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?