To Rasterize has Nothing to do with Rastafarianism and Other Things I’ve Learned Over the Past Month

But you may already know that, especially if you’ve ever had to work on publishing something with figures, pictures, and fonts combined.

I’ve learned about a hundred things over the last couple months about self-publishing. And is my “Twas the Mouse Before Christmas” in print yet. It is not.

To say that I have technology fatigue would be to put it mildly. To get this picture book published, I’ve gone through most of the stages of grief, occasionally landing on Acceptance, but then fall back into Anger and Bargaining.

Once I got my “Doctor’s Little Handbook to First Aid and Safety for Hikers” published in August, the elation lasted for about two weeks. I felt like the worst was over. If I wanted to publish something again, it wouldn’t be so bad. I was so wrong.

It was about that time that I was getting up the courage to try to illustrate my own children’s book. I’d written “‘Twas” during the second wave of the pandemic, and had sent it to a few agents. And I thought, Wait, when Christmas is coming, people will look for the original “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and they could see my book on the page, and maybe take a look. Why wait to find an agent?

Plus, since I took up drawing at the end of January, I’ve had so much improvement, maybe I’d be ready to illustrate it myself. I wrote out a schedule with plenty of buffer time. After about four days, I wasn’t sure that I could do it. It was taking about four days to get one page finished. There was so much more to consider than when I’m just sketching a character–there’s the background, the composition, what viewpoint to do the picture from, sizing the characters, perspective, values, color go–it goes on and on. Dan was very encouraging and I thought I’d give it another two weeks. Things did pick up, I was learning things every day. And I got ahead of schedule.

I finished before Thanksgiving. The morning after, we set out to get a book published. I’d learned terms like bleed and gutter for publishing. We got the e-book and the paperback book versions uploaded and I figured all was well. Perfect timing for Christmas.

Things might have been fine if I could have used Amazon KDP for the hardback. But short books like children’s picture books aren’t handled by them. You go through another self-publishing company, and Amazon will link up with them so that people can order off of them.

I take it back, we’re having trouble getting the paperback published, too.

Anyway, a recommended hardback publisher’s instructions were so convoluted and out of order., it gave me a headache They had four different guidebooks on their site. I couldn’t get through all the prompts. After about a week, I gave up and went to another publisher, but their requirements were slightly different. Reformat 16 pictures, import them to my computer, combine with the text, and send again. It’s been several days, still waiting to hear back from them.

I’m afraid this doesn’t capture the intense frustration (techno rage–Is that a word?) I’ve gone through, but I don’t want to put you through the excruciating details. I understand why some people use a service to get this done now.

The ability to deal with badly designed websites, difficult to find Contact links, and all the rest, is a little like willpower. We only have so much in a day. I don’t know, maybe after all the hours of trying, my ability will get stronger. Right now I want to throw the remote at the TV because it says I have no connection. So, not yet.

that’s why I’m writing this essay that I’ve been thinking about for about 10 days. Right now my blog is showing me that my designated image for the essay is getting cut off. I’m going back to Denial.