Chapter I — Why?
It was, in fact, a chill November evening when the original idea for developing a product that aimed at gamifying fitness. As we progressed on developing the idea into a full-blown product, we have gone through quite a bit of a journey.
Community and synergy
A big reason as to ‘Why’ this book exists is my kids. Our younger one pulled a leaf off her brother’s hat to come up with ways to avoid brushing her teeth. The scene enacted in the book is what happened in our house. Every morning. In many ways, Fit$ is our baby and so, in a way — the antics of our kids and the desire to help Fit$ were the key reasons behind ‘Why’ we decided to capture this moment of our lives.
Every product that we have developed has allowed us to get to know the community a bit better. When we developed our first app ‘proBUGtivity’ several years ago, we had the opportunity to engage with productivity-minded individuals. There was a lot of fluff surrounding that community with a fair number of fake productivity gurus offering random productivity ideas. Often they would propose contradictory ideas in back-to-back posts. In any case, this was our first encounter with ‘customers’.
Looking back at that experience, I had not internalized it fully — we were entering a different world. Each niche has traits that stand out pretty markedly (in retrospect). Even as we were developing ‘Fit$’ and engaging with the fitness community (& in particular, runners) — it is very apparent how the community works. It has been an absolute joy to see the community lift each other, answer questions (give back to the community), and focus on doing things.
Actual customer feedback
Having your output in the hands of customers, watching them play with it has no equal. You gain a lot of respect for people who can earn any amount of money by selling their craft. The book was a means for us to do just that. It was also meant to provide an experience of putting our faith in something that we believed would be useful.
It was our daughter’s birthday and they were doing a spotlight for her at the school. My wife and I requested that we can read our book to the kids in her class. The book wouldn’t have existed without my daughter so it felt great to be able to share it with her friends on her birthday. Watching her friends gather around and listen with rapt attention as my wife read the story for them was a unique experience. And, boy, did we get feedback. The pure attention of a child is to feel the intensity of a light turning into a laser.
When we first prepared the draft of our book, our first ‘customers’ were our kids. My 6-yo niece was truly the propelling force in converting the draft into the book. She memorized the book and re-told the story to her friends who were in splits after listening to the book. Her enthusiasm and insight were a source of joy for us. But, it also is one of the reasons to take up this book. This book presented an opportunity for us to engage our kids in creative output. My other niece has a youtube channel where she narrates kids' books — and, she is stellar.
Another reason that we worked on the book was that the development and deployment of our app were dragged out. This is typical when you hire third-party developers. Given that one of our core values is ‘Move’ – there wasn’t much the team could move on. Our fledgling company mechanics was clogged. The book provided an opportunity and an outlet. We could practice a variety of skills that I will cover in the ‘How’ section.
The ‘why’ part of our journey was completed – for the most part. There is one additional aspect (legacy) of it that I will talk about towards the end of this article.
Chapter II — How?
Needless to say, our book is not a magnum opus but still, it was a project involving collaboration across continents and timezones. When it comes to children’s books, it was important to get a decent enough digital artist for the transformation to happen.
Luckily, the first illustrator we worked with on Fiverr was brilliant. She immediately got what we were looking for. When we were still figuring out whether this might be a good idea or a long-drawn-out process, she knocked it out of the park with her first draft. Looking for such an early, small win goes a long way in determining the eventual path of the project. We did make a mistake that we did not put together the book as we worked with the illustrator. Our initial thought was to go with an agent, so getting the book in kdp format was not so critical.
Regardless of which path you are going to take, it makes sense to at least get the book in kdp format ready when you are working with the illustrator. It might be more work but if you have a smidgen of doubt, then just get it kdp ready.
As part of the Facebook community for first-time Children’s book authors, there were some helpful posts from the veterans. One of the pieces of advice is to get a professional editor to review your book. So, off we went to find a decent editor on Fiverr. The fact that the editor could not find anything to improve in our book could mean one of three things: a. We are just that good. We have written two Ph.D. theses and a Masters's thesis so we do not make huge mistakes between my brother and me. But, all that writing has taught me is that it doesn’t matter who you are, you likely made several grammatical mistakes b. Our Fiverr editor wasn’t that good. He was highly rated but still may not be on par with a really serious professional editor? c. It is hard to have too much stuff wrong in a children’s book, to begin with.
Regardless of what the actual reason was, the conclusion was clear. Our book was good to go. On the editorial side of things, we did notice that Grammarly has been a revelation. Maybe using Grammarly (trial or pro version) is sufficient to clean up your children’s book. For our next installment, We will surely pursue this route.
A word about advertising
Any self-published author gets to enjoy the pain of promoting their book. It is both a joy and a joy. Yes, it is a double joy process. Like with the self-help productivity gurus, there is a lot of fluff when it comes to advertising.
The first ad campaign on Amazon was flawed. We barely got any impressions. We set up our campaign to follow the default ‘automatic’ targeting under the assumption that what can be better than Amazon’s algorithms. It did not go anywhere. So, we decided to farm the ad campaign to someone on Fiverr. He said he would work on it, took two weeks, and then had to back out. These are special pandemic times so I was not miffed with the contractor. It turned out that his backing out was a good thing because I was able to figure out a much better way to advertise on amazon using a targeted keyword search-based approach.
We might not have sold too many copies of the book but we did gain a bit of a ranking bump ending up in the top 3 of the Kindle’s Children/siblings category. Using a targeted keyword-based campaign yielded several thousand impressions and landed us much higher in the rankings. We did not stay high in the rankings, but we knew we could break into the top ranking. If our product truly has a staying power, it will do that eventually.
A word of caution — several folks are trying to take advantage of eager first-time authors by ‘helping’ them stand out from the crowd. A little bit of digging before coughing up money will save you a lot of heartaches. One good example of who NOT to use —
Another tidbit of information during our advertising attempts. We had launched a small campaign on Facebook as well. Even though, we received more than 100 ‘likes’ on our campaign — there was no resulting traffic to the book itself. Though we did find one interesting observation — most of our likes came from grandma’s. In retrospect, this seemed obvious but it was surely a revelation. Apart from this revelation, not sure if it is worth using Facebook to advertise our book. Maybe we need to re-visit this with an altered approach. And, this brings us to micro-influencers.
As you already know that my niece is a micro-influencer in her own right. Her YouTube channel is a perfect audience for our book. More importantly, though, was the opportunity to listen to her read our book. She did an outstanding job but that’s what we were expecting from her, anyway. On Facebook and YouTube, we started to reach out to other influencers. As of this writing, there is not much movement because of the influencer outreach but it is only a matter of time.
So, all in all — these efforts did get us reasonable success on the metrics that we set out in our ‘Why’. We learned about working with contractors from different nationalities, backgrounds, and expertise. We learned about KDP publishing, marketing on social media platforms, Amazon.
Chapter III — What?
What greatness looks like?
As part of the Facebook community of authors and illustrators, I get to see some of the work that a wide range of people are working on. There were a few illustrators who made my jaw drop. One particular one that stood was about someone launching their book on ‘a lost elephant’. He was an animator too and made a cute animation promoting the book. The work was simply exceptional.
In another instance, I came across a post from a grandma who had just released her 25th children’s book! She was leaving behind a legacy for her grandkids and beyond. Honestly, this was one of the ‘Whys’ for me too. One day, I hope my kids and their kids can read this story to their children. This also meant that I have a long way to cover — I have at least 24 more books to write. For the next round, I am contemplating utilizing the community in a much deeper way. Even though our illustrator has done a good job on the first edition, there is still a lot of scope for improvement.
During the preparation and later in the marketing phase, my family and friends came together to help get some visibility to the book. They organically formed a launch party for the book. And, it makes a world of difference. At least, it did it for us. For future releases, we can surely bolster our efforts to improve the odds as we know our roles a lot better.
And, lastly, criticism — as writers, when we put our work out there, we need to be prepared for criticism (harsh or not). It puts us in a vulnerable position but it is also an opportunity for growth. It will force us to improve ourselves, be more diligent with our work and not be afraid to experiment.
Closure
A particular quirk that I have observed is that — writing helps me get closure. There was a lot of mental chatter about the things that we had accomplished with the publication of our book. It felt like there were untold things that were not sorted into their respective positions. This article has helped me get some closure. It is funny how closing opens up new doors in my mind.
In this process, I am hopeful that any points that were mentioned in this article are useful to someone else on their journey. Either as something that they can do OR avoid doing something that I did.
A couple of links to round up the story:
b. My niece’s YouTube narration of the story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgZB_WiAVDU&t=97s
Enjoy!
