children’s books

Today’s Challenge

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Next Book Title Votes from my sixth graders

Can you stop thinking?

Try it.

Say, I will stop thinking now. Then, wait.        Wait.                 Wait.

How long before a thought comes?

Try it again.

This is practice and you’ll get better.

We grow up believing that people who think are smarter.

Of course, one needs to think in order to achieve or produce.

But most of the time, we have 12,000-60,000 thoughts a day and research has shown that over 90% of those thoughts are repeated thoughts from the day before. Completely unnecessary.

This is the gateway to personal power and inner peace.

 

Self-Publishing Update

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Working through CreateSpace (Amazon’s answer to self-publishing) includes the following phases:

  1. Create
  2. Setup
  3. Review
  4. Distribution
  5. Sales & Marketing

Esther, Mia and The Stars is now in the Distribution phase. This is my first book, so I’m very excited! I’m enjoying the process immensely, even when things go wrong.

I’ve been meditating an extra minute every morning. This morning, I meditated for 11 minutes and tomorrow, I will meditate for 12. What I mean by meditating is concentrating on my breath and not thinking. Why is this important? Because the mind can work in overdrive and  interfere with inner peace. Meditation has (already) helped me keep calm during challenging moments. My sixth graders were very loud and obnoxious today, but I was fine. My illustrations scanned at a dpi that was too low and I had to re-scan and crop them all over again, but I just did it and didn’t feel anxious or upset at all.

I’ve written my book description:

Esther and Mia are best friends. Esther must come up with a creative solution when she discovers that Mia is being bullied. Together, they overcome this painful event and tell their story in English and Spanish.

My “About the Author” blurb:

Caroline Chung-Wipff delights in working with children who are often much wiser than adults. She lives in the desert with the love-of-her-life (Willey), her two amazing daughters and Opal the Dog Wonder.

Amazon tells me:

Your book files are still being reviewed. A final print ready cover file is needed to continue to KDP. You will be e-mailed when the review is complete.

So I wait.

Please ping me if you have any questions about the process thus far. It’s so fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Self-Publishing

 

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I am a HUGE fan of James Altucher. He’s creative, honest and authentic. I absolutely believe in his assertion that we must choose ourselves. He’s the reason I’m finally self-publishing my children’s book (which I’ve mentioned before).

If you’re interested in self-publishing, check out Amazon.com’s program CreateSpace.

 

Choose yourself!

Update: all the illustrations are done. Now, I’m working on the manuscript errors. I had 3. My laptop is super old, so it’s very slow in processing.

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Tonight is all about editing. I’m enjoying the process and I’m learning a lot. My daughters, ages 13 and 15, were the illustrators. I will cherish this book for the rest of my life.

Happy Saturday night!

 

 

 

 

 

Self-Publishing: CreateSpace.com

I completed placing the text tonight. I will complete uploading the scanned illustrations (hopefully) tomorrow night. It’s a super busy week for me both at work (school) and for my daughters (school/violin).

Alas!

Balance. Consistency. Little-by-little.

It’s still not clear to me how placing text and illustrations in a Word template will ever look good, but I have to trust the process, right?

Thank you to all who have been so kind to provide words of encouragement. I hope I am helping even one person out there.

 

 

Self-Publishing: Formatting Your Pages

It’s a Saturday night. Hubby’s watching TV, girls are on their phones and I’m at my desk again.

Tonight, I’m starting the process that stopped me before: formatting my pages! I got overwhelmed in March. I’m determined to see this through! So here goes.

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CreateSpace has a template you can use in Word! How easy is that? The first is the interior cover page and then a dedication:

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…a blank page follows that and then the Table of Contents.

Note: I started this whole process with Udemy.com and I enrolled in the “Self Publish Your Children’s Book” course given by Tim Johnson. He has a very warm, enthusiastic manner and makes the process less intimidating. Check him out!  I got 62% of the way through. I will be completing that course in tandem with the CreateSpace.com website going forward.

I’m going to upload my content and update my blog tomorrow.

And to all….a good night!

Esther and Mia on a blanket
Illustrated by Josie Wipff  March 2016

 

 

 

Self-Publishing First Steps

After locating my EIN which I secured six months ago, I am ready to complete the self-publishing process.

I log into my CreateSpace account and complete the banking information. It feels very strange to supply my banking info…I feel suspicious. And I wonder if this info. is safe and secure. I do it anyway.

I am prompted to choose:

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I choose Individual/Sole Proprietor because I am only planning to sell as myself, not with partners. C Corporations are taxed separately from its owners. S Corporations are not. Either way, Sole proprietorship is the simplest way to go and since I’m just starting out, this seems the best. I can always change it when I sell millions and make J.K. Rowling dough.

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…and I get to input my EIN!

Next, I am to review my taxpayer information. It’s good to go.

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Going forward, I need to work on items in my Project Dashboard:

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Until tomorrow!

 

 

Self-Publishing “Esther, Mia and the Stars”

 

I’m a newbie to self-publishing. I wrote about my children’s book a couple nights ago and I’m going to share my learning process with you in this blog. My hopes are two-fold:

  1. This will hold me accountable and make me DO IT; and
  2. You will follow along with me and get your book published too!

Coincidentally, (and doesn’t the universe provide when you with what you need when you express your desires out loud?), I was reading Choose Yourself by James Altucher and he has a chapter on self-publishing! He recommends using CreateSpace.com. I know there are a kajillion other sites and ways to do this. I’m going to try this first. They have a step-by-step process built in for you and you can then sell through Amazon.com.

Tonight, I signed up. Each night, I will do something to get closer to publishing and share it here. But for now, I have to make lesson plans for the week. I spent most of today cleaning and taking my daughters to the mall. One had Girls Day Out (she had a fantastic time with three friends) and the other needed to pick out a Homecoming dress. Done!

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My Beautiful Fresh(wo)man

I also made progress in re-typing a short story I wrote over 13 years ago (I lost the Word doc, but had a hard copy).

As long as I make consistent progress in these areas, I’m happy. As a wise woman once said:

You can have it all, just not at once.

Oprah Winfrey