I did my last conference of the year this week, the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media (AAIM), the school librarians, in Jonesboro, AR

Book sales were strong at this conference because 1) they are school librarians, 2) I only brought hardcovers appropriate for their libraries, so the price points were higher, and 3) they bought series. The Children’s Animal Book series, Moments in Science, and the Read and Write series (writing essays) were popular.

Time to Clean My Office

This isn’t exciting news, but I’m planning to clean my office this week. I have lots of books that need to be organized and put into storage until the next season of conferences. They are stacked everywhere! I’ll need to inventory, sort and store them better so next season will start strong.

Order Books for Award Committees

This is also the season to mail books to award committees. I’ve written about children’s book awards here, which includes a list of appropriate awards. And I’ve started a Monster List of Children’s Book Awards here—subscribe to be notified when a new list goes live! Or download the Monster Books handout from the conference to see what books I recommended.

Right now, I have a spreadsheet of awards that I will submit to, the number of books required by each award (see the info on each award), and I’ll order books to send out. (Order more books? I really need to get those boxes sorted and organized!) I’ll also need to order packing materials. I tend to like the easy fold boxes because they can hold 1-3 books depending on award submissions that year. They are also sturdy and protect the books. I like to get these award submissions sent early because Book/Media Rate at the USPS can be slower; I mail early to get there in a timely manner. A majority of my publicity budget is invested in sending books to the award committees.

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Write the Next Book!

Finally, I’m turning my attention to two new manuscripts. I’ve done research about a new animal to add to my Children’s Animal Book series. I’ve ordered used books from other countries, dug into scientific papers and actually started a draft. But here’s the thing. Right from the start, I wanted these books to be ABOUT the animal as a main character. They are biographies of a single animal, not a species. For WISDOM, one editor said I needed to add more about the scientists. Another editor said take out the scientists entirely. But my vision has always been that these are from the animal’s POV, but also includes how they interact with humans.

The first draft of the new story, though, is all about the scientist. I was trying hard to get the timeline and the science facts straight. One source is written by the scientist, so of course, I started channeling his POV. Now that I know the problem, it should be much easier to write with the POV and voice that will work for the story.

A second manuscript is a cosy fantasy. Have you heard that term, “cosy fantasy”? It’s become popular in the last five years. A space-opera or high fantasy is a story that takes into account the fate of the world. It might be a war between rival factions that will change the universe forever. It includes sweeping stories, years of battles, and bigger-than-life characters.

By contrast, a cosy fantasy is a local neighborhood story about smaller stakes. In children’s literature, I’d consider THE WILD ROBOT a cozy/cosy fantasy. It’s limited to the island where the robot is stranded. It’s about an egg, a baby duck and raising the duck. The stakes escalate to include the fate of the island, but it’s not an epic fantasy for sure. Another popular story is the GROWING HOME by Beth Ferry. A girl’s best friend is her goldfish and her talking ivy plant. Talking plants are big right now int he cozy fantasy category.

I realized that cozy fantasy may be better suited to the types of stories I write! I’m deliberately writing one and having a blast. I’ll be doing a major revision on that for the rest of the summer.

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Planning for Fall

Planning for late summer and fall still continues, of course. Leslie Helakoski and I will teach a webinar on August 11 and 13 about writing picture books, Picture Book Essential.

We’ll also teach an in-person workshop for Boyds Mills on September 16-19, Picture Book Authors and Illustrators: A Generative Retreat. If you’re interested, hurry! Spaces are limited!

Finally, I’m speaking at the Wisconsin SCBWI Retreat on October 8-10, teaching an intensive, PUBLISH: Earn Enough Money to Pay Yourself a Salary. Come, join me!

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And I’ve been musing that our business, thanks to the internet runs 24/7/365, all day, every day, with or without direct intervention. What a blessing!

Trip to Amsterdam and London

Two years ago, I traveled to Prague and Poland and that trip resulted in two books.

But this time, our travel was just for pleasure. Here are a couple photos.

Planning for a Break

Before I left, though, I did a couple things to make sure the business didn’t break while I was gone. First, yes, I had email access all the time, through wifi and our mobile provider. That meant, I could quickly deal with urgent items. There were a few small ones, and I was surprised at how easily I could solve things from my ipad. I always bring my computer, but I never fired it up.

Second, before I left, I shut down some ads. I’ve been running Amazon ads this year again, trying to master the beast (hopefully a post is coming later this year). Some of the ads are experimental, unproven. I PAUSED everything except the proven ads. I took other steps to set up automatic payments and make sure the financials were all steady—and wouldn’t need any attention.

Third, I gave myself permission to not write! I’m a writer. Everything I do is to write or teach writing. I’m pretty boring—that’s my only passion, to communicate through words on a page and to help others maximize their communication skills, and connect people to their work. But sometimes, you need to take in things—so you have something to give out.

One afternoon, my husband and I just sat on a bench and watched people walk by for an hour or two. We chatted about the choices of clothing: the heat wave meant belly buttons everywhere. He noticed the crooked houses, the result of failing foundations along the canal, and how were those foundations built anyway and such a waterway? I pointed out unobtrusive bird nesting boxes placed oddly on a roof. What would it be like to live in such a town if you were a bird-watcher?

The Sherlock Holmes play in the Open Air Theater of Regent’s Park was amazing. The stage was a circular structure that had a revolving inner and outer ring, and when there was a chase scene, what an amazing choreography!

Regent’s Park roses were in full bloom, so I literally took time to smell the roses!

We often need to remind ourselves that our writing comes from filling the well, so there’s something to give out.

And—hallelujah!—while you do it, you’ll still be selling books!

I’ll start with one thing I’m not worried about: I’m not worried about things that my traditionally published friends are worried about. Several children’s publishing imprints with long storied histories have closed recently. Overall, the industry is shrinking, with tales of woe here and there. There was a big ruckus about the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Mac Barnett. This is all happening like it’s in another dimension. The trials and tribulations of traditional publishing doesn’t keep me awake at night.

Instead, I’m worried about tablecloths for tables at conventions, accessibility for ebooks, reaching the homeschool market, launching two books, writing a new book, contracts for another new book, and much more. Come and marvel at my jumbled thoughts!

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Barnett quotes a science fiction writer, Theodore Sturgeon, who was tired of his chosen genre being belittled and decided to write what’s known as Sturgeon’s Law:

90% of everything is crud.

Corollary 1: 90% of science fiction is crud and this is normal.

Corollary 2: The best science fiction is as good as the best fiction in any field.

Barnett extrapolates that to children’s literature in the now famous Barnett Addendum to Sturgeon’s Law:

“Maybe more like 94.7 percent of kids’ books are crud.” (p. 19, Kindle version)

When I read this as a children’s book author, it’s depressing. Maybe it is normal that 90% of everything is crud, but what good does that do me when I sit down to write?

Barnett’s Arguments

Throughout his book, Barnett is arguing two things. First, the audience of kids is often misunderstood, ignored, or exploited. On that, I could agree. There are books which bash kids with politeness, tell them tone-deaf stories about events that bore kids, and tell sensational stories just to make a buck.

His second argument is that some books represent art, crossing into the exotic realm of literature. Those are the books that Barnett would say respect the unique position and inner life of kids.

But, he says, most books “…fail to provide any kind of real literary experience for children.” (p. 21, Kindle version)

The statement argues that Art with a capital A should be the goal of children’s literature. I disagree. It is only one possible goal for children’s literature.

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Children’s Literature is Inclusive

One book that has repeatedly spoken into my writing career is Art and Fear: Observations on the Perils (And Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland. They address the idea of Art with a capital A, but instead of looking at the work, they focus on the Artist. Or, in our case, the children’s book author.

“’Artist’ [children’s book author] has gradually become a form of identity which (as every artist [children’s book author] knows) often carries with it as many drawbacks as benefits. Consider that if artist [children’s book author] equals self, then when (inevitably) you make flawed art, you are a flawed person, and when (worse yet) you make no art, you are no person at all! It seems far healthier to sidestep that vicious spiral by accepting many paths to successful artmaking—from reclusive to flamboyant, intuitive to intellectual, folk art to fine art. One of those is your path. (p. 7-8, Kindle version)

In other words, when Barnett says that only Art can become children’s literature, I reject that statement. His aesthetics may or may not create literature, just as mine may or may not create children’s literature. Certainly, his idea that Art is the goal is not helpful for me as a children’s book author. It doesn’t speak to my reality.

When Bayles and Orland say, “…when (inevitably) you make flawed art…”, they understand that the art making process is hard. Indeed, they help me understand that it is my (inevitable) flaws and mistakes that make it my art. As they say, “Art is made by ordinary people…The flawless creature wouldn’t need to make art.”

I understand that Barnett is talking to a wider audience about the necessity of considering the audience of children’s literature and bringing respect to the stories we tell. But I reject his criteria for deciding what constitutes Art and therefore, children’s literature. For me, the criteria is much more inclusive.

And for my writing career, his comments leave me stranded, with no way forward. There’s no way I can create Art with a capital A, because I’m a flawed creature. I know that every time I put a word onto a page.

With apologies to Bayles and Orland, this rewording helps me face the next story that I plan to write for kids:

It seems far healthier to sidestep that vicious spiral of narrowly defining children’s literature by accepting many paths to successful storytelling—from reclusive to flamboyant, intuitive to intellectual, folk art to fine art.

Barnett has written a book about children’s literature that expounds a certain viewpoint. He’s grasping for a higher standard for children’s literature, and I applaud that. But as a children’s book author, his emphasis on Art as children’s literature leaves me cold and unable to write. People complain about the surge in children’s books and suggest that the answer is fewer books. Instead, I think we need to accept the many paths to successful storytelling and find the ones that resonate with the kids we encounter.

What if Barnett got it all wrong?

What if children are a great audience for storytelling—from reclusive to flamboyant, intuitive to intellectual, folk art to fine art?

“Well, then we’d better do our best to make some good kids’ books.”(Mac Barnett, 2026 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature)

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Questions About Your Children’s Story

It begins with the story. When we publish a book, it lands in the midst of a tsunami of children’s books and the question is always how will your book be discovered? In today’s crowded market, how does your book stand out.

Wrong audience. Often, I think the audience for a book is adults, the parents or teachers, not the kid. Children’s book walk that fine line of appealing to kids, while also acknowledging that parents/teachers/adults will choose to pay for the book. The kid-appeal issue is crucial for your story to land in a kid’s heart. If your audience truly is the adults, then don’t write and publish a children’s picture book. Instead, write a story about surviving diabetes, choosing to be kind in a multicultural world, or loving and caring for an aging dog. In other word, think about your story’s theme. Does it appeal to kids, as written? Or will it appeal only to adults? The cure: Write for kids!

Bad writing. Children’s literature, especially picture books are short, focused stories where the writing itself matters. Stories should trip off the tongue and be a joy to read aloud. I avoid stories with bad rhyme, inept metaphors, or poor rhythm/hard to read. This is a matter of over-confidence, little experience with children’s books, lack of respect for the audience, or a dead ear for the lyricism of language. The cure: Writing classes, critique groups, and good editors.

Mediocre illustrations. Children’s picture books need the best of the best illustrations. Today’s digital artmaking can be excellent; and yet, so often, I find portfolios to be mediocre. There’s nothing exactly wrong with the illustrations, but they are forgettable. The use of color, line, texture, design, and so on are bland. I comb through portfolios looking for flashes of excellence, something different, something that will, well, “stand out in today’s crowded market.” The cure: art appreciation classes, art classes even if you’ll never be professional level because making art helps you understand the artist’s job, and never settling for mediocre.

The task of an indie publisher is to cast a vision that a certain story will reach the hearts of a certain audience. Then everything must bend in service of that vision. You must study your audience and their needs and preferences. The story, writing, and art must serve the audience.

Yes, there are many other things that a startup business needs to know, from publishing method to where to find editors to formatting the story. And so on and so on. Here’s my guide to getting started with all of that.

Or, try the Write a Book for Kids Series, which helps you write and publish for kids.

In the end, your startup company must commit to a certain, well-defined audience, and then find ways to serve that audience. Sure, you’ll make mistakes and have to correct problems. But keep your eye on your audience, because they are your North Star.

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

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Books About the Craft of Writing

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

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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.

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13. Promotional Prompts: The Rational Writer by Mindy Klasky

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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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Share Indie Kids Books

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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