Jake Buck.

Title of the book is Bug Hug.

Thanks, Jake, for appearing on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors podcast.

Jake has written a book, as he's mentioned children's book called Bug Hug and I look forward to our conversation.

Jake, before we get into the details behind your book, can you tell us what it means to you, being a children's book authority?

It just means the world to me.

It's always been a dream of mine.

So you could take some of my illustrations, take some of my stories and make them come to life.

And I had my daughter three and a half years ago, and it was something where just seeing her read all these different kind of books and seeing all these different kind of books come to life just made me start thinking, like, I would love to present something to her written about her, like, make that come to life for her.

Honestly, just meant the world to hand over something that was inspired by her so she could read it.

She loves it and it's great.

That's terrific.

Obviously, your daughter is the inspiration behind the book.

I've talked to a lot of children's book authors who have been inspired by someone.

How did you get started?

Just because you had the passion and you thought, oh, wouldn't this be cool?

A legacy for my daughter.

But how did you have the ability to take action?

What motivated you?

Honestly, probably the biggest part.

About two years ago, I ended up actually losing my tech job just right before the holidays.

And it was something where, you know, and obviously with pluses and minuses, pluses, I was able to spend a lot more time with my daughter, which meant that I got to read a lot more books to her.

And then during some of my free time when she's at daycare, I obviously, in between searching for jobs, I was thinking, what if I could maybe start actually utilizing some of these illustrations or maybe some of these other ideas I've had and just put them down, see if I can make this happen.

I borrowed my wife's Chromebook and downloaded an app on something I can start just practicing drawing.

And I started practicing.

Gosh.

For the next year, the full illustrations took me 17 months from start to finish.

And a lot of it was just the inspiration that I would finish one page and show my daughter the character and she just love that.

She just lit up.

So was it the illustrations first and then the words came second?

I guess technically I did write down.

I wrote four manuscripts kind of right off the bat.

Took about a month to think about it.

All of my manuscripts are actually nicknames that I've given my daughter before in the past.

And something obviously helped the inspiration wrote some of these manuscripts out.

And then as I was going through the illustrations, I would start being like, oh, this illustration really makes more sense by worded it this way.

And so soon enough it just.

Everything was revolving for the next 18 months.

Put her down for sleep and then at night I got another job.

And so my days were busy after work was spending with my daughters.

So the only time I really had would be evenings right after I'd put her down and would just draw until 10, 11 o' clock at night until just get too tired and my illustrations would start looking too wonky.

You mentioned you actually wrote out four different ideas for books and then were your illustrations the same thing too?

You use the word wonky.

Were your illustrations all over the place and then you started as assembling them into your current book?

Bug Hug.

Yes.

So I, I saw it because I was brand new to this illustration tool.

It's called Concepts.

And anyways, I started, I'd be drawing, I'd be doing all this kind of stuff like that, and then I'd go into the next image and then I'd be like, oh, I could have made that first image even better.

So I'd constantly just be going back to the first image and second image and yeah, so it was definitely one of these.

Just consistently working on the illustrations, taking two steps forward, then one step back, and then just constantly because all of a sudden you get to three, four pages later and the character looks different than page four, than the page one.

So I was like, I should probably fix that so it all makes sense together.

Yeah.

I've talked to children's book authors who tried to stay with one illustrator and depending on what happened, sometimes the illustrator just disappeared.

And then they wrote their second book and it was with the same characters.

And then they were hoping they could find an illustrator that could actually capture those images and keep it feeling the same.

And it's interesting for you to tell us this story where you're doing the illustrations within the same book and five or six illustrations in the characters looking a little different to actually bring come back to that.

So talk to us a little bit more about that.

How did you bring yourself back to getting, I think you call it, the main character in your book is Small Bug.

How did you make sure that you had consistency in the look of Small Bug?

Honestly, I think the biggest thing was, I know obviously like character consistency looking at on some of these Facebook groups or some of these other kind of online groups.

That consistency is such a huge factor when it comes to these books.

And then I guess also, I should say another big factor.

Something that I learned, too, is obviously, when you get to the printing status of it, you need to run it through Adobe InDesign and making sure that the pixels are correct.

And so some of my images from page one, in retrospect, were these just massive behemoth, just big pictures of different things that were just filled with pixels.

At the end of the day, when I would go to print that, it would show, you know, it'd be a lot more kind of pixelated.

So I would almost have to then reconfigure the entire thing so it's not only just like the.

The character, but it's also getting everything to the print quality so that I could send it off to the offset printer when it came to basically the character I was learning to.

Right now I'm actually illustrating my second book now.

Something outside of Bug Hug, but as on the same kind of thing is it's a different character.

So it's an elephant now.

And as I'm now I think I'm on illustration page 16 right now.

And I knew that this character development is definitely a thing, but I thought I was gonna have it figured out by book two.

And I still find myself now going back to page one, going back to page two, and doing the different techniques, the shadings, the different backgrounds, to make everything a little bit more kind of consistent.

So then you're not reading the book, and you're like, what's happening with character right now?

Aging overnight or.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And it's interesting you should say that because I.

We have two children's books in our book series called the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

What's interesting is that our.

And I'll just show you.

The audience can't see this, but that's our main character.

And I went back to our illustrator, and I wanted to have a logo design that I could put on a T shirt.

And so I asked the illustrator if he could design one, and he came back to me, and Caboose looked like a teenager.

Now, you might say, what do you mean?

But you know what?

You can tell with your character.

And so I had to go back to him and say, you aged my character.

And it took a couple of times, but he finally caught on, and he said, you're absolutely right.

I can see what you're saying.

So eventually he came back, and we were able to agree on this logo that captured the age of our character.

And of course, Caboose in our books at this point will never age.

She'll stay around the same age for the entire book series.

So it's interesting what you're talking about.

I appreciate you sharing that with us.

I'm also interested, and it's funny because it would have been one of my questions coming up.

But now that you've mentioned it, you're talking about doing your second book.

And I find most of the children's book authors that I've talked to, once they've published one, they definitely have a second or third book that they want to bring into the world.

I'm interested in finding out from you is do you have a children's book business plan?

What's the plan behind all of this work that you're putting into your books?

Definitely, I don't think I have really quite a concrete plan.

Like I said, when I first wrote out the four manuscripts, I thought, for sure I'm going to do these four books and make those happen from there.

Each four manuscripts are different from the other ones.

So definitely it was just going to do a little bit more widespread variety of it.

Obviously, Bug Hug was fantastic and it was great.

And then while I just released that one, actually then caught attention onto a children's therapy company who they developed basically a kid's feelings wheel.

Kids during therapy.

Obviously, kids might not know the word anxiety or depression or excitement or whatever have you, but they can help describe the feeling as feeling wiggly or feeling kind of jittery or frozen or something like that.

So this wheel can help the kid describe how they're feeling and then help the therapist.

So talking with this children's therapy company, they loved bughug.

They loved just the premise of it, the warm feelings behind it.

So then they wanted me to develop a book that we can partner together with the kids wheel, create a manuscript, create full picture book, couple them together and sell to therapists across the country.

And that obviously then started to transcend to like, all right, I'm going to jump into this.

I'm going to really do this.

And on a side note, my original degree and everything was in psychology.

I really wanted to get into therapy.

Ended up going towards marketing around still working with people.

But regardless, though, this kind of therapy business, I was going with the flow.

And so when it comes to this plan, obviously I had this plan to illustrate my four manuscripts to really bring these to life.

But now with this therapy company and this product, really, I guess, yeah, Showcasing a little bit more of my prior experience with psychology.

I was like, this now sounds my next calling.

So that's in the works right now.

So that's your next book?

Yeah.

So I'm about three fourths of the way done with illustrations.

Manuscript is done.

Their kids wheel has launched.

So they have the product right now.

And right now just basically I'm finishing up illustrations, gonna go through the whole editing process basically to make sure that it's good on both ends.

But because also BUGH has been doing pretty well, I've gotten a lot of them requests to almost enhance, just kind of like exactly.

Caboose to enhance on that.

To write more books about that same character and kind of start creating a little more of that.

Following my plan after this is see where this fork in the road goes, where I have this therapy side of it and I'm going to have bug hug and just chase both dreams, see which one kind of starts to come to fruition.

And yeah, just make that happen.

Terrific.

And for those listening, Jake's first book, Bug Hug, is actually a board book.

And so you have two formats.

You have the board book and you also have the E book.

And I just want to let the audience know and Jake know that I got your book.

It's a E book.

What ended up happening?

There's bug hug on my iPad.

So it's.

Yeah, it's cool.

It's very vibrant, lots of colors and it's fun.

You're actually my first guest and I've NOW interviewed over 60 children's book authors.

You're my first guest that's ever done a children's board book.

So tell us about that format.

Why did you go that way?

I'm sure there's people out there listening, wanting to know, okay, how do I do this 100%.

And honestly, this is one of the things I always love talking a little bit more on probably the most, just because it is a little bit different than the print on demand route.

And through a lot of these different kind of Facebook groups and different online groups.

I always love talking to people about this because I presented having a board book which actually have it right here.

Beautiful board book effect and everything like that.

But so I guess, yeah, so to back up, you know, I wrote this book for my daughter and when I first started this book, she was two.

And obviously for two year olds, paper pages, stuff like that just easily rip.

I knew I wanted to go down the board book route.

Now the board book route is definitely, I guess, not as favorable when it Comes to the distribution side, when it comes to printing, it's a little bit more of a risk, obviously, because you have the two different routes.

You have print on demand, you have pod, and you have the offset printing, which you have to go through a third party to basically do bulk printing.

I found out that Print on Demand does not do board books.

And so even though it was something where the Print on demand through IngramSpark or through KDP, where it would have been a little bit obviously cheaper upfront money to go that route, obviously then you get your royalties out of it and then they just do everything.

Print on demand, IngramSpark and KDP have mainly IngramSpark has a large distribution program to where they have the massive catalog to 45,000 retail stores across the country.

So they're able to really showcase your book and get them across the country.

Or there's obviously the route of offset printing, which they were able to do.

The board book.

The upfront cost was basically about half of my margins right there.

It's obviously the more that you get, the more quantity you get, the lower the cost of the book is.

And so something where I very much just.

I was contemplating back and forth if I really wanted to put up that kind of money to do a board book, if I really wanted to go with my original plan and go with my heart and go for something that I truly want to give my daughter.

And so I finally went down that board book route.

And I'm extremely happy that I did because not only, and this is maybe talking a little more of the financial side of it, but even though it was more money up front, I'm seeing a lot more, obviously a lot more money and larger roi.

We'll just say that when it comes to a lot higher margins, I'm able to sell my book.

I know when you look at some of these Print on Demand books through Amazon or through KDP or IngramSpark through sometimes the prices have to be 20, $25, something like that, just to make a royalty of a dollar $2.

This here.

I mean, I'm selling it right now, 12.99.

And for the most part, I make about $8 a book.

Let's talk about that a bit more because I just want everybody to understand now, of course I downloaded the ebook.

I personally believe you should be charging more for your ebook.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, no, because you know what happens, Jake, And I want the audience to understand I was buying everybody's soft cover book and sometimes the hardcover would be cheaper than the soft cover through Amazon.

So I get the hardcover.

But eventually my wife said to me like, where are we going to store all these things?

I said time to go the ebook route.

And so that.

That's what I've done.

So I know what the prices are and I find that you have by far the lowest price I've paid for an ebook.

If I were you, I probably, I take it up two and a half, three times what you're charging for.

That's.

And you know what?

You don't have to take my word.

And for the audience, go to Amazon and check out the pricing.

And generally you're going to find pricing on an ebook is cheaper.

They like to discount it a bit to make it attractive from the soft cover book or the hardcover book.

That's just a recommendation.

No, I appreciate that.

I feel like sometimes too it's always so tough to.

When you look at different ebooks out there and different kind of prices and like how should I price my book and what level is it in comparison to some of these other ones?

And sometimes and especially too.

So the main reason that I have the ebook out there is obviously to get onto KDP's I guess platform to be able to sell bug hug to be able to have that an author page on Amazon.

So the ebook obviously fantastic.

And it's great.

Obviously I think the main sale is to get the board book.

So having the ebook basically creates the platform for me.

So then I can not just do a third party seller program through Amazon but I can actually jump onto KDP and utilize their platform, utilize their author page and then showcase the board book.

Let's talk about the board book format because you do have it on Amazon.

Explain to us how you're selling it through Amazon.

Definitely the board book since it was printed third party.

It's not through KDP or Ingram.

It basically is set up as any kind of product.

And any kind of product you're going to have to go through the Amazon seller account as anything would.

And that's how you put it on Amazon.

There's Right.

So Amazon has the seller account and then they have the author page account through kdp.

Basically what I did is I created an ebook which was extremely easy through KDP finding out that was definitely the route to go instead of Ingram since KDP has a better market for the Kindle.

Yes.

Utilizing the KDP's platform so I can create an author page so I can put my publishing or publication company on that page.

And then I linked my third party products so my board book into my KDP accounts, so then those could be sold together.

I will say it is something to where Amazon obviously loves everything through their own platform, so they will always showcase the Kindle version first.

And then they'll say, oh, also another feature thing is going to be their board book.

So there is a discrepancy there.

But like I said, when it comes to the board book, it is looked as the second sibling to print on demands.

Just because there's not really a distribution platform set up for board books for offset printing companies.

Explain to us that process because you have a excellent price on your board book.

Thank you.

And you said the margins are good, but at the end of the day it gets ordered through Amazon.

But how does it get to the end user, the person who bought the book?

Definitely.

It's actually the kind of best of both worlds.

And I don't know if I'm able to name drop my distribution company.

Sure.

Okay.

Yeah.

So when I was going through different kind of offset printing companies, there's obviously fantastic ones in the United States.

There's one called Pint Size Productions and I believe they're the ones that do the Sandra Boynton books, American Made.

They do a fantastic quality.

It's just that the pricing was just a little bit outside my budget and especially when it came to margins, didn't see like I'd really be able recover from that, especially for my first book.

You never know how it's going to sell.

So then there's going to be offshore companies that can do it for a lot cheaper.

But obviously the shipping cost to get it to United States could always be a lot larger and make up that difference right there.

So one of the companies that I found that actually was the best of both worlds was IAPC Independent Authors Publication Company.

They have, like I said, the best of both worlds.

They used four printing companies in China that they will manage.

They'll work with them, they'll make sure that it's the top tier printing quality.

If anything happens wrong with the book, they will talk with the printer themselves.

So it's not me directly talking with them.

And they have basically to make sure that the communication line is set up great between them.

The next nice thing about them is like Yuri, you're talking about is, let's say I just did 500 copies.

Where am I going to store 500 copies on my house?

That's.

It's a lot of space.

Absolutely.

So the nice thing that they actually have is they have a warehouse to where you pay $0.03 per book or per unit stored in the warehouse a month.

So for 500 copies, that's about $30 a month for me.

And then the best part about all of it is when it came to shipping and handling, because when I got on there, they were like, oh, we're able to use media mail.

And media mail was about $4.92 to ship out for them.

When I tried going on to go send books out myself, me going to the post office ship them out, I was looking at about $9 to $10 per unit just to send out.

Found that the fun way when I first launched the book and I had people been like, I want to sign copy.

I'm like, great, I'll send you the copy.

I'll just whatever, sign it and I'll send it to you to send out five copies to different places.

It was $65 in just shipping costs, which completely blew out my margins.

So the best part about this warehouse is that they do the shipping handling.

They're able to send out each unit for $4.92, and that includes their handling fee, everything included into that.

And on top of that, too, if it's two, three books, if it's a little bit more of a bulk order, it only goes up by 10, 15 cents.

So for the most part.

And their warehouse team sends everything out almost immediately.

So it is almost the feeling of having a print on demand quality of getting things out to the consumer.

With having a board book and with having an offset printing company in your back pocket.

I just want people to understand.

This year, book retails on Amazon.com for 1299.

It costs you $4.92.

Yeah.

Okay.

To get it shipped, it costs you another 3 cents to store.

Yep.

And it costs you how much to print?

You said about $4 a book to print or less.

Yeah.

So I can be up front about.

For my 500 copies of my book, with being 7 by 718 pages, it was about 2,100 for an upfront cost for the 500 books.

And that included shipping.

Yes.

So the shipping is.

Yeah, the shipping was included in that.

Yes.

And so the shipping actually sent it to the warehouse.

And then from.

Because I opted into the warehouse before I bought these books.

Yes.

And then I had 190 units shipped directly to my house, which was only $13 to have it shipped here, which was great.

It was super cheap.

But yeah, just then, obviously I could do in person sales, could do my launch party, all these vendor booths, and then also go market it myself to all these retail stores.

Okay.

I divided 500.

500 copies.

500 copies.

So 500 into $2,100 is $4.20.

Yep.

I'm just trying to calculate out at the end of the day is that's $420.03 and then $4.92.

So you're at 9, about 915, correct?

Yeah, about $9, something like that.

And then Amazon has some small fees, so you could probably just take a dollar off that too.

Okay, so you're at 384net, less Amazon than a buck.

So you're taking in about $2.84.

It's about $3,100 for everything cost wise as printing, shipping, website vendor stuff, submitting for awards.

Yes.

Doing like admissions into like vendor booths, stuff like that.

So about $3,100 into it.

Okay.

And I've sold about 240 copies at like $12.

So by just trying to give people an idea of the net amount per book at some point, if you print 500 books and you sell them and your nets about $2.84 a block times 500 bucks, your net is $1,420.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's.

I'm just trying to give people a feeling for that aspect of it.

Yeah, definitely.

That's the thing too, is that with print on demand books, obviously you have the royalties go into it and if you're able to carve out a good amount of royalties, I think that's fantastic.

And it's an easy route too.

You have to pay for storage, you have to pay for distribution.

You don't have to pay for shipping.

Shipping and handling it yourself.

And obviously you also have the opportunities for Amazon prime and being able to send books out or deals or whatever have you that way.

There's obviously a lot of the pluses when it comes to that.

It's definitely a lot more streamlined.

The thing about your publishing approach is you've gone the indie publishing route.

So you've set up your own publishing company called Buck Publishing.

Yep, exactly.

So you handled all of that.

You hired a book formatter, is that correct?

I did not actually for the book formatting, I did everything myself and then editing.

I just took beta readers and basically it was about 10 different moms.

Because I was like my target audience was moms, but as moms in different kind of facets.

I was moms and nursing.

There's teachers, moms that are in the education field or like moms maybe in like tech field, but different kind of ways.

But it was my target audience.

Was moms.

And then I had them read through the book, gave me their edits, their suggestions, whole nine yards.

And then in return, I just sent them a copy of the book.

Once everything was printed for free, you.

Actually went out and found your own beta readers?

Yes, I did, yeah.

And then you just offered them a copy of your finished product.

I did, yeah.

Oh, yep.

And a lot of them were just very happy just to do that.

I was very much willing to pay them if needed because I know that sometimes better readers, you would maybe pay them or whatever, have you.

But no, they were very happy just getting the copy of the book for free.

Terrific.

That's a great approach.

I love to hear that going right to your target audience.

In a sense, you're skipping the kids, but you're going to the parents or the grandparents that are generally reading the book to their children or grandchildren.

So congratulations on doing that.

Thank you.

The whole idea of independent publishing and also having the skill of being an illustrator, have you thought about building your book publishing and building it out where maybe you actually help publish other children's books besides your own?

Yeah, that's the thing.

I've actually.

I've had a few inquiries of people asking if that's something to publish underneath my umbrella.

It's something to where when I was first getting started, I was new, didn't have any kind of information.

I very much was looking online for different kind of information, trusting a lot of these Facebook groups.

I found a lot of people that I was able to reach out to that helped me for free.

So when it comes to a lot of this, like publication experience or knowledge or anything like that, I've extended out my hand and just wanted to help anyone out for free.

It's something that I love.

Everyone wants kind of their share, their story to be shared.

Some of them might be stuck.

Some of them might be stuck, obviously with the printing or when it comes to distribution or whatever have you.

And I can usually try and help them talk through that process.

And I feel like a lot of what you like online is, oh, yes, I'm more than happy to help you DM me or reach out.

And then sure enough, they reach out and they're like, oh, so if you want to know more information, it's going to be X amount of dollars or yes, whatever have you.

So I just want to help the next author just be able to do this successfully or at least give them the options of this was my experience.

This is what I know so far about this.

I just want you to choose the best path for you.

And that's one of the reasons we have our show.

We're also independently published.

The name of our company is Caboose, the Rocky Mountain Bear Publishing Den.

And we have our own company and we do our own publishing.

And at this point we're just publishing our own books and with the podcast show, having guests on like you.

And that's why I love it when I can drill it down with you and you don't mind sharing so that you know anybody who's an aspiring children's book author, we take away a little bit of the mystique and help them out.

Also for people to understand that you can spend a lot of money getting your book self published because you can see where the fees go from 12 to $20,000 just to bring your book into the world going the self published route.

And so it can be very expensive venture.

And I've said this before, nobody becomes a children's book author for fame and fortune.

No, it's very real.

And just seeing just everyone online, just trying to ask, I would be so excited to sell 20 copies or 30 copies or whatever have you.

It's, you know, that's.

Or the ones that say, I'm just so excited when I have that one child that picks up my book.

Because at the end of the day, if I sold one book at that vendor booth event, that means that one kid is going to go home tonight and read my story, my words, and see my pictures.

And that I think is the most intrinsic value, that being a children's book author really truly brings things to this field.

It should be the goal.

Yeah.

If you're like, this is it.

I'm about to make millions in this field.

Fortunately, I feel like Dr. Seuss did it.

And then Jake, I know exactly what you're saying, the skill that you have.

And again, like I said, I've talked to over 60 children's book authors.

Very few of them have the ability to be their own illustrator.

In less than a handful, that's how many author illustrators I've talked to.

So you have a unique skill there.

And if you've started your own publishing company and it's something that you want to pursue, if you listen to any of our episodes, a lot of people are going to Europe for their illustrators.

A lot of Americans find Canadians, a lot of Canadians find American illustrators.

It's global.

To actually have that skill as an illustrator, I think you'd find there's quite a demand for that.

And then if you're a published children's book author, people can see how you've used your skill to bring a book to life.

So congrats.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

I was going to say, being part of this field, there are a lot of talented people out there with the different kind of illustrations.

And sometimes I look at them like, is good for you and.

But sometimes a lot of these illustrators, like, I have like a hard time either finding the right client or finding a client that they can actually fully get what they deserve to create this book.

I'm very blessed that I was able to illustrate my own book and that my little chicken scratches turn out to be okay.

It's beautiful book.

Thank you.

But I think also to go back to your publication question, when it comes to that having other people underneath, that's something where that would be fantastic.

I would love that.

I'd love to help them out.

Whether as a publication company, help them illustrate their book or help them get it published.

But at the same time, too, for the most part, when I started my publication company, it's $50 to start an LLC in Colorado.

So it was one of these where that was the initial cost.

And I luckily I have the illustration experience.

I was able to do a lot of kind of stuff myself.

It's one of these were like, I would gladly love to help anyone like in those kind of fields, but if they're like, oh, I'm just looking for a publication company, it's go do it.

Go start your own.

If you got your heart set on having a brand, build your brand.

Absolutely.

And there's no question.

And that's how we started is because it's like that old saying, I didn't know any better, so I just went and did it.

Yeah, exactly.

That's one of the attractions of this show, is for people to understand that answer some of those questions.

But at the end of the day, you still have to put one foot forward and take some action.

Yes, for sure.

Talk to us about your website for a moment.

Because you being as creative as you are and being an illustrator, did you put your whole website together on your own?

I did.

I just a little bit about myself.

I started my own advertising firm five, six, seven years ago, stuff like that, which was a lot of website design, SEO and email marketing, a lot of different kind of marketing tactics.

So website design was something that I already had some experience in, and it was something where I knew exactly what I wanted to do for my website.

I wanted to build that comfortable feel for my book.

I wanted that almost that not just the image of hey, here's a book, but just a feeling right through there.

I developed my website through Squarespace.

I mean I'm not going to pretend I know coding and did everything manually, but definitely Squarespace has been great just for a simple product.

I also know too that a lot of people tossed out there when you're first time publisher and you only have one book, a lot of people are out there saying, yeah, you don't need a website, especially if you do print or publish through kdp, they have the author page.

So you can build your own internal website through there.

But something to where like we were just talking about is if you want to go for it.

And I wanted to build my own website to show credibility and validity to my book and to my publication company.

Decided to jump in.

Tell us how you used your website to launch your book or did your website come after your book launch, which came first?

Website was there first and from there.

Yeah, it was basically like I said, showing the credibility of it.

So a lot what I did is I did a lot of the SEO, did keywords, key phrases, built a lot of imagery and basically all of my descriptions to be bug hug, children's books, mother daughter relationships, if that's about my book, for all the readers out there haven't read it yet, but basically building up awareness to it and then launching my Instagram page and same kind of thing as building the excitement, the awareness.

And if people are like, wow, this looks great on Instagram, I want to see what the website looks like.

And then as they say a website is a digital resume nowadays people want to see the validity of who this person is or this validity of this company.

They usually go to the website and the website looks good, usually speaks a lot more than just what the words say.

So I definitely I launched Instagram and I launched my website.

I made sure everything on my ducks were in a row to make it like, all right, this is a big deal, this book is coming out and went on from there.

We talked about your daughter being the motivation behind the book, which I love, because actually in our first book, my oldest granddaughter, her name is Kira and she was the inspiration behind our character Caboose.

So that's why when you look at the named Caboose, it's not a C, it's a K and the K stands for Kira.

I love that.

Yeah, that's awesome.

So much fun.

And in our second book, my middle granddaughter chose a beaver as her character in our second book and her name's Bailey.

So it's Bailey the beaver.

My oldest grandson wanted to be a red hawk, and so we named the red hawk Leland because that's his name.

I love that.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

So actually I have five grandchildren, and they all chose characters that are natural to the Rocky Mountains.

And then they chose the animal, and then we named the animal character after them.

I love that.

That's perfect.

Yeah.

So it's fun.

So tell us a little bit about.

Because I want to talk to you about your main character, Small Bug, and knowing that your daughter was the motivation behind the book.

But I'm really curious on, did she have a fascination with bugs, or was this something that just came to you?

Yeah, she's not really a fan of bugs.

Obviously, she'll be excited about the Ladybug and also like that outside and get super pumped about that.

But when it came to bugs, yeah, there was no, like, I guess, affiliation with actually insects.

Which is funny because I have some people that are like, oh, my God, like, my kids love insects.

I'm like, that's great.

But no, for the most part, it was just the nickname.

I always called her Bug growing up, stuff like that, or she's growing up.

And with all my manuscripts, all the characters are all the names.

Kind of thing really had to do with just.

Yeah.

Nicknames that I've given her.

So other manuscript names I have.

I always called her Cheeks.

So it's Cheeks the Squirrel is another manuscript.

And then what I always call her Pumpkin Bear.

So I have another kind of, like, Halloween manuscript written up for, like, Pumpkin Bear.

Okay, terrific.

I think it's so important, though, as any author should, but like, tying in personal relation to your book and having those dedications, not just at the beginning of the book, dedicated to people, but, like, dedicated to this character and dedicated to this memory or experience through your book.

And it just makes it.

I feel as the reader, you can tell when it's, oh, this is actually, like, meaningful.

It's different.

Absolutely.

And it's interesting you should say that because we've written with my grandchildren.

We've written 38 stories in our book series, Adventures of Caboose, the Rocky Mountain Bear.

Now, of course, to bring them to print is not inexpensive and we're not illustrators, so it's.

It's going to take us a while to do that.

But each one of them, we've written multiple stories where they're the actual character.

It's a lot of fun.

And so what we've done.

And you might want to do this with your daughter is.

We actually, in our first book, we created a bookmark.

And I talk about this in the show, but there's a QR code.

And that QR code is actually my middle daughter.

She narrates our first book.

I love it.

So you get the audiobook through the bookmark.

That's my.

And my oldest granddaughter, who's the inspiration behind Caboose.

She actually, as part of it, tells the story behind the story about how we came up with the whole idea.

That's perfect.

That's.

That has such a personal and just great tie.

And also, too, it not only has that personal tie to it, but then it also is marketing.

Right there.

Something where the bookmark then has the audio version.

It has the kind of background the book.

And obviously so much more of a book is just reading the words, but the feeling that you get behind it.

Yeah, it's obviously, people will start having a lot more ties to the characters, to the book, to the author, based on the background and knowing the story and knowing a lot more of, like, how this book came to be.

I couldn't agree with you more.

It's fun when, as you've said, I think you've.

You said you've got about four characters, that they all have different names that were inspired by your daughter.

Yes.

And you gotta love it.

Now, is there any experiences in the books that you've written from your childhood?

Gosh.

So not quite.

Because a lot of what I wrote, I was very much into Pokemon back in the day, so a lot of that was a little kind of Pokemon ties.

I feel like if I did that, I'd maybe be in trouble with Nintendo.

But no, it's just something where my daughter just means absolute world to me and is something that I wanted to give her.

Something that just means so much to her.

And that's something too, where.

And I'm sure you could also tell grandkids and kids that it's funny.

They get so excited about certain things.

Some things you're like, oh, they're gonna love this.

And they just toss it aside.

So I was fully prepared that once I got this book and I was gonna hand it to her, she's gonna be like, huh?

And I'm moving on onto, like, princesses or unicorns.

And she ended up absolutely loving the book.

And it's now one of her just, like, nightly rituals to read the book.

And then in the book, on the last page, it's.

A mother's hug is the best remedy.

And it's always something where she has to always give my wife a big hug.

That's terrific.

It's interesting, too, because when you are able to develop characters that are named after your grandchildren, they get to choose their own character.

And then to do the audiobook where they actually read the story that was written about them as the character is.

A lot of fun, I'll say.

Another one of my favorite authors out there, Christy Hopkins, her and her daughter did Heart Phillips.

And all the illustrations are illustrations by both of them through the entire book.

And it's just.

I think it just means so much more.

It is such a beautiful image that people want to see, but something that I feel like nowadays, too, with.

With the rise of generative AI.

And it can be so easy just to create a book.

Something super can.

Something super easy.

But it's something that just the illustrations that when it's not like I did them and I did it with my daughter, like, those will always, I believe, speak more volume than something that's just quickly generated.

Absolutely.

I couldn't agree with you more.

So let's talk a little bit about your theme in your book.

Bug hug.

Talk to the audience about your theme in the book, definitely.

So the biggest thing is it's a bedtime book.

It's where kids obviously, at the end of the night, trying to wind them down, they want to run up and down the hallway.

You want to wind them down.

And one of the kind of parts behind the book is to give them almost like a ritual of going to bed.

And so this one here, this book is basically about a bug that had such a great time playing outside, playing with friends.

Finally, it's nighttime.

But however, the bug has a hard time sleeping and goes around, finds some other friends and finds some other creatures that can ask, how do you fall asleep?

What kind of nightly rituals do you do?

And after all the bugs give them some advice.

It doesn't really work out for small bugs, but obviously small bug returns home, and home is with mom and mama bug.

And mama bug is obviously there ready to help out.

And it's just.

It turns out that even though people might have different kind of ways and things that maybe help them out, that just a hug from a loved one, someone that they're able to embrace, can be the ultimate remedy to help fall asleep, to help a ritual kind of start where, like, little kiddo, it's okay when it's time to go to bed, time to get a good night's sleep, give that loved one a big hug.

And that's gonna help you fall Asleep.

Fantastic.

I love it.

And I definitely got that feel from reading your book.

So thank you for sharing that.

Of course.

Yeah, Happy to.

I wanna pick up on your writing process because it sounds to me like it's evolved.

And I think you said.

I think you used the word hodgepodge when we were talking in the beginning and with your illustrations and your words and putting it all together.

And now it sounds like it's morphing into four different books at the very least.

And possibly something that is totally different from Bug Hug or from Small Bug to.

You were talking about children's therapy and picking up on that aspect of it.

So can you explain to us what your writing process looks like now and how is it developing?

Especially now?

I feel like especially writing process is to just word vomit and just get everything, get the feelings out onto the page.

Because I definitely feel like as a writer, you want to almost be engaged in this certain kind of feeling, this vibe in that moment right there.

However, obviously there's the famous writer's block where it's so easy to just be like, oh, I can't think of the next word or the next rhyme or something like that.

So while you have that feeling, when you have that understanding of what your book wants to be, you just toss the words out there.

It doesn't have to be correct.

Order doesn't even have to really even make sense.

But you just have to get that feeling out there.

And then you can start plugging and playing and putting the pieces in.

And their bug Hug is a rhyming story.

This next one is going to be another rhyming story.

And I feel like rhyming.

I think it's fun because obviously creates a rhythm.

It creates a little bit easier to read, but sometimes trying to create that cadence and that correct amount of, like, syllables in each word, so then you can make sure that it makes sense and that both lines then have the right amount of syllables.

So then it's easy to read.

That can be difficult.

And that can easily create writer's block right there.

So I think definitely it's the initial word vomit.

Then you start, you can piece it together and see if you can do that for a get writer's block.

But then from there, it's starting to illustrate.

I think it's always so important that as you're writing it, can you see what's happening?

Can you visualize what you're writing?

Because at the end of the day, if you're okay, yeah, cool.

This makes sense.

Then you also get to illustration process you're like, I don't know what to draw for this.

This doesn't make, like, any sense.

So I think, honestly, the biggest part is just getting your ideas out, as anyone should, whether it's talking it out, stuff like that, and then start chopping it in.

And I feel like everything is.

It's an evolution.

Right.

You can be done with your illustrations.

You could be about to finish your book.

You could be on the editing side of it.

And I also encourage any authors out there to.

That there's no exact time to do editing.

If you have friends that you fully trust that could maybe help out with editing, send it to them right then and there.

And something that editing will.

It evolves over time, and they might be able to pick up things earlier and help adjust it.

The beautiful thing about having five grandchildren or having a child or children is, you know, what we did is we wrote our books together, and then I got them to read them out loud while we were together.

Yeah.

Or I would read them and they'd say, papa, that words too difficult.

It doesn't work for the readers that we're trying to read to.

You have to change the word.

And so you know what?

Sometimes your greatest editing asset is your own children or grandchildren.

100%.

I know.

It's funny too, because, yeah, they will be able to pick on some kind of thing or like, sometimes, yeah, there is a word that's a little bit too difficult for them, and you're just like, I never thought about that.

That is so true.

Something that they don't understand it.

And the last thing you want to do is pause in the book, be like, oh, abundance means this.

Absolutely.

It's neat when you're the illustrator.

But I'm interested in.

As you're putting your ideas for your next books together, are you doing any type of research into the material that you're developing?

Yes.

So for this next one here with it basically being a creature going through all these different feelings and understanding, I was going to illustrate a human, but I was like, no, there's just something about not having direct affiliation with the character, with it being like, oh, if this is a male with, like, brown hair, it's maybe like, I've got blonde something where it's.

I want to make it not human, but I want this, my main character, to have, I guess, that emotional understanding.

So I guess I researched what animal out there has the biggest kind of emotional cognition, and that is an elephant.

I started practicing drawing an elephant.

Could not figure out how to do that trunk to Line up every single time.

Or the big ears and how they switch different ways.

But no, I mean, it's definitely something where I feel like kids can pick up on certain things and we haven't.

You should talk about an elephant as a character too, because I just had a guest on Sinetta.

Anthony actually wrote a book, Ella Learns to Dance.

And Ella's actually an elephant and she.

And the elephant's learning to be a ballerina.

I actually, I know that book.

I. I saw them on one of the groups and did a fantastic job.

Yeah, a lot of fun.

A lot of fun.

So again, that's a beautiful thing about using animals in our books.

We wanted that Rocky Mountain feel, that outdoor adventure, recreational activities.

So our main characters are animals, but we do have humans as part of our books and we also have indigenous people in our books.

And that was important for us.

And you can see from here our storyteller in this is one of the illustrations is actually an indigenous person.

Because a lot of people know that sitting around the campfire and telling stories and passing family history down, that was important for us.

That's the beautiful thing about children's books is you have that literary license to whatever your mind can conceive, you can bring it to life.

It is so true.

No, that is very real.

I want to talk, Jake, a bit about success measurement.

Talk to us about when you first started writing this book.

I know that you were talking about you want to get this book done for your daughter.

She was the inspiration.

But talk to us now that you've got this book into the world and you obviously are doing more books and you've got a bigger vision than maybe when you first started.

Talk to us about what were you thinking about in terms of success originally and now?

What does success look like to you?

That's a fantastic question.

I honestly, I wanted success.

Yeah.

My first goal, my first line of success was the fact that my daughter would actually like the book, you know, that she would actually want to read it again.

Just obviously you hand them the book and they're interested for the first time.

But for them to say bug hug or let, let's read it, that would be a huge success.

Going on all these different forums and understanding just what it takes to be an independent author.

And especially too that the average independent author, first time author, usually sees book sales between 75 to 90 within the entire lifetime of the book.

And it almost sets up this precedence.

Kind of like I was talking about before is just because you wrote something, it doesn't mean it's it's going to scene in Target and it's going to be out there in Barnes and Noble that it's, it's going to make you millions just like that.

Right.

So I had this lower expectation of, you know what if I can at least reach the 5075 book sale, stuff like that, I'll be happy.

I'll be happy with that success and go from there.

Now it's something that's, you know, I guess I've now seen the book and people are very excited about it and it makes it almost the stop process of this book is actually selling of like I said, I've sold 240 copies at this point.

And if I have something that people actually want and keep scaling it, keep on growing, keep on pushing, and now success looks like trying to get into all the big retailers and really putting it out there.

And I know on some of these webinars that I've jumped onto that threshold.

Point that you're at is if you want to scale, it's going to be a lot.

It's a lot of work.

But then it's also a lot of investment into your book and it's do you want to.

Nothing's usually nothing ever.

It's just like a. Oh.

And then it made it big on its own and.

Right.

And that's why I asked that question, Jake, about do you have a children's book business plan?

And we were the same way.

And most children's book authors have had the same inspiration as you.

You were inspired by your daughter, I was inspired by my grandchildren.

And out it comes.

But at the end of the day, we'd all like to get our books read by a bigger audience.

And it doesn't necessarily equate to be becoming rich.

It becomes equates to you have a beautiful book and you'd like more people to read it.

And so how do you do that?

And that's why I'm trying to share more and more ideas about how do I build my book business without as you just talked about putting in thousands of dollars into marketing and trying to figure out what's the right thing.

I had a guest on Lauria Orlinski episode 48.

She's not only a children's book author, but she also works for Yorkshire Publishing.

And she talked about what's called earned media.

And that's where you actually are able to get media for free.

You have to put the effort in.

But you know what?

It's surprising how you can get go on podcast shows.

You can Go to the local newspaper.

They love these kind of things.

Go to local radio stations and they're looking for these human interest stories so you can get your book out into the world without breaking the bank.

But you have to put the effort in to do that.

And that's what part of our show is.

I hope that people are saying, oh, okay, I should have a little bit of a plan.

So when I bring my book into the world, how am I going to reach people?

In the beginning, I say, look it, you've invested a lot to bring your book to market.

So put some effort into earned media.

Go find out how you can get on podcast shows.

Find out how you can go on the local radio shows.

Go and talk to your local newspaper.

There's a lot of community newspapers out there.

They're just looking for stories.

I share that with you.

But you certainly don't have to go and break the bank to get your book out there.

No, it's so true.

I think one of the best ways.

Yeah.

Is putting a face to your book.

And I think obviously some people out there just want to just flip the switch and be like, all right, cool, like, my book's selling because I released it.

Like, it should start just selling off the shelves and.

Right.

Putting a face to the book and going in person to some of these retail stores, into the bookstores, the libraries.

One of the best ways that I found that really helped out, at least mine, was going to daycare and school visits where it's free, if anything.

Usually maybe the school or the daycare should pay you.

Maybe like farther down the road, obviously, but going there and reading the book to the kids, doing half hour activities where you print off pages of your character, they color in, they can make funny little goofy things with your character.

But you do a half hour session with these kiddos and at the end of the day, in exchange with the school, is that you have then a flyer sent out or you have a notification through their school system that says, we're reading this book today.

If you are looking to purchase it, buy it this way.

And also too, those print off characters that they just colored, guess what?

They get to take them home with them.

And when the parents are like, what is that?

Absolutely build upon that way.

So that's definitely a great way.

And then also for my launch party, because I know sometimes people are looking for the best way to launch your book.

I think very crucial, build up the hype, build up the excitement behind it, and you really start building it up.

Probably about three weeks before I feel is the perfect time because obviously if you do more than that, people then usually lose the hype and they maybe forget about it.

And then if you like, hey, next week we're doing this launch party, people are probably busy.

So one of the best spots where I think are, I guess, best ways to do a launch party, or at least what I did is you do it at a brewery and people are saying that's weird.

Why would you have a children's book at a brewery?

Guess who's there?

Parents with young kids.

That's the thing is you build up the excitement for the launch party.

I ended up having, I think it was between like 50, 60 people at the launch party.

So it makes it exciting that people are around you.

If people are buying the books, people are seeing these books walk around.

And so not only are you selling your books to the family and friends and everyone that showed up that they're excited to get it and making those initial sales, but you're also building up the organic sales of all the people that are now seeing this book coming out and they're wanting to come in.

And then a nice way too to help out is that you talk to the breweries and across marketing situation is if you show that you bought a copy of the book, you get a dollar or two like off a beer.

Dollar or two off a beer.

Nothing really to a brewery, but they'd much rather have the 50 or 60 people come to their brewery to come drink.

And so anyways, you do cross marketing with them.

Obviously you say, hey, you reach out to your a hundred people that signed up for your book launch, whatever have you say we're going to do at this brewery.

So that's marketing for them.

And then also to your people then buy a book and they also now get a dollar or two off a beer.

So it's very much great cross marketing opportunity for a book launch party.

From there you can really build on your sales.

All that.

Wow.

Wow.

That's the first time I've heard that.

It worked out great.

Now that you've written your and published your first children's block, the role, and you had mentioned part of it was your daughter, part of it was your job situation where you weren't working.

So you're able to take your skills to a higher level.

But tell us now the role of writing and illustrating in your life, because now it sounds like you've got a very busy life.

You've got a career, you've got your family, you got a lot going on.

So how do you fit the role of writing and illustrating in your life now?

It's honestly, it's a same kind of situation as the first book where a lot of it would be after I put down Kiddo to sleep and to have just a couple hours before obviously I fall asleep myself.

But just taking any moment to just build on that, trying to illustrate, even if it's drawn a couple lines.

But obviously then next time I come back to my illustrations, I'll be a couple lines further down the road.

But I think the biggest thing is taking your time on it.

I feel like obviously people just want to get the book out there.

They want to write it, they want to illustrate it.

They want that excitement because they're excited about it right then and there.

They don't want that.

Absolutely.

Stop.

I mean, like I said, it took me 17, 18 months to me write and illustrate Bug Hug because I wanted to actually make sure that the illustrations made sense and that I liked them, that they actually meant something.

And right now, like I said, I'm three quarters of the way through illustrating the next one.

And I was like, oh, for my next book, I know the process.

I'm gonna just.

In three months, I can do a new one.

Yeah.

Like I said, three fourths of the way done, and I'm hopefully gonna be done by Christmas time.

But it's one of these things where I love this book and I love publication.

I love being a writer, and I love being an illustrator.

But what I love even more is spending time with my kid and just being able to really fulfill that kind of need there.

So anytime that I'm away from my job and stuff like that, and I'm with her, and she also.

There's times where she'll just want to hang out, watch a movie.

So I'll be drawing, and then she'll see me drawing, and she'll also want to draw too.

So I open up a whole new little whatever page.

So my iPad has 30 pages of her little drawings on it, because then she just thinks it's so cool to draw along too.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Now that you've shared your story here, I'm.

I'm curious advice for aspiring authors.

Now, I don't want to say you're a newly minted children's book author.

You're fairly new to this genre.

Talk.

Talk to us.

What advice would you give aspiring children's book authors?

I think one of the biggest thing is research.

I feel like nowadays there it's so easy to fall for, like, the streamliner like an advertisement.

Been like, oh, write an illustrator book for what would be $2,000, but we can do a special for 299 vanity publishers, stuff like that, or hybrid publishers that you actually pay everything to publish through them, and then they get to keep the title of your book.

There's a lot of things out there where it sounds nice at first, it sounds easy, but just research the heck out of it.

Join any and all of these Facebook groups or open forums or anything like that that you can ask the questions, because at the end of the day, you want to ask questions.

People are like, oh, I feel dumb asking, but just either ask or just stay on the platform just so you can see maybe your question pop up.

But I think the toughest thing is that people will say, I'm looking for an illustrator.

And there are a good amount of scams out there, unfortunately, nowadays.

And there's nothing that kills motivation more than wasted months of time.

You just lost a few hundred, maybe even a few thousand dollars from what I've seen.

And now nothing happened at some player.

I just think that just the research that people should put into it.

And that's why, like, also, I will try and help people for free because I would much rather them keep up their motivation.

And it's interesting you should say that.

I've already had a book formatter on our show talk about formatting and that whole mystique behind that and so that people understand that part of it.

And I've also had a website designer on our show.

And my goal is to eventually have the key roles that it takes to put a book together.

And for people to understand that in a lot of cases, they can be their own general manager behind their book.

And all they have to do is understand there's only five or six key roles to actually putting publishing a children's book.

And if you understand those rules and have a little bit of a plan, you can definitely do as you're describing, Jake.

You can do your own independent book publishing and come up with a beautiful book, 100%.

And I think that's.

It's something where, you know, unfortunately, I think people are like, oh, like, I can, yeah, format it myself, or I can edit myself, or I can do all this kind of stuff.

Definitely, if you want to go for it, you can definitely try for it.

I wasn't a formatter, and now sometimes I look at it and shoot, I should have had a formatted myself.

That's why they're experts.

So we get paid because I'd like To I want to pick up on what you just said there for a second.

Most of these things that we're talking about, except for illustrating, are relatively inexpensive.

If you wanted to get your book professionally edited, it's probably less than 100 bucks.

And why do I say that is because most editors charge you by the word, while most children's books it's between 500 and 1000 words.

So again, you can see it's the editing part, which is very important, is probably the least expensive thing that you're going to invest your money in.

And even when it comes to book formatting and all of that, in the grand scheme of things, that's the least expensive part of the book.

Unless you're an illustrator, that's going to be your biggest investment is the illustrations.

Yeah, and I know it's old saying of spend money to make money or whatever have you.

And especially too, it can be very expensive the full process of printing a book.

But if you truly do want something that is genuine and will make a lot of sales at a it has been proven it is worth it to get the professional illustrator, get the professional formatter editor or the marketer to really, truly launch your book and do this up.

I know obviously, like I said, with the rise of AI and it can be so easy just, oh, I'll just edit it and I'll have that come out.

Or I will use generative AI for my illustrations.

It just hasn't proven yet to be selling any better than a human illustrator, a human editor or anything like that.

So it's one of these where you almost get out of it what you put into it.

And if, you know, you want to try and do this kind of stuff on your own and you want to try and shoot your shot, like I said, I say lots kind of stuff too.

And I take it with a grain of salt because I illustrated my own book, I did my own website, I started my own publication company.

So a lot of this kind of stuff is very low cost to myself is something because I was able to do a lot of it myself.

But I just very much believe that if you truly want like a great product to really do the research into it and to try and have a genuine effort towards it, then just the quick, easy solution.

Encouragement for readers.

So tell us why people should buy your children's book.

If it's especially for bug hug.

It's something where it's just a simple bedtime story that I feel like anyone can relate to.

Any little kiddo that has a hard time Falling asleep.

And honestly, just any parent out there that just loves that just little, like I said, ritual of their kid giving them a good night hug before going to sleep and just letting that be the reason that they come home.

So it's something where like Bug Hug, for instance, is a simple book, but I feel like it has such an important message behind it.

It's a nice, easy, rhyming reading book.

It shows that there's the bugs out there trying different things and putting in the effort, but at the end of the day that it's all about just hugging a loved one.

And your illustrations are great.

So thank you.

I appreciate that.

Yeah, no problem.

Final thoughts.

Is there something you said?

Oh, geez, I wish Rick would ask me that question.

Any final thoughts?

Not really coming to mind.

I will say though, it's funny because I. I did this on purpose and I've had a couple people like bring up asking, for instance, in my book here, when it comes to the ladybug kind of thing, I have red flowers right here for all the different forest creatures that our small bug is going to go ask is, you notice that there's red flowers here with the ladybug, you have yellow flowers here with the centipede, and they have purple flowers here.

And so people were wondering if there's any kind of.

Just because the bugs are that color or something like that with the flowers.

And one of the things I was going for in this book is that if you notice at the very end, it has all the different color flowers at the end showing that not only is it obviously mamas that's there to support, but all the forest friends that, you know, did their best or gave their advice that they're also there in love and support of the bug too.

Nice touch.

Nice touch.

Thank you.

Yeah.

No, it's interesting because I've seen people use different imagery throughout the book.

Recently, a guest on who had butterflies, and she just had the illustrator hide a butterfly on each page so that people could eventually go back and look.

And I've seen that with bees, I've seen it with lassoes.

All kinds of different little fun imagery to engage the reader.

You know what?

Then they go back once, once they're aware of that or they become aware of that, they'll go back and reread the book several times.

And that's.

Yeah, kind of part of it too.

It's just I want to show my book it's not just this bug's doing this and bug that does that.

It's like there's a little more kind of depth behind it.

There' more kind of meaning.

And you see that.

Yeah.

Some of these other books, especially with the butterflies too, that that's when the illustrator or the storyline was going through this.

That it's not just I'm drawing a tree, it's no I'm drawing, but there's depth and there's like a subplot to the plot kind of thing.

He just adds more a little bit.

Fantastic.

Jake, thank you so much for being a guest on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors podcast.

I really appreciate it, your generosity of time, your insights.

I'm always looking for, like I said to you, my first guest with talking about a board book and even though people have talked about it, I've never had a guest on that actually has done a board book.

So I really appreciate your insights into that.

I was talking to a guest in England and she was telling me a big thing over there right now is puzzle books where the page is also turned into the pieces of a puzzle.

I haven't seen that yet, but I thought that was a pretty cool idea.

So that is really cool.

We promise our audience that in our show notes we'll have links to Jake's social media, the links to his website, and if you've enjoyed the episode, please hit the subscribe button to listen to our future episodes and feel free to share this episode with anyone who you feel would be inspired by or enjoy hearing about Jake in his children's book.

Bug Hug.

Thanks again, Jake.

Thank you so much, Rick.

I appreciate your time.