you how i would do it like in photoshop or in procreate the second mistake i made which isn't really a big mistake but i would probably change it if i could go back is that i didn't include a copyright page so this blank page right here i could have added copyright information and that's not required in kdp but it is good practice and it is the industry standard and it's just good to have that information anyways so going back i would probably add that in the third mistake that i made when creating my children's book is that i did it all in traditional media so i just painted it all which i'm not saying again disclaimer i'm not saying that this is a mistake to do all the time and actually when i think back on it i'm glad that i did do it that way because otherwise i probably wouldn't have gotten my first one published i think that when you're creating your first children's book the most important thing is just to get it out there and if you try to do everything right the first time then you're just gonna get hung up on having it perfect and you're not going to end up getting anything out because perfect is the enemy of good so thinking back i wouldn't change it then because i didn't have my ipad pro and i did have a tablet that you hook into the computer but it was kind of a pain because then you're like glued to the computer all the time and but now if i were to create a children's book i have the ipad pro so now i would use ipad pro and the reason for that is just because doing it digitally makes it a lot easier to kind of move stuff around and change things and copy and paste and all that kind of stuff so that you can really mess around with the layout a lot more which i did kind of end up doing in photoshop like i would kind of cut parts out of my painting and move them but if you can create it initially like that in different layers it's a lot easier and much less clone stamping for my next children's book i will definitely do procreate for the whole thing the next mistake i think i made when creating my children's book is i didn't create the cover from scratch so i actually just pulled this image from the first part of the book right here where a mouse is standing in the forest i just pull that and just put it as the cover and again it is better to get something out for your first book so you know i don't regret it but if i were to go back and make changes to this book i would want to make a cover from scratch and that's mainly just because i don't think that this cover is like super eye-catching like if someone sees this on the shelf and it's just like a mouse in the middle of the forest you know they might pick it up if they're like mice otherwise probably not but what i think would be really cool is to have like all the different animals in here somehow like maybe their heads sticking in or just something that would kind of be eye-catching and also kind of let the person know that there's other kinds of animals in the book because if they're not super into mice they're gonna be like oh well that's not interesting but if they love foxes and birds and rabbits like those are all in the book but you wouldn't know it from the cover and so that's why i would probably want to do something like that on the cover the last mistake that i made when creating my children's book was i designed it in rgb and when you do that then you upload to amazon and the colors could come out differently i ended up getting lucky and the colors all came out pretty good in this one you know nice and bright and they seem pretty accurate but just to be safe i think it is good to design in cmyk unless it's only going to an ebook and some people would disagree with me because i know one person in my comments on another video had said he would rather design an rgb and then convert to cmyk because then you know your ebook has nice bright colors and then you know you're just kind of compromising it a little bit for the printed book but i guess it kind of depends on if you want the ebook and the printed book to look the same or as close to the same as possible then you would want to design in cmyk but if you just want to get the most brightness and colorfulness possible in the ebook then go with rgb and then convert so if you want more info on that i do have a video on rgb versus cmyk so you can check that out i'll link it in the cards and in the description that's it for my five mistakes that i made when creating my first children's book and i might make a follow-up video where i fix those mistakes and you know i'll show you how to create your copyright page and how to you know change your layout make it interesting and stuff like that so let me know in the comments if you'd like to see something like that if you have any mistakes that you made in your first children's book let me know in the comments i think it would be a fun thing to share and chat about so and that's about it if you have any questions let me know in the comments you can always email me at heatherheathercash.com and thanks so much for watching bye

Channel: Heather Cash Art

Views: 56,992

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Id: rkSp91qy8pE

Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 08 2022