For paid subscribers, this last post will wrap up the stage of being on the front list. It moves to the backlist sometimes soon, depending on how you define front list and back list. Basically, it was published in 2025, so my attention is turning to launching 2026 and 2027 titles. Come and see what worked and what didn’t.

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Storybundle is a unique platform for selling a themed group of books together at special pricing. This time, the theme is independent writing and publishing, and each book is an exclusive-to-this-Storybundle version of the books. There are 14 ebooks and one exclusive on-line workshop.

Books About the Writing Life

1. T. Thorn Coyle’s Let Your Life Be Your Lightning.

2. Ron Collins’s On Being (and Becoming Again) A Writer.

3. Workshop: Writing in Turbulent Times.

4. The Write Attitude by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Books About the Craft of Writing

4. Writing Novels with the Waltese Falcon, by Dean Wesley Smith.

5. The Pitch Perfect Author by J. Daniel Sawyer.

6. Brick by Brick, by Douglas Smith

Books to Write AND Publish

7. Bundle Up! by Jamie Ferguson.

8. Picture Books by Darcy Pattison.

Books About a Writer’s Career - 2026

9. Stark Realities by Mark Leslie Lefebvre.

10. The Indie Author Survival Guide by Tracy Cooper-Posey.

Books About Practical Matters

11. Kickstarter: Kickstarter for Authors by Anthea L. Sharp.

12. Newsletters: The Independent Author Newsletter Playbook by Andrea Pearson

13. Promotional Prompts: The Rational Writer by Mindy Klasky

14. Interns: Authors and Interns by Robert Jeschonek.

Write Stuff Storybundle

Storybundle Pricing - Basic Bundle

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of three books in .epub format—WORLDWIDE.

• Authors and Interns: 2026 Edition by Robert Jeschonek (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• The Pitch-Perfect Author - Voice Mastery for Writers by J. Daniel Sawyer (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• The Independent Author Newsletter Playbook: Complete by Andrea Pearson (StoryBundle Exclusive)

Storybundle Pricing - Bonus Bundle

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $30, you get all three of the regular books, plus TWELVE more books, for a total of 15! And all of them are EXCLUSIVE to this bundle!

• The Indie Author Survival Guide by Tracy Cooper-Posey (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Let Your Life Be Lightning by T. Thorn Coyle (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• On Being (and Becoming Again!) a Writer by Ron Collins (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• The Rational Writer: Promotional Prompts by Mindy Klasky (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Stark Realities by Mark Leslie Lefebvre (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• The Write Attitude by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Bundle Up! by Jamie Ferguson (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Writing in Turbulent Times: A Three-Week Video Class by Dean Wesley Smith (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Writing Novels with the Waltese Falcon - How to Write Novels at Speed by Dean Wesley Smith (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Brick by Brick: How to Build a Story by Douglas Smith (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Picture Books: Write and Publish by Darcy Pattison (StoryBundle Exclusive)

• Kickstarter for Authors 2nd Edition - Including Bonus Materials by Anthea L. Sharp (StoryBundle Exclusive)

Available for a Limited Time Only

Storybundles are only available for a limited time. Check out the Exclusive Write Stuff Bundle today!

Write Stuff Storybundle

Copyediting for Novels or Picture Books

First, your manuscript needs to be copyedited, fact-checked, and proofread. For these tasks, some people turn to AI. In reality, a spellcheck is a type of AI editing. I consider the programs that do grammar and usage checks to be a similar type of rules-based programs that check your story against the norms.

Personally, I like ProWriting Aid because it does a bit more than just grammar. For example, it checks for repeated words and allows you to find your “tics,” the unconscious repetition of words. In that previous sentences, I said “a bit,” which ProWriting Aid would tell me is a phrase I use too often. You can also do a house style to check anything extra you want. I use this to check my character’s motivations, looking for words like “need” or “want” to reveal their desires.

I prefer to hire a copyeditor, a person, to go through my manuscript. My copyeditor is excellent!

But the problem is this: I am a lousy copyeditor. When she returns my story, I must go through and actually make the corrections she indicated. And sometimes—how does this happen?—I fail to follow through. I manually check off every correction she indicates—and still I make mistakes.

From now on, then, I’ll run the final pdf through an LLM-AI to make sure it’s clean. Currently, I prefer Claude (I pay for the $20 level), but Gemini or ChatGPT could do the same. I wouldn’t use an LLM for fact-checking because none of them can write an accurate biography of myself. But for grammar and usage checking, I might do a final check. In this case, I use a prompt like this:

You are an expert copyeditor of children’s books using the Chicago Manual of Style. Go through the XXX.pdf document and indicate errors in spelling, grammar or usage. The goal is clarity, consistency, and correctness.

Note: Usage errors are important to include here! This will catch misuse of homophones (accept/except, there/they’re/their), commonly confused words (that/which, everyday/every day), idioms or phrases (all right/alright), redundancies and wordiness (added bonus/bonus), and inconsistencies (e-mail/email).

A Warning Against Inappropriate Software

Please - do not be tempted to just design your novel, or especially your picture book, in Canva, Powerpoint, MSWord or other program not designed for layout and design. The exception below is for novels laid out in word processors for which you are applying a professional template.

Poorly designed books have a poor chance of succeeding in a demanding industry. Learn either Indesign or Affinity for picture books—or hire professionals. Reedsy.com is my preferred place to look for freelancers, because Reedsy vets applicants and only includes professionals on their platform. Avoid other cheap platforms because the quality is usually lacking. To compete in today’s crowded market, you need the best produced book possible!

Tech Stack for Novels

Once the manuscript is copyedited, you can turn to formatting it so it looks like a novel. This can be daunting your first time through. There are two approaches that work equally well.

Templates for Common Programs - For Beginners

First, you can use templates for MSWord (PCor Mac), Pages (Mac), or Indesign (PC or Mac). I’ve used many of the templates from BookDesignTemplates.com, and consider them perfect for beginners. The templates will create the right margins, preselect fonts and set the size and spacing, create headers and footers, and more. They have layouts for fiction and nonfiction and show you the variety of headers/footers, fonts, and so on. You can choose how you want the book to appear and be confident that the novel will turn out as expected.

Indesign is the powerful Adobe program designed to layout complicated designs perfectly. Because it’s powerful, it has a steep learning curve. For any question you might have, though, there are tons of resources including videos or blog posts to walk you through the problem. Using a template here will help you become familiar with the program while scaffolded with the template.

One of the biggest objections to Indesign is the required subscription of $22.99 (price at time of writing). NOTE: I ONLY subscribe to Indesign, not the entire Adobe suite, which allows me to keep my costs under control. I consider that a minimal cost of doing business, but others complain about the monthly expense. One unexpected advantage of Indesign showed up when I sold international translations. The foreign publishing companies expect Indesign files, which transport worldwide, and are still the standard for publishing worldwide.

MSWord (PC or Mac) is Microsoft’s word processor. But word processors are not meant to do layout and design. If you stretch the limits of the program and dig into style sheets, though, you can produce a reasonable book. When you export to PDF, the file is acceptable to most printers. Pages (Mac) is Apple’s word processor and templates are also available for this program.

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All-in-One Program for Print and eBook

Two programs allow for control of a novel’s layout and design for print, but also allow exporting as ebooks: Vellum (Mac only) or Atticus (PC, Mac, Linux, Chromebook). I’ve only used Vellum, but Atticus fans say the programs are comparable.

These programs show the layout for epubs, and if you toggle a selection, you’ll also see the print layout. The programs are adding features all the time, so you can currently add header images, fonts, custom backgrounds, and many other options. They do have a limited size selection, as shown in this image. (Accurate when article was written.)

The beauty of these programs is, of course, that you get both epub and print layouts. If you use the book templates above, you’ll still have to figure out the ebook at some point. Some would prefer to do both at once.

For children’s books, though, the paperback version sells the best. Beginners can start with the paperback and add the hardcover and ebooks later. So, it might make sense for you to use the programs you’re familiar with, such as MSWord, and just add a template to create the print version. As you build your list, though, you will want to add epubs; I’ve tried every program available and prefer Vellum to create epubs for novels. If you plan to go with Vellum, maybe you want to just start there, instead of the templates.

Look through the the BookDesignTemplates.com for their options. Vellum doesn’t have a gallery of styles, but you can get a glimpse of options here. Atticus doesn’t have a gallery of styles, either, but look at their options here.

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Tech Stack for Picture Books

Ah, picture books. Those gorgeous images add so much difficulty to the layout and design phase of creating a children’s book. But the images are also what makes the book work!

Delivery of Files

I’ve written a couple times here and here and a five-post series (for paid subscribers) about working with an illustrator to create images for your story. It’s an important topic, so I’ve written about it a lot!

For our purposes today, it’s important how you take the delivery of the art. You need high-resolution images, at least 300 dpi (dots per inch, a measure of the quality of the art). I alway put in the contract that I need 300dpi, full-size images in either jpg, png, or tiff formats. PNG gives you transparency, so you can stack photos without a background interfering with the images. . TIFF is the highest quality, while JPG has some compression of the images. But all of them work. Once you have these high quality images, you can choose the program to use.

You may also include in your contract that the illustrator delivers .psd files, which are photoshop files, the original files the illustrator works with. Some illustrators will charge more for these files, but some will provide them with the other files.

Be careful: do not copy images from the internet because you’ll likely violate copyright and image optimized for the web (usually 72dpi) will not be high enough resolution to print (minimum of 300dpi required).

Fixed Format ePubs

Before we talk about programs, we also have to cover the difference in epubs for picture books. The idea of an ebook is that the reader can change the fonts to a selection of presets and can change the size of the fonts. When that happens, the text reflows, or moves fluidly from one page to the next. Reflowable ebooks are the norm and allow readers to adapt the ereading process to their needs and preferences.

Reflowable text doesn’t work for picture books, though. The image and text must stay together or the story doesn’t make sense. That means the ebook must force the image and text stay together, called a fixed format ebook. This is sometimes accomplished with CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, which are commands that tell the ereader how to display the images and text. CSS is used on webpages to control the look of the website. However, CSS is interpreted differently by various ereaders leading to inconsistency. With over 100+ different ereaders, including all the old legacy models, it’s impossible—in my opinion—to make the fixed format display correctly. The other option is to create the ebook and export it with text embedded as an image. Essentially, you create an image for every page (or every layout) of the epub.

The restrictions of the fixed format ebook create problems when you create the epub. Fortunately, there’s been developments this year that make it much easier!

Creating the Picture Book

To create picture books, I use Adobe’s Indesign program because it’s powerful and consistent. As noted above, though, it’s only available with a subscription. In 2025, Canva.com bought Affinity, a British-based program that is similar to Adobe, and in a surprise, bold move, they made Affinity free. It’s different from Indesign, but comparable. It’s going to be interesting to see how Canva’s bold move plays out over the next few years. I will continue to use Indesign because I’ve spent years learning it and still consider it the industry standard (plus it exports for international deals).

Using either Indesign or Affinity, you will lay out the story with text and images. The program will export the high quality pdf needed by printers.

That takes care of print, but what about the fixed format epub? Surprisingly, I use Affinity and Calibre (a free software to edit the metadata of the ebook - PC, Mac, Linx) to create simple fixed format epubs. I’ve detailed the exact process of creating fixed-format ebooks for your children’s books here (for paid subscribers).

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Complete Tech Stack for Creating Children’s Books

1. NOVELS

   1. Templates: MS Word, Pages, or Indesign + BookDesignTemplates.com template of your choice.

   2. All-in-one software: Vellum or Atticus, to create both print and ebook.

2. PICTURE BOOKS

   1. Print: Indesign or Affinity to create the full-color layouts with precision.

   2. eBook: Indesign or Affinity to create the full-color layout and export images. Use the images in Affinity to create the epub, then edit with Calibre to correct the metadata.

Best Tech Stack for Beginners

Because the main product for children’s books is the paperback, you can start with BookDesignTemplates.com and programs that you are already familiar with such as MSWord or Pages.

As soon as you need ebooks, though, you’ll need to upgrade to Vellum or Atticus to create reflowable ebooks. They are comparable and the choice mostly depends on the type of computer you use.

I’m sorry, but if you create picture books, it’s more complicated. Beginners should either dive into Indesign and expect a steep learning curve, or start with the free Affinity program, which still has a learning curve. With either, plan to watch tons of video tutorials on how to layout the book. It’s time well-spent, an investment in your career. I can’t imagine not knowing Indesign and having to depend on freelancers for this important task of creating picture books.

What programs do you use to create your picture books?

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• April 16 NSTA Convention, Anaheim, CA

• April 17-18 OK-AR SCBWI Conference, Tulsa, OK.

• August 11 and 13 Picture Book Essentials: A Two-Night Mini for Picture Book Writers, Boyd’s Mills, 2-night mini online webinar (Registration opens in May.)

• September 16-19 Picture Book Authors and Illustrators: A Generative Retreat- at Boyd’s Mills (formerly Highlight Foundation). This is filling up fast! Register now!

• October 8-10 Wisconsin SCBWI, Green Lake, WI

  

Indie Publishers: Should You Do School Visits?

If you publish children’s books, do you have to do school visits? That’s when an author goes for a public appearance and does a presentation at a school. Usually, the visit is a paid presentation that features information on books, literacy, or education, specifically mentioning the author’s books and experiences writing and publishing children’s books.

We all know that school visits can be an important part of the publicity, marketing, and income for children’s book authors. For paid subscribers, let’s do a deep dive into a fascinating case study and answer some questions.

• What type of author benefits from doing lots of school visits?

• What are typical stages of a career based on school visits?

• Will school visits guarantee your books are best sellers?

  Indie Kids Books is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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The essay below is what I wrote that day. It’s an appendix in Tell Better Stories (originally published as Novel Metamorphosis: Uncommon Ways to Revise) , which is part of the Write a Book for Kids series.

Here on Indie Kids, I mostly write about the publishing process for children’s books. But I’ve also extensively taught how to write children’s books. I can and do talk about techniques of writing. But I think one aspect that is woefully ignored is the emotional strains of writing, getting critiques, and revising. It can be a deadly process that cuts down your self confidence. This is my reaction to that process!

Why post this today? Because I’m feeling the same insecurities about some business situations which required me to make decisions. I don’t want anyone to give me business advice right now, either!

I DON’T WANT AN HONEST CRITIQUE

No, don’t tell me what’s wrong with this novel. I don’t want to hear it. Minor problems? OK, I’ll !x those. But major structural, plot or character problems—don’t tell me.

Cynthia Ozynick says, “Writing is essentially an act of courage.”

When I get an honest critique, my courage fails me. I fear the revision needed: I won’t ever be able to “get it right.” Obviously, I thought that I had communicated my intentions well in the first draft, or I would have changed it before you read it. But you say that you don’t understand, or that I’m inconsistent, or that I’m unfocused. How could that be? I see it so clearly. And if my vision of my story is so skewed, then how will I ever get it right?

I fear that you’re right and I’m wrong. But how can I be sure? This is my story and it comes from my psychological leanings, my background, my research. How can you tell me what is right for my story? If the story doesn’t communicate what I want, then, yes, I need to revise. I repeat: Obviously, I thought it did communicate what I wanted, or I would have revised it before you saw it. Do you just have a different vision of the story because of your psychological leanings, your background? Are you trying to envision what I intended, or are you envisioning what you would have written? Where does your ego slam up against my ego? And where does your objective appraisal need to push my ego back into line with what it really wants to do anyway? Perspective is hard to achieve.

I fear that all my hard work—all the months spent thinking and rewriting—will be wasted. As a novelist, time haunts me. To write a novel isn’t the work of a week or a month. It takes many months, a year, a year and a half. More. It’s a long, long process. Your revision notes mean that the time is extended, and that without any guarantee of being finished even then. Meanwhile, that means that I’m a year older, that it’s a year in which I couldn’t write anything new (even if I could find the courage to begin again). I fear your honesty; I need your approval (or someone’s approval; if not yours, then whose?). Will it crush me emotionally if you don’t “like” my story? I gloss over the approval part of critiques and agonize over the “needs work” assessment. Is there a way for you to only show approval, yet open my eyes, so that I recognize what needs work? I’d rather recognize it for myself than have it pointed out.

I fear that my standards are too lax. I want to be finished, I want to have this story “out there.” I want to have written, but in the throes of writing, I want the end of the process long before the story is really finished. Submission comes too early and then I get rejections. Then, it’s harder than ever to revise. But waiting is excruciating. Typical advice: Put the manuscript in a drawer for three months and then pull it out and read it with a fresh eye. What? Waste three more months? Never. It’s done and ready to send out. (Ok, maybe it isn’t, but I can’t stand looking at it one more time and in three months, my editor could read it and buy it. OK, maybe they won’t buy it until I revise, but three months? Isn’t there any other way?)

Critiques, especially honest and on-target critiques, are fearful things. I know that I need them; but they are painful, emotionally draining, and confidence shaking. But I need them. OK, can you give me a minute? Let me find my mask of courage. There. I have it on. Now bring on your best critique!

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Top 10 Ways to Stop the Sting of Critiques

1. Avoidance. Have someone else read the critique for you and only highlight the good comments. Read only the highlighted comments.

2. Revenge. Give the creep back an even harsher critique than you just got.

3. Denial. Write out the reasons why the critiquer is totally off base. Ignore all suggestions.

4. Excitement. Fake excitement about the critique and tell everyone you know exactly what’s wrong with the story and how you plan to fix it.

5. Suspicion. Read each comment with the suspicion that the critiquer is trying to get your manuscript out of the running, so their own manuscript will do well. Therefore, you can safely ignore any comments you want to.

6. Surprise. Allow each comment to be a revelation at how far off base this critiquer is.

7. Pride. Take pride in your ability to “take it” from the tough ones.

8. Loneliness. Understand that you and you alone are in the situation of receiving harsh critiques; such things have never been written about any manuscript and will never be written again.

9. Forgiveness. Realize that the critiquer has sinned by so harshly criticizing your story and at some point they will have to come and ask for forgiveness; be ready to give it gracefully.

10. Hope. Find hope in the good things the critiquer noticed, and hope in the process of revision.

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They share profits with independent bookstores, their reason for existing. Their interface integrated with bookstores, allowing the bookstore to have a strong presence online at a time when much of shopping moved online. Customers can designate the independent bookstore of their choice for profit sharing. If there’s no selection, then the money goes into a general fund which is divided among all the bookstores which are partnering with Bookshop.org.

Effectively, when you buy from Bookshop.org, you support a local store. That makes it a strong alternative to Amazon.com or other online bookstores.

“78% of our customers said they regularly bought books from Amazon before they made the switch.” Bookshop.org

They caught my attention this month as they made a couple important and strategic partnerships.

1. Spotify and Bookshop. Spotify has been experimenting with audiobooks and the growth has been phenomenal. Now it will integrate with Bookshop to allow listeners to also purchase print books or ebooks. And they will page match, or sync across the formats. If you’re listening to the audiobook but then open the ebook, it will open to the page where you left off.

2. Draft2Digital and Bookshop. Opening this marketplace to the indie book community makes sense! Bookshop.org has always wanted the program to be inclusive. Through a partnership with Draft2Digital, your ebooks are now available on Bookshop.org. They already have a partnership with InAudio (formerly Findaway) to sell audiobooks.

Opening the marketplace to indie publishers is exciting. But how does Bookshop.org work? For paid readers, I’ll take a deep dive into how it compares to other bookstores and when you should link to Amazon v Bookshop v Your Site, and how to create lists that create sales.

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In order to access the feature, you must buy BOTH the audiobook and the ebook from Amazon. Of course, this is only available (for now) with the Kindle/Audible integration from Amazon.com. This is a children’s short chapter book, so it works. On the screenshot of the book page, notice that in the bottom right corner, it says Whispersync for Voice is highlighted—look for that before you buy thinking you’ll get this feature. Since I already owned the ebook, it offered the audiobook at 49% discount. (I go through InAudio to put audiobooks on Amazon, not Audible.)

When you own both the ebook and the audiobook, the Audible app will tag it as Read & Listen.

Will Parents and Teachers Embrace Read & Listen?

On children’s reading apps such as EPIC! they do a similar feature and the Read to Me Versions are hugely popular!

The biggest difference is that Audible’s Read & Listen doesn’t work for the fixed format ebooks that we usually use for picture books. EPIC! creates those one book at a time. Audible is likely using some sort of AI to sync the audio with text, but it will only work for text-based reflowable ebooks. For us that means chapter books, middle grade novels, and YA novels.

What do you think? Will this become a popular feature with parents and teachers? Will it matter to the beginning readers?

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Before we get to that, though, I have a request! My book, THE JOURNEY OF OLIVER K. WOODMAN, was in print with Harpercollins for 23 years and just went out of print. I’ve just republished it from Mims House Books — and I need reviews! (Don’t we all!)

I’m happy to send you a pdf review copy. It received a starred Kirkus and BCCB (Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books), and was in a Harcourt 3rd grade Journeys textbook. Want a look? eMail me for a review copy.

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NOTE: Report on Bookshop.org and D2D partnership. Yesterday was the official announcement that indie authors will be able to put ebooks on Bookshop.org through their D2D account. When I checked today, I was disappointed. They will NOT accept Fixed Format epubs. Children’s picture books won’t be represented on D2d unless you use reflowable epub format, which is inappropriate for a text with lots of images.

To create a fixed format ebook is hard. I’ve written about this several times, but there’s a new software that might make it easier.

Creating a Fixed Format eBook

For years, I’ve been hand-coding ebooks because it creates a strong fixed format ebook and offers the smallest file size. First, I export page images from my book, embedding the text into the images, thus bypassing the problems of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to produce the exact placement of text. Then, I use ImageOptim to reduce the file sizes, and then put it into the hand-coded book. I learned that if you use images that show spreads instead of pages, it further reduces the file size.

Why does file size matter?

File size only matters on Amazon, because they charge a download fee of about $0.15/MB (varies by country) if you choose the 70% royalty rate. A fixed format epub from a picture book can easily be 20 MB or more. Indeed, if you go over 8MB, you should instead choose the 35% royalty rate because it doesn’t charge that download fee. Also, if your book is in Kindle Unlimited (KU – Amazon’s subscription ebook program that allows for certain promotional activities in exchange for an exclusive listing), then file size doesn’t matter.

So, my goal has been to create a fixed format ebook with the best layout and design that also has a small file size.

However, for children’s books on Amazon, in December, 2025, ebooks were only 3.8% of my income. I rarely put my books into KU because my ebooks are other markets.

Maybe, my criteria needs to change: save time, and make the ebook process easy. For paid subscribers, I’ll explain my new, simple, effective method.

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Take a deep breath and hang on for the ride! Because there’s lots to get done. Let’s talk about everything you need to do before you can market your book.

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Bundling ebooks like this is a great way to use collective marketing to get word out about your ebooks. Most of these are Book 1 of a series, or at least an introduction to the author’s works. If you have any interest in YA scifi, this is a steal.

Read the blog article explaining the Aliens Bundle.

Want to know more about “bundling”? For paid subscribers, I explain how this bundle works behind the scenes.

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I’m coming now to ask for reviews. You know—more than the normal person—the importance of reviews. So far, PUBLISH only has two reviews! I was hoping for 10+.

Could you leave a review on Amazon and Barnes & Noble of the books? It never needs to be a long review. Just a single word will help. Of course, it you want to leave a long review, I won’t stop you!

But just a single-word review will help!

WEBINAR: KidLit Self-Publishing 101

I’ll be teaching a webinar for the newly renamed Boyds Mills (formerly the Highlights Foundation) on January 26 and January 28. It’s a two-night mini-webinar and covers the basics. It’s a great time to review what it takes to get started in self-publishing, as well as get some questions answered. Come join me. Or send your friend who is bugging you for more information on the process.

Accounting, My Kryptonite

I’m still working on my 2025 end-of-year accounting. As you know, accounting is my kryptonite, and the accounting books are a mess. Fortunately, the Amazing Accountant is on the job and things will get straightened out. But here’s what I already know.

My sales were down in 2025, probably the lowest in five years. This can be attributed to a couple things:

1. A Little Bit of Dinosaur series is now coming on five years old for Book 1. Incredibly, on the EPIC! reading app, the series has 6.7 million reads. But the last two quarters, the reading has been tapering off—the natural life cycle of a book. Since this has been a huge income, it’s affecting my bottom line.

2. The federal government has gutted the Education Department, which has to be taking a toll on state education programs. No, they didn’t buy books directly, but their grants, programs, and requirements did buy books. I think this has affected the overall sales of children’s books. Economic woes from other government changes hasn’t helped either. Children’s books are important, but can be set aside for more basic needs.

3. When the Baker & Taylor distributor closed this year, many orders were backlogged and publisher’s left in the lurch. For example, Harpercollins wrote off $13 million. It may take a couple months to straighten out the orders. Meanwhile, everyone else is scrambling to pick up the library and school market customers. Read this interesting article. There’s lots of juggling going on and it’ll just take time to straighten out.

For paid subscribers, here’s what I’m planning for Q1, 2026. A lot! Starting with local strategies, I’ll strive for a national reach when possible. Will any of this work? I don’t know. But 2026, here I come!

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Public Domain Day - The Importance of Copyright

January 1 was Public Domain Day, the day that old works fall out of copyright and into public domain. Copyright is for a certain length of time, and when it runs out, then the book becomes public domain, which means it can be copied, modified, or used in any way you like. This year, it includes the first four Nancy Drew books and many more interesting works. StandardeBooks.org has made 20 of these free as ebooks. Check it out.

I’m reminding you that copyright IS our business. We only have rights to sell because the federal government recognizes the importance of encouraging and protecting creative endeavors. Copyright lasts your lifetime, plus 70 years. If you die this year, Public Domain Day of 2096 will be the first day that someone besides your heirs can exploit your works.

Over the holidays, I received six copyright certificates, which had been delayed when the government shut down in the fall. Here’s a quick flip through my copyright certificates. I use a 3-hole punch on them and put them into this notebook.

With the Anthropic copyright case, we found out the importance of filing a copyright.

Tomorrow, the Write a Book for Kids series goes live on Amazon, Ingram, and my website. That means later this week, I’ll be filing five new copyrights.

Working through Mistakes

Getting five books uploaded on my website/Lulu/Draft2Digital, Amazon, Ingram is a pain. I also send ebooks to Overdrive, and I’ve been using an ONIX feed for this. These books had two versions, ebooks and paperbacks. So—KDP kicked out one book because they didn’t like the subtitle.

Do you know what that meant? I had to totally redo the metadata and interiors for all five books. The interior had a chapter that introduces the series, and the book was listed with the now-changed subtitle.

Here’s the list of activities I had to do at the last minute last week:

1. Update subtitle on Bowker, and on my ONIX feed. Update the sales sheet and any marketing materials.

2. Redo the interiors of all five books. This was relatively easy because I used Vellum to format the books. I updated one book, the copied that chapter and inserted into the other four books, while deleting the old chapter. Regenerate print and ebooks.

3. Reupload everything to Lulu, the backend of my Shopify store. Ebooks and print books.

4. Reupload everything to Ingram, which sends books to the industry worldwide.

5. Reupload everything to KDP. Ebooks and print books.

6. Reupload five ebooks to D2D, for sale on my website.

7. Reupload five books to Overdrive.

Sometimes, it seems all I do is make mistakes. Publishing a children’s book is full of details, important but picky metadata, and lots of platforms. Read: lots of places to make a mistake filling out some new form.

But when I make a mistake, I don’t beat myself up over it. I just <sigh> and fix it. It has to be right, which means I have to redo everything until it’s right.

It’s the same answer when kids ask me how many times should I revise a story. The answer: until it’s right. That’s it. Until it’s right. I upload everywhere—revising, until it’s right.

Digital Rights Management (DRM) will change on January 20, 2026. DRM is a technology that protects your books from being copied or pirated. Yes, children’s books are pirated, as we learned this year with the Anthropic Copyrights Class-Action Lawsuit.

So, before we go any farther, the first thing you must do against piracy is establish your legal rights under copyright. As soon as you write a book, it is copyrighted. But if you want the right to sue and obtain financial settlements, you must file your copyright with Copyright.gov. It’s a simple process that you can do yourself, no help required. Simply create an account at Copyright.gov and follow instructions.

Then, you need to consider your choices, especially in light of changes in the library market late this year.

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(If you were not a member when the Kickstarter for this project closed, but are currently a member, let me know and I’ll set up your ebooks. Or, join now—before the end of the year—and I’ll get them sent your way.)

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I am picky about the awards, only submitting to industry-wide reputable awards. Here’s a list of awards that I consider. The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLI) also maintains a list of awards and rates them on a scale from Excellent to Caution. This is one of my major strategies for finding recognition for my books. When I submit, I understand the there are many factors that go into such awards and this particular book may not find advocates. However, the judges of these committees are opinion-makers in their field! Even if they don’t give my book a certain award, I want them aware of the book. For another use, they may find it’s the perfect book.

However, as a marketing scheme, it’s unreliable. Books I feel should win, go unrecognized. And I’m surprised occasionally when an under-the-radar book finds recognition. That’s what happened this year!

The Przewalski’s Horse wins Eureka!

All year, I’ve written a series of blog posts about the process of publishing NOT EXTINCT: The Przewalski’s Horse Returns From Extinct in the Wild. I’m thrilled that it was recognized by the California Reading Association as a Eureka! Nonfiction Honor book. This means teachers and librarians in California will be especially interested in using the books in their classes.

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CLIMATE named a Best STEM Book

Before you even start a conversation about climate change, kids need to understand what climate means. Additionally, a study of weather and climate is required by the NextGen Science Standards. When I heard about the story of Köppen, I was fascinated to learn that we still use the maps he drew about 100 years ago. They’ve been refined some, but are basically still sound. That’s an amazing achievement.

Then, I found his autobiography in a version that included both the original German and translated English. Perfect. The result is this fascinating book about weather and climate. Illustrated by the amazing Peter Willis, this is a visually fun book.

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Two Awards: Snails are NOT slow!

Don’t overlook the humble snail! It won two awards, the NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book and the Best STEM Book. The awards are slightly different, with the Outstanding Science Trade Book going to books about information while the STEM Book award recognizes the process of science. It’s rare to get both awards, so it’s particularly thrilling. And two awards look nicely balanced on the cover!

This is Book 7 of the Children’s Animal Book Series. Other titles include a bird, mammal, marine mammal, reptile, amphibian, and a spider. I’d love to write another book in this series, but the stories feature a single animal, not a species, that has been named for some interaction with humans, which also has a great story, and also has a scientist (or a rich historical record) to answer questions. Where am I going to find a fish story?

This is almost that fish story, the one that keeps growing. Did I tell you the one about the book that won an award? No, it was two awards? Ha! It’s a humble story that has found love from the science teachers! Thrilling.

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Do Awards Mean Sales?

Awards don’t mean automatic sales, but they do bring a book a higher profile. It gives you a reason to talk about the books with teachers, science enthusiasts, and more. I’m strategically creating images, press releases, and emails to talk with a targeted group of people about the books. That will include reps at Ingram and Lulu, science specialists at different levels, local teachers, and more. Increasing the visibility will help find more readers for these books!

One thing I’ve done is create a new kind of catalog. Before this, I’ve created catalogs that look like a regular publisher’s catalog. See it here. This time, I created a catalog that emphasizes the curriculum tie-ins for the Next Gen Science Standards, and the SEL (Casel Framework) curriculums. The hope is to make the collection of science books more useful and visible to curriculum specialists. Download that catalog here. Ask me in a couple months if it helped!

Finally, on a personal note, it’s satisfying to see the collection of books grow into, well, a collection. Individually, I’ve loved creating each book. Over the last 13 years, though, I’ve also created a collection of books that reaches curious kids with fascinating stories. That’s surprising to me. I concentrate on individual books and the myriad of problems each one brings, and voila!—like magic—here’s a group of books that make a coherent collection. Isn’t this a wonderful life we lead? I’m blessed to be publishing books I love for an audience that I love.

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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!