I am making a coloring book. The way is fraught with fears, doubts, and time eating mechanical failures. Fears of being unable to make my goals. Doubt that my art is worth the investment of strangers. Battles with an old scanner not being compatible with my computer. Then a crashed computer bios that corrupted my RAID drive. I lost a lot of files. But I am winning. I am winning thanks to very good friends who encouraged my talents. I am winning with the support of my very wonderful family that helped me in times of need. I am winning because of my tenacity in the face of problems. It is only a matter of time in this book battle of attrition. “Today I Draw Dragons” will be a thing.
I will encourage you too to tread the path of book making. Be not daunted by the endless tasks before you.
This project began when I started to draw dragons before work and then after work. I began to count them. I told myself that when I made thirty five of them I would pursue making them into a coloring book. I ended up making one hundred and fourteen of them.
I shopped around for publishers. It is a sea of frustration. You have your easiest ride if you can wrestle the support of a professional publishing company, but they will have a say in your product and it is hard to convince them that you are worth it. So I decided to pursue self publishing, at least for now. If I prove myself with a successful project, then I will show them what I can do.
None of this is the way to wealth but it is the way of artists.
I learned many things. I learned that even if I print only 30 dragon images it will be considered a 60 pages plus book to a printer even if I don’t print on both sides of the sheet of paper. If you have a place to store 1000 books and the cash to buy and ship them then you might be able to get them printed for a competitive price. ISBN numbers are expensive if you buy just one.
Advertising matters. My Kickstarter shows a definite lull in support when my computer crashed and I could not reason out how to advertise without my scanned and worked drawings. My friends and family took up the slack then. I continued. I made business cards and flyers to paint the town. I wish I had done more. But I am still winning.
Cleaning up and re-working scans for print TWICE is annoying.
I have an external hard drive now so I can back up the back ups.
Learning all the programs for formatting everything for print is a huge pain in my pinky toe.
I still have many tasks ahead. I need to subscribe to a download service so that I can deliver my PDF. files. I need to secure a high quality printer for the prints I have sold. I need to prepare to wrap and mail out my books. I need to make all the custom sketch cards and commissioned art sold to fund this endeavor. I will need a plan in place to sell the extra copies I am going to order. And I need to draw more, lots more.
This will not be my last publishing adventure, by far.
There are still a few more days if you want a copy of the book yourself:
“Today I Draw Dragons” By Shelly Loke
My Kickstarter Ends March 8th, but that is really just barely the beginning. I hope to see your adventuresome projects up here too, soon.
