Mistakes Thus Far

So, going back to the AI (previous) post – I also wanted to address the mistakes I’ve made and noticed with what I’ve published so far.

1. Book Covers – mine are shit. Well, that’s a little harsh, but that first cover, Duck, Duck, Flamingo, took me forever to figure out. I didn’t want what Amazon could give/help me with, but I could NOT figure out how to get it completed on my own. The one I’ve most recently published should be the best one yet.

2. Format – size matters. Depending on your book size, the format of the inside pages can get wonky and it just takes a few minutes to make it right, but it can sometimes get tedious. And making margins and – ok, here’s the deal. I can’t math. And margins, formats, etc, all have some kind of math component to it.

3. Illustrations – again, see previous post regarding AI illustrations. Those suckers need to be double and triple checked and then checked again by a fresh set of eyes, preferably eyes that are unrelated to yours. In Millie Mouse, one of the pictures showed a duck that had a mustache and a tail similar to a squirrel’s tail. I did not catch it. I didn’t catch it when it was created and I saved it in my Millie Mouse file folder. I didn’t catch it when I added it to the manuscript. I didn’t catch it when I got the proof and showed it to my friend at work. I asked her to look it over and she didn’t catch it the first time either.
Finally, the second time she looked through the book, she saw it. The mustache and the tail. Needless to say, I had to literally go back to the drawing board and redo that picture.

4. My name – how do you mess up your name, you might ask. Well, let me try to explain. I have never used my real name on any social media. With my day job I do not like to put my actual name on anything so that they can’t track me down and see any of my information, including that of my family. For me, it’s a security issue. When I published Duck, Duck Flamingo, I didn’t even think I was permitted to use a pen name so I didn’t. Then I found out I could and tried to publish my first coloring book under that pen name. It got weird and confusing and I just went back to the beginning and used my real name. Same with pictures. I don’t like putting my image on any public social media page, also due to security issues and what I do for my day job. On a side note, I didn’t notice that my first coloring book left “N/A” in the middle name section. So I’ll live with that forever. Now that I’m aware of these things, I won’t be making the same mistakes. I’m sure there will be others though!