Fourth Times a Charm….
If at first you don’t succeed, well, you all know how the rest of that goes! In this case, I would be referring to the new “Pulp Wildlife, Pics from in and around one yard in Central Texas” photo book I’ve been working on for quite some time now. I must admit, the self publishing process was probably 10 times more difficult than putting it together in the first place. I was using Mac Pages to do the draft and it handily comes with an option to “publish to Apple Books” which seemed rather nifty and surely would be a time saver as its all through one program and what could possibly go wrong with that? Turns out that was not the case at all (and till this day I still have no idea why that is). Anyway, as you go to publish it pops up a mention that “what appears in Pages may not be exactly what shows up on Apple Books” or something along those lines and then mentions you should proof it using an E-Pub app that is a simple download and all should be well. So download we do and then confusion sets in! The suggested app can only proof a PDF version of your book meaning you now have to send it out of Pages and save it as that PDF (which obviously changes the format). Now you run it through the app and it saves it as its own EPUB version, however, the only way to open that file is through Apple Books. So you drag it on into there and what comes out is a completely jumbled version of what you started with in Pages. The good news (not!) is that there is no real explanation on how to fix any of it and/or get it back into Pages so you can try the publishing thing again. Quick note, I was under a bit of a time issue to get something put out and physically for sale as that was one of the requirements for my trademark applications (the book being the last item on my checklist that I needed to make happen). So, after a bunch of research and still not getting the answers I needed, I published! Result being a fairly hot mess of a book and what I refer to now as Version 1. On the bright side, it did appear as a book for sale on Apple Books, which did, indeed, finish off the requirements for those trademarks (for the record, Pulpland and John Pulp are the two I had applied for and are now listed as such in the big old book of US Trademarks).
With that, I immediately dug into Version 2 of the book, checking my margins, downsizing a few of the pics, bringing a few things back to where they were supposed to be (some pages literally jumped ahead into later chapters), etc., etc. Re-published to Apple Books and result #2…. more hot mess! I should mention here that you can upload new versions of the same book as often as you feel like to Apple Books, which is really a nice feature. The review process takes a couple days for every version you upload, which I found refreshing as it let me “walk away” from it for a few days to calm my nerves. Repeated the process once again for Version 3, this time, removing items that had gotten jumbled and tossed about, first copying them, then pasting back onto the clean page. I had also noticed that the preview of the book that showed up in Apple Books was pretty much the first 3 pages of it, which in its current version was an Introduction and the Table of Contents, not very exciting stuff at all if you are trying to promote a picture book! So, decided to make the first thing you see in the preview a nice one page collage of about 6 various wildlife pics, then you could read the Introduction and Table of Contents. Solid plan, no? Result #3…. you guessed it, the hot mess went on! Seems it liked my first page collage of pics so much, that it turned it into 6 individual pages, which in turn, completely throws off the Table of Content page numbering system, thus rendering it useless and all in all looking pretty unprofessional. A couple things did go right, however, aka, I did seem to figure out how to keep the Intro and Table of Contents on their own single pages, so a bit of a win there.
Version 4, time to rethink this whole thing. Start from scratch. Clearly there was something built in to my original book that just wasn’t going to allow it to format and be published correctly ,so decided to do a complete and separate new version of the same book. Lots of copying and pasting but was also able to put back a few things that got deleted in the course of the first 3 versions. Here’s a quick couple lessons learned:
Picture books should always be in landscape format (stumbled on that tip while doing the “why is this happening” research).
One picture per page limit, even if that was not the original intent, it does appear to translate better.
For written word portions, put them into a single inserted text box, expand as needed, and also limit that to one per page. For longer sections of text, avoid trying to squeeze a picture in there, simply make it its own page and follow with a full picture on the next page.
Do not number the pages yourself, there is a function in Pages that will do that for you. If you want to include your own Table of Contents with corresponding page numbers, wait till you are finished then use the thumbnail screen to verify the page numbers.
Use Apple Books as an editing tool, like I said earlier, takes a couple days for them to review and put it back out, then you can make changes to resubmit. Chances are as a first time author, no one is buying your book from the first get go, so there is time to make changes and go fairly unnoticed. You do, of course, have to purchase the book yourself, initially, so you have a copy of it (congrats, your first sale)! Once you have it, you own a copy forever, so upon every revision submitted, wait two days and just delete it from your Apple Book collection (a copy of it remains in the cloud). Re-download it to see the new version. Once happy with it, then it is time to do some marketing (which we’ll be getting into at a later date).
So, Pulp Wildlife has officially arrived. There is a link to it on the New Pulp Page along with some new pics and updates on the “Pulp Sink Nook” project. We’re about 50% done with the new subway wall tile install and it is time to go get back at it. Crank up the music!
Have a great Memorial Day Weekend y’all!
