On Being Retired

Retirement... It Can be a Challenge

I retired at 62 which is early. Official full retirement age is 65. I retired because I was working a mediocre job and wasn't kept busy enough. Since I lived with my son and his family (paying rent, of course), I felt I could afford to simply stop working. I had really been looking forward to not working anymore for several years. Forty-four years of working is plenty.

The first few years were easy peasy. I painted art pieces, made jewelry, crocheted a crap ton of Afghans for family and outfits for my new grandson, and enjoyed unlimited television.

Then the day came when I could no longer live with my son and his family. It wasn't working out as we all had hoped. I'm now living in a room in a trailer owned by a 79-year-old woman. I've no place to paint canvases or watercolor paper and I'm bored with jewelry making. Overall, I was just bored. BORED!

I thought about looking for a job, but not for long. There was no way I was going to find an Art Director job. I'd been away from it for too long. Besides, I live in an art drenched city with a killer art college just up the road. The kids coming out of that place are very talented and - frankly - I'm not up for competition. I'm 67 and done with that crap.

Ugh! A job. I didn't wanna. I didn't want to work some menial, lifeless, boring job. What to do?

I remembered I had started a Zazzle store, Visages Gift Store, back in 2011. It got to the point where I was receiving checks every other month and sometimes a couple of months in a row. Because I had neglected it for so long, there were 200 and some odd pages of product that needed attention. It took some time, but I got everything back up and available for people to see then hopefully buy.

Then I headed to my blogs, Zazzling Gifts, Dreams Come True, and Miller's Wrapped Expression. I hadn't blogged in a while, so I was a bit rusty. Still, here I am blogging away. 

Next was creating a website. I had used GoDaddy in the past so I stuck with it. As frustratingly slow as it was (and still is), I managed to get a semblance of a site up I named Visages Gift Store which is - coincidently - the name of my Zazzle store.

And I wrote a children's book, The Little Bear and the Lollipop Tree, that I'm marketing. With no revenue yet coming in from the updated Visages Gift Store, I'm having to find creative and free ways to market. Research is very time consuming. Yet, there are ways to market through social media, blogging and having a website.

Funny thing. I'm not bored anymore. I'm busier than I have been in years. I'm productive which is a must-do for retired folks. Several of my friends have bought my book, my blog stats have increased substantially, and Visages Gift Store is selling again. In two or three months, I'll have my first check from them. In another few months, I'll get a check from Amazon from my book sales.

Dreams come true, but - dang - is it ever a lot of work!

 

Adventures in Self-publishing and Marketing My Book, The Little Bear and the Lollipop Tree

I'm going to make this as brief as possible. This is basically an outline of all that I've done since finishing my first children's book June 3, 2023. I've never self-published before so I had to learn everything from scratch.

I wrote a book and illustrated, The Little Bear and the Lollipop Tree. I uploaded it to Amazon's Kid's Direct Publishing, Barnes & Noble and Kobo after satisfying the different formats each company demanded. It wasn't easy, but I got it done.

JPG Cover Image

Now I'm marketing my self-published book rather than going through an aggregator/marketer. Aggregators/marketers take a percentage of the profits as does each of the previously mentioned companies. Remember, those companies also charge you for printing so price your book accordingly.

Researching marketing ideas was overwhelming. Where do I start? I don't have extra money to advertise so I need ideas that cost very little to nothing. I'm retired and live on Social Security.

On a phone call with my son, I told him I was a bit overwhelmed with all of the marketing research for self-publishers I was doing; that I didn't know where to start. Well, my 42-year-old is wise. “Take one at a time,” he said. With that advise in mind, that's exactly what I did and it helped a lot.

First, I hit all of my social media and registered on those that I wasn't a member of. One day, I put a picture of my book cover and wrote an announcement that I had written and published my first children's book. My friends were thrilled for me. First one friend then another then yet another bought my book.

Two days later, I took two sample pages of my book, turned them into PDFs and placed them on all of my social media. A couple of more sales came from that.

I also used the same steps with all my blogs that I had done with my social media.

Next, in my research, it was suggested that I create a website. For about $12, I created a website on GoDaddy. Creating a website is daunting and very slow. For every one thing I did, I had to wait a few seconds for the task to complete. It wasn't instantaneous as I had hoped it would be. Add several seconds to each task on GoDaddy and it adds up to many minutes.

My website, Visages Gift Store, is still in construction, but I've published the pages that I had created thus far which includes announcing my book.

Next on the list was creating a video. Again, I had to research free video-making software. I settled on Microsoft's Clipchamp.com since I'm a member of Microsoft. I spent hours learning the web-based software, but at the end of the day, it was done. I introduced myself and added illustrations from The LittleBear and the Lollipop Tree.

The following day, I added the video to all my social media (or those that allowed it. One or two didn't.) as well as to my blogs (posted here on June 19, 2023) and website.

A couple of days ago, during my research, one of the “self-publishing experts” suggested using hash tags. Since I didn't know anything about hash tags and how they work I had to read about hash tag application and usage. I headed back to all of my social media and blogs. I have to hash tag!

Now I'm writing this blog outlining my adventure. I'll copy and paste it to all of my blogs as well as my website.

If you're on this same adventure, be sure to leave me a comment about your experiences. I'd love to hear from you.

One last thought: You have essentially started a new business. You'll spend eight hours a day reading, learning and applying what you've learned. Don't forget to take breaks and eat.

Meet Me, Deborah Miller, and View Illustrations From My New Book, The Little Bear and the Lollipop Tree

You can find my book at Amazon available on eBook or in print-on-demand. Click here.

 

 

 My New Children's Book, The Little Bear

and the Lollipop Tree

My new can now be printed on demand. For just $2.99 you can order the eBook
here to see if you like it. If you enjoy the colorful illustrations and the bedtime story, the print-on-demand version is just $7.99.

Here are a couple of sample pages for you to see. My bio follows the sample pages.

Deborah Miller is a retired commercial artist, former Art Director of automotive magazines and Operations Manager of a wristwatch magazine.

She's an artist who has been commissioned to produce a variety of art. Several of her art pieces are displayed on print-on-demand products that she has sold all over the world. She has won contests for her designs and her writing.

Deborah spent the first 15 years of her life on a farm in Kansas but then moved to Lawrence, KS, with her mother who was a High School English teacher.

She has two children, three brothers, one grandchild plus four step-grandchildren. She's the aunt of five nieces and nephews, and great aunt of one.

She wrote her first short story when she was 14 and has dreamed of writing books ever since.

Children's Book: A Great Gift for Kids

It's finally published and up on three book sites now. I'm so excited.

Let me introduce The Little Bear and the Lollipop Tree. I hope you consider purchasing it for your 3 to 5 year old. It's available for $2.99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. Soon, it will be available on Google Play Books.

 Another Dream Come True

I had a list of things I wanted to accomplish hanging on my closet door. The list wasn't anything too far out of reach. I didn't include wanting to be a millionaire (because I don't really want to be one) nor did I include travelling to Scotland (where my ancestors are from) and staying in a luxury hotel. My - we'll call it bucket list - was simple.

I wanted to write songs. I wrote one for my brother converting the letters of his first name and that of his bride's into music notes. For instance, the letter K converted to a musical note would be F on a music scale. It was my wedding present to them.

I wanted to sell my paintings and get commissioned. It happened to my delight. I also wanted to sell my art on products available through print-on-demand. I currently use Zazzle and have been categorized as a "Bronze Pro". I've sold assorted products in several countries in Europe and to someone in Australia, and - of course - the U.S.

I've entered writing and art contests and won prizes.

But the biggest of all my wants on my bucket list was to write and sell a book. Well, I've written it and it's in the midst of being published on Amazon and Barnes & Noble as an eBook. It takes three days to become live on their websites, so I don't have links to either yet. Below is the cover of The Little Bear and the Lollipop Tree.

I still have a few more publishers to upload to, but it's a chore. It isn't as easy as bloggers make it sound and believe me, I've read a lot! You have to jump through hoops providing a W-4 and other personal information. But that wasn't my problem.

'Just upload your book and earn money' is a load of crap. Well, except for Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Amazon has its own free book-making software you can download. It was easy to upload my illustrations and paste in my text then hit "publish".

Barnes & Noble was another story. It took two long days of trying to accommodate their requirements. The problem was my book is illustration heavy. That means if your book is text only and created in Word, you'll have no problem. If you want pictures, you're better off creating an EPUB. Did I mention Barnes & Noble doesn't accept PDFs? And, they don't have their own software like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.

The end of my story (because I don't want to make this too long) is that I spent over 17 hours figuring out how to turn my PDF into an EPUB. (Barnes & Noble doesn't recognize Amazon's book version.) Oh, it's done. The configuration isn't exactly the way I want it, but it's on its way to being published.

Sadly, after it's published, I need to make a correction. One of their mandatory questions I had to answer was "Contributor" with no clear explanation of what that even meant. I took it to mean who helped me with my book, so I included my brother's name because he proofread it. Turns out that they listed him as the author and when I tried changing the name in the "Contributor" section, I couldn't because it was currently under way of being published. At this point, I'm banging my head on my bed's headboard.

Maybe one day I'll blog about the assorted software different bloggers (who make themselves out to be experts) convinced me to use and that turned out to be utterly useless.

Still, another of my dreams has come true! How exciting is that?