Hi, I'm Con Lavery.

I'm a Canadian indie author and freelance graphic designer.

Do that full time and write stories in the morning and evening.

Thank you Khan for appearing on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors podcast.

Today's episode is all about supporting aspiring children's book authors and helping them turn their words and illustrations into a finished self published children's book.

In this episode we will discuss with Kahn how you can bring your book to life as an aspiring children's book author.

Even though we are talking about self publishing a children's book today, Kahn's talents can work for any self published author.

Khan is an award winning author, but not in the genre of children's books.

This episode is for you as an aspiring children's book author or self published children's book author who wants to learn some of the ABCs about children's book authorship to be able to reduce that feeling of where do I start?

The time delays that can manifest into months, years and the unnecessary expenses.

Just to give you a little background for us, Kwan helped us create our first children's book, the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear and he's helping us launch our second book in our series Hijinks at the Big Head Folk Music Festival which is due to be released mid summer 2025.

Kahn's talents come into play after you've edited your children's book and you have the supporting illustrations.

We will discuss with Kahn book cover design, front and back spine ISBNs, adding pricing to your back cover, whether you should do that or not.

Then we'll move into the inside of the book and inside book cover information.

Book plates, book formats and book form formatting all the elements and processes you need to assemble all the parts of a finished self published children's book.

Thank you Kahn.

I know that was a mouthful, but I really want the audience to understand what value they're getting today and where we're focused on our episode.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Again, thanks for having me on the show.

I'm glad to share what I can.

Can you tell us?

I always start with a little bit of the origin story.

So tell us about the inspiration for you to become a graphic designer.

I've been playing with graphics and web web tools basically my entire life.

Way back when Microsoft front page was a thing in 98 I was playing with Microsoft paint, making dinosaur drawings and then making essentially choose your own adventure books on the Internet with hyperlinks and stuff and it was really fun.

I've been doing this my whole life.

And even though writing is my real passion to tell stories, I was also very aware while in high school that it's a difficult path, especially to make it a full time job.

I knew that.

I also enjoyed graphics and it's a trade skill that you can actually learn and go to a college for a much shorter time than having to spend years getting a master's in writing and then still hoping that you're going to make a living.

So I was like, let's go to graphic design school and polish up my skills so I can get to get a job.

My dad was, was a salesman his whole life and often ended up working for himself where things were commission based.

So he was in control of his funds and how to close deals and all of that.

So that really stuck with me on wanting to basically be my own boss.

I had a couple of jobs after graduating college, but I always knew I wanted to be freelancing, so I was doing it on the side.

And eventually in 2014 I went full time freelancing.

And I've been doing that ever since.

And yeah, it hasn't always been stars and sunshine, but I love it.

That's fantastic.

And just so everyone knows, when I first met Kahn, it wasn't in the genre of children's books or children's book authorships.

I actually had been investing in real estate for years and I really loved it.

And I thought I kept writing this book infrequently.

So I'd write parts of the book and I put it in the drawer.

And I think most a lot of book authors go through this where you have this inspiration, you go through writing spurts.

And so all of a sudden I had about 3/4 of a book done and I thought, now what the heck do I do with it?

And I just happened to go to a conference that had a editor come in and he was talking about how to bring your book to life.

And after that conference, I was very fortunate.

I actually had supper with that gentleman in the evening and he thought I had a good idea.

He went as far as helping me find one of the top editors for investment real estate in the country.

And so that triggered this whole thing.

But once I started down that road and started reading out, reaching out to traditional publishers, that's when the rubber met the road.

And I realized I'm probably going to have to go the self publishing route through a contact.

I think I just phoned a college and a college said, you should reach out to Kahn.

And that's how.

So we've known each other for quite a long time now.

I'm.

Yeah, I'm not quite sure how long, but I probably could go back and figure that out.

Yeah.

Timestamped files in like 2015 or 16.

The nice thing about it is Khan helped me bring two investment real estate books to market.

One is the full book and then the supporting workbook that went along with that.

So that was fun.

I knew what self publishing was all about, but I certainly had not taken it to the point of thinking about doing children's books.

My next question for you is you knew you had to do something besides trying to be a starving author.

Yeah.

You had to support your habit, is that correct?

That is very true.

That's still true.

Still true.

So I, I know that as a graphic artist.

So explain to us because today we're going to be talking a lot about book formatting.

Because I think that's the biggest mystery that most people have is they, they just don't understand that part of it.

Like I said earlier, it causes delays, it causes unnecessary expenses, and it really can be quite an expensive venture when it doesn't have to be.

Explain to us why did you decide to learn how to be a book formatter and learn all the processes that go behind that?

Two reasons.

There's two main types of designers, and as technology progresses, the roles have merged.

But back at the time, there was print design and digital web designers.

So with print design, you're designing everything under the sun, from brochures to textbooks to novels to anything really.

That was just a skill I ended up learning was formatting text while I was in college and doing projects for clients after I graduated for my own writing too.

I knew I had the skills to format all this and I figured I could do it myself.

So I too went self publishing for a lot of my works and totally agree on the formatting bit that authors tend to forget because it's not something that makes sense when you're trying to write the story and you're trying to get those words down in any way you can.

So you've got all sorts of different applications everywhere that you're writing on your phone, you're writing on your computer, you're taking voice memos that can translate text and all these different softwares will apply their own formatting.

And then you try to essentially Frankenstein it together.

So you've got all this text in different sizes and they hide a lot of styles too.

So when you go to try and format it, a lot of people get confused why their book looks Strange in ebook format or print and they scratch their head on how to do it after the fact.

But because there's so many moving parts in making your own book and publishing it, that one tends to slip through the cracks because it's not at first it doesn't appear as loud as some of the other hard setting ones.

Like you need an ISBN or a cover.

Okay, I want to just talk a little bit because we're going to get.

We're going to really get deeper into the whole book formatting process.

But before we do that, I want to talk briefly about the graphic design part of the business.

Because as a graphic designer, the thing that Khan has helped us do is that he's helped us design multiple book covers and actually helped us even design.

When you're looking at the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book author podcast cover, Kahn designed that.

He's done a lot of designing for us.

Before we move into the inside of the book and the formatting, I want to talk to you about the front cover, back cover and spine, primarily on.

Let's start with a soft cover children's book first.

Jump right in and just tell us a bit about how you would go about helping someone design their children's book.

Front cover.

Yeah, yeah.

When someone comes to me and they have the book made and ready to go, I usually ask them do they work with an illustrator?

Because that's.

Those roles tend to get Model 2 as we were talking about web designing and print designing than illustrators because some illustrators will actually design too.

And not all designers are illustrators.

So I try to figure out where they're at, who they're working with, if they usually with children's books, they have illustrations.

So I find if they want to know if they have a custom illustration for the COVID or for sourcing something from the inside of the book.

Pick up on that for one second.

So just so everyone understands and that that's part of the purpose of today having K on as a guest is that is something that I will always say to people interested in publishing a children's book is when you come to K or you come to someone who's a book formatter and even cover designer for front, back and possibly the spine.

The first thing you need to do is have your words edited and have your illustrations done because then it's all about assembling it into a finished self published book.

I just want to make sure that everybody understands what you and I are talking about because like you said, some illustrators are also Book cover designers.

And so it can get muddled.

Yeah, yeah.

And that was a real good point about having the book edited.

And we'll talk about the formatting.

And often what authors like to do for good reason is get the front cover of their book to start promoting it early while they're even still working on the book.

When the spine specifically is, the side of the book can range in height and size, because if the book's not done and you end up having more pages and the spine changes size, the COVID is often separated, which is the front separated as a separate project than the spine and the back, because you can use the COVID for promoting for the ebook and then ultimately the softcover book and if you choose other formats.

To Kahn's point, Khan helped us design the COVID of our second book, which we've had on our website for probably about eight months now, promoting that.

We're going to actually launch it in the summer of 2025.

Again, to pick up on what you were talking about is how do you.

Why would you do that?

How do you use it?

You can use it for promotional reasons.

And it helps build brand awareness, which is a term design used quite a bit.

And as you mentioned, Rick, like the podcast cover for this show, that is part of your overall brand.

And a designer should help either integrate into your existing brand if you're working with them for the first time and you've got other books published and an established author brand, or help you from the beginning and build that brand.

You can succeed as an author and have a visual identity that people will start to recognize.

Oh, this particular typeface, this particular color is seen throughout all of the books and promotional material like websites and if you have business cards, I just want.

To pick up on that.

And it's funny because yesterday I was talking to some students and we were talking about the art of storytelling.

And one of the things that I said to these students was, we always begin with the end in mind.

So what's the end of the story?

And so that was the same thing when we developed our brand and Koan actually designed our brand's banner.

So we have a banner that says, and for those who are.

Don't have.

Who are listening to the audio, we have a banner on the front of our book and it says the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

And that's.

So that's our branding banner.

And then if you look our second book cover, we do again, the book is called Hijinks from the Big Head Folk Music Festival.

But we do have it right at the top of the book.

Our banner, the Adventures of Caboose, the Rocky Mountain Bear.

Because all of our books will carry on that theme.

The Adventures of Caboose.

So anyways, I just wanted to show people and tell people some of the things that you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

So with a soft cover book, the COVID is the first thing to work with.

And as the examples each showed, those worked with an illustrator who had provided an illustration.

And a designer applies the type and make sure the type works with the illustration.

Because too often type can not work with a illustration by it gets all muddled and you can't even read the text.

So a designer should know how to position the text that supports the genre, because each character within a typeface really has their own personality and you want it to complement the story and you want it to be visible from far away when it's small on a screen, because often sites like Amazon or Kobo are going to shrink it down to a really small size.

So you want the text to still be visible and the key elements, like what's represented in the illustration.

Usually a designer will provide a couple concepts and of where we could go with the design for the COVID And then.

And I guess the neat thing about it, Colin, when we're talking, especially to aspiring children's book authors who are going to maybe publish their first children's book, is that by having the illustrations and giving your graphic designer who's doing the front cover and the back cover, and we'll talk about the spine separately when you already have illustrations, what it does is it can lower your costs because then the graphic, the front cover, back cover designer doesn't have to recreate the wheel.

They just have to, as Kohen said, look at what illustration conveys the message and how they can fit the words, the type onto the front cover, the back cover to make it work best.

Yeah, yeah.

And if you don't have a front illustration, that's.

Yeah, that's probably your first step, especially with children's books, because it's such a visual component.

And.

Yeah, then you and your designer will go back and forth with revisions as needed.

Sometimes it's a perfect match for what you were envisioning, plus the right target market, because that's something that's important too, is differentiating what you personally want with what's going to help market your book and.

And knowing where you want to go with your book as well.

Because if it's more of a local journey, then you can have the COVID as you'd like.

But if it's more, if you're looking to make sales, then that's a different discussion.

And the designer should be able to help you figure that out through some market research.

And that's basically the process for your actual front cover.

And then you've got the spine and the back.

And as you mentioned, Rick, you should have your book fully edited and ready to go.

And making a soft any sort of physical print copy of the book, you are in a two step process.

It's kind of like a chicken and the egg scenario where you can design the back and the spine, but once the book is edited, you still don't know how many pages you have within the book because the amount of pages is going to change the thickness of the spine, which is going to change the cost of printing it and how the COVID or the whole book itself is designed.

If it's a real thick spine, not common with children's books, but if it is, that's a lot of real estate to work with the design.

And if you're doing something that doesn't even have a spine, which is known as a saddle stitch, for much thinner books that have a shorter page count, there is no spine at all.

So you're just working with the front and back and just to.

And I want to pick up on what you're talking about, Colin.

Yes, most children's books are 32 pages.

Yeah, that's the standard fare.

Some go a little more and for example, ours has I think 46 pages.

And the reason I mentioned that is to Corn's point, the spine, when it comes to.

Even when you have a children's soft cover book at 46 pages, still in most cases you would not even think about any design or not the design.

You wouldn't use that real estate, as Kahn's calling it to do, to put anything on it other than to.

I don't know what this technique's called, Kahn, where you actually wrap the graphics around the book, but you could maybe explain that.

Yeah, depends on the illustration and the type used on the front.

But the spine and the back act as complementary highlights to the front because your front is essentially your poster selling the book.

And the back should be eligible or readable.

And the spine, if you can have information on it.

So like when it's on the side put into a bookshelf, you can see it, but with thinner books, not always possible.

But yeah, to your point, with the front and back and spine, you want all three of those to complement each other.

So if the illustration on the front has let's say blue text, but then on the back you've got a bunch of other colors that don't match the blue text then say red, green and pink.

And there's just too much going on.

Your brand is going to start to fall apart.

So you want to have the back, whatever is used on the front to match in the back and the designer will be able to guide you through that process.

Okay.

And it's really the, it's the book cover, to Karn's point, that is you only have one chance to make a good impression or first impression.

Yeah.

And so certainly when you're looking at your front cover, it's critical that the graphic artist that you're working with understands exactly what you're trying to convey.

And hopefully if you've had the illustrations done for your book, it doesn't take a lot of research to understand what can work and what you're trying to convey.

Yeah.

And I actually would like to add a note to that.

If, when you're looking for a designer, whether you're finding one online or referred to one, it's a two way interview.

So when you meet with them, you want to see their portfolio and see their past work, what they've done and even as they talk, how they treat you, are they informative or are they just wanting to get a price and budget timeline and basically treat as a project and move on?

And those are some things to note because they should offer some insight into the specialty you're looking for.

Because graphic design is a very broad industry with a lot of niche specialties like product.

Graphic designers that do labels and packaging is quite different from someone that specializes in logos and branding versus a book cover designer.

So quite the wide range.

And they also bleed over like illustrators and web designers.

Absolutely.

And you know what, the different projects and Con, I'm so happy you said that because Con and I have worked together for almost 10 years and the things that I've thrown at him over those years have nothing to do with book formatting or the design of the COVID or back cover.

A lot of times it's other different projects like podcast cover work.

And I know we've done some other projects together, marketing tools.

So there's all kinds of things that you don't realize.

What happens when you start working with someone like Khan, who's a graphic designer.

It's almost endless, the possibilities.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And it's.

Yeah.

And a good designer should be looking for working with someone long Time long term and not just kind of a contractor that wipes their hands clean at the end of the day and moves on.

That's more of a, often a fiverr approach that quite a bit on those types of sites.

So just to be wary, it's a two way interview.

If you're looking to work with a designer long term with your work, other times you're just looking for a one and done and nothing wrong with that.

Just be wary that you might not get that personal approach for sure.

So let's move to the inside of the book now.

Yeah, so that.

So like I said to everyone, when you're coming to someone as a book formatter, now we're going to move to the inside of the book.

So now you've got your front cover design.

You've got in most cases with a children's book you don't have a spine or you do have a spine, but it generally is just bleeding the front cover and into the back cover.

So anyone who's watching will see you just bleeding the spine into the back cover from the front cover.

So now we're going to jump into the inside of the book and talk about that whole process.

And I think that's where people really get bogged down and it stops them right in their tracks.

So let's jump in and talk about generally the first couple of pages in the front of the book before you even get to taking the, taking your story and your illustrations to work.

So what would you recommend there?

What happens?

What's the process?

Yeah.

Oh yeah, that's a good point.

And I've seen other, all sorts of clients that have come to me from other genres too where the story's written.

They're very happy with it.

They've gone through the whole process.

It's been edited, but it's missing what's known as front and back matter.

Your front and back matter in your book are extras components that are quite important to clarify information about you, the book and adds a personal touch.

So the only book I have in front of me is just, it's a literary guide, but just wanted to check.

Yeah.

So the main thing you usually want to add is copyright information.

Now specifically here for listeners that are Canadian, as soon as you write something, a story, it's been copywritten.

So that's information that you can just put on the book.

So as soon as you've published it, that's the copyright date, 2025, whatever the date may be.

And if you want putting like a disclaimer, if you Want some people will do that saying, this is all fictional.

It's the author's artistic direction stuff, just to show there's no ill intent.

That's something that you could look at, but that's just one example of front matter.

Maybe an author's note is another one mentioning the inspiration that tends to go on the back matter sometimes, too.

So there's depending on how the author wishes to represent their.

Their book.

And all of this information authors tend to forget about.

So they're ready to get their book formatted and out to market, and they're very excited because it's been edited and they've got the COVID Everything's fantastic.

But pump the brakes a little bit.

There's a few extra steps you need.

Absolutely.

And I just want to pick up on that for a second, because the nice thing about it, I have our children's book in front of front of me, but I also have dozens of children's books behind me.

But to Kahn's point, when we first did our book is the first thing we had was just inside the book.

As you opened the book, what happened was Kahn did a beautiful job, but it was.

It's black and white print.

And then what happened was we through.

Through talking to some of my guests, I got onto the idea of a book plate.

So Con and I discussed this, and ultimately both of us embrace this idea of a book plate.

And for a children's book, generally what happens is the book is bought as a gift.

Very few children actually go buy their own book.

And so the neat thing about a book plate, it just is an area where in our book it says this book belongs to.

And then the nice thing about it, whoever bought the gift can write the child's name in there, and they can also leave a message.

And so it's.

It's just a nice little touch.

So again, front.

I actually, you might as well call it front matters, because it does matter.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

So anyway, so to Kahn's point, if you.

And if you flip the page, if you flip the front of our book, then we do have, as Kahn designed, the copyright.

And then it lists all of the ISBNs, and it also lists, if there's a publishing company who the editor is, who the illustrator is, who the book formatter and designer is, and then your first edition.

And then what I find, and I just wanted to mention this, Con, because I see this so often, is that's where you should be putting your website at address.

And I find most children's book Authors, especially ones that are doing it for the first time, do not have their website anywhere to be found in the book.

A lot of even conventions I've done, I've seen all sorts of self published authors, from nonfiction to children's to genre, don't even have copyright pages and all that information.

And all you can, all you have to do is look at one of the traditional published books, see what they're doing and add some of that information.

It really ups the quality of your book and helps readers find more information.

What if they really like that illustrator and they want to see their other work or want to go to your website as you mentioned and find out more?

And the other thing that we worked on with Con and Con, I don't know if this was your idea or what we did, but we actually as children's book authors, we actually wrote a message to all of our readers and it says hello, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, family and friends.

So we just knew that our children's book would be purchased by either a mom, a dad, a grandma, a grandpa, family or friends.

So it just made sense that we as children's book authors talk to them and told us a little bit, told them a little bit about us.

Again, I'm not saying that every or every children's book author has to do that, but why not get people to know you as a children's book author?

Yeah, yeah.

And books are such a, they're such a personal thing for however you choose or why you're making a book, there's still that personal touch.

And adding that extra behind the scenes essentially is end up a special message says a lot and not everyone will read it and that's totally fine.

But you're, you want it for those that are willing to read it and they take their time and want to know more about the author and the people behind the book.

That's a nice touch to add.

And I want to circle back to that book plate you mentioned.

That's usually.

Yeah, like the front of.

As soon as you open the book, you often see the title reiterated.

That is on the front cover design in black and white.

So the COVID should work, the title text choice should work in color and black and white.

And often with books you'll see there's a lot of white space and the page is blank, but it'll show the author and the title on that first page.

That empty space is really handy for whether it's a book plate, which is a sticker that authors can sign, or if you're actually at A signing, and you're signing it yourself.

Sometimes authors will use the back inside of the book, which is the left side, as soon as you open it.

But sometimes you want to leave that blank and just put it right on that first page.

So often that should be a blank section.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So is there anything else in the front matter before we move on to the back matter that you see is.

Important for children's authors?

No, that's.

Those are probably some of your main ones.

And you'd always be surprised what authors end up doing.

And something I'd actually recommend to authors of all types is going to the bookstore and do some market research.

It's fun to see what others are doing and flip through the books and get some inspiration.

And you might like some of it or some of it you might decide that's not really needed.

So, yeah, that would be my recommendation.

Okay.

And so let's jump to the back matter.

Yeah.

Because that generally is a lot of times doesn't get any attention at all.

No.

In the back matter, you can have your author bio.

That's handy.

And you can have a sample of your next book.

So this is where you have to almost think ahead.

Like, you put all the work into finishing your book and you're ready.

And are you going to write a sequel or is this a one and done?

And this is starting to get into big picture.

Thinking of your author career.

And if you just want a one and done, great.

Your book's kind of finished and you can celebrate.

Thanks for the readers, maybe leave a review.

But if you do plan to write more, it is a nice addition to.

If you can have a sample of chapter one.

And just so I want to pick up on that con because again, I mean, it's been.

It's going on two years since we.

We brought our book to life.

But to Kahn's point, we decided we knew what our second book was going to be.

We knew we were writing a book series because we've actually written 38 stories.

Now, if I hit the jackpot, I probably bring them all to life, but I don't buy too many lottery tickets.

To Kahn's point, what we did is.

We actually did.

Exactly.

Now, remember, when Kahn's talking a chapter, he's talking more like a chapter book, but in a children's book.

We actually put the first couple of pages of our next book into our first book.

Teas are readers.

And hopefully have them support our next book when it came out.

Yeah, yeah.

And that's in the back map.

Yeah, yeah.

And that teaser also supports the following bit once that sample is done.

A call to action.

Usually a call to action can be as simple as follow the author online.

Sometimes it could be a newsletter subscription.

Yeah.

So you want to give them a call to action, leave a review.

So they aren't just left hanging at the end of the book.

That's usually wraps up your back matter.

I find, is that when we were designing our book, we are trying to encourage children to become storytellers, not only to write their own story.

In our back of our book, we have what we call activity pages that Kahn designed.

And there's a couple of pages at the very back where we encourage children to write their own story.

And then we also have a couple of pages where we have picture frames where we have you sketch out your story.

I've also seen.

I had a gal on recently who talked a little bit about going outside and looking for bugs.

So an instructional.

So I've seen instructional things.

A lot of the authors that I'm dealing with as children, book authors, our former teachers or our teachers, and they always have to have a little lesson at the back of their books.

And I think that's so cute.

And it just.

But it's a lesson that ties into the.

To the main story.

Yeah.

And that's what Kohen's talking about.

So your back matter can be just blank pages or your back matter can be part of your next book coming out.

It can be activity pages.

It can be instructional pages.

It can be a multitude of things.

Yeah.

That add value.

Yeah.

Anything you want.

That's where you get to really get creative.

And again, remember, what we're talking about, folks, is that we're not talking about.

We're just talking an extra four pages or so.

In terms of the printing costs, I don't think it adds a lot of cost to the print.

No.

And with printing, this is where you'd have to consult with both your graphic designer and your chosen print shop.

And that's a whole other topic.

But usually when printing, they come in sets of four.

A single sheet of paper.

It's a whole process.

But anytime you add pages, it essentially adds four.

We can talk more about that too, if you'd like.

Okay.

Yeah.

So let's jump into the.

In the inside of the book.

So now I've come to you and I say con.

I listened to your podcast episode with Rick, and I have my edited words and I have my illustrations.

Now what?

Now that's basically assembling it all from.

Yeah, the COVID the Spine, the back, the edited words.

It needs to be formatted.

Either the designer, they should know or if you've done children's books before, there are certain standards that should be met for readability.

Unlike books for adults, the children's books, they need to be a larger print.

The type so it can be red.

Color needs to be brought into consideration.

It should be easy for people and kids to read if they're colorblind.

So just some things that need to be thought about while the designer is preparing to format the interior.

Just so everyone understands, I'm just going to describe a couple of things so Khan can jump on it.

In our book, we actually have the illustration on one side and the words on the other side.

So the illustrations generally are on the right side and the words are on the left side.

Now, I also have noticed some children's book authors.

Sorry, I'm turning away from the mic.

Some children's book authors will actually blend the illustrations together.

Yep.

And then they'll actually put the words on both pages.

Yeah.

I think Little Critter did that is my favorite while growing up.

Everybody does it different.

This one does it exactly the same way as us.

So just explain to us as a.

When you're doing the book formatting and it must be easier if you're just putting the words on the left and the illustration on the right.

Talk to us about that and then talk to us about where you having the illustrations be on both sides with the copy.

Yeah.

So that design choice usually is determined by how long the story is and how many illustrations are being used.

And as we had briefly talked about, these books are usually 30 to 40 pages.

And if your story's shorter and if you have fewer illustrations, the direction of text on one on the left side, illustration on the right can help increase those pages and also readability.

That's a big one.

That's something to be conscious of.

If illustrations.

And you're putting the text right into the illustrations.

The designer really has to make sure that it can be read.

Illustrations can be noisy in terms of visual information.

But an illustrator that specializes in children's books is also wary of this.

I would imagine even the color of the lettering.

Because I noticed sometimes if you look at this one, and I just mentioned this, is that almost blends into the same color as the background of the book.

A little more difficult to read.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's.

Yeah.

Again, goes back to readability.

Are going to play crucial roles on making the text readable and size.

So those are things that the Designer will have to consult with you on.

And if you're self publishing this, that's where your budget will come into play.

On how many illustrations you ended up going with and how long you want the book to be.

So sharing that information with the designer will help them be able to provide the best solution for you on where your book's at.

As fun as it is to blend the text into the illustrations and have as many as you want.

Not always practical direction.

And I think, and again, I'm not trying to be critical.

The biggest thing is sometimes, remember, as an author, you are not the end user.

No.

So you may be looking at the book and saying, I've got this beautiful book.

Graphically it may be beautiful to you, but is it actually functional, readable to your end audience?

Yeah.

And choosing the type face the is quite important too.

Picking one that's easy to read.

There's two main types of them.

There's sans serif and sans.

So the sans are.

The difference between the two is the little feet on each character.

Sans serif are your ones like Ariel Helvetica, Futura.

And those are essentially just solid column blocks.

They have no feet.

And then the other type is the.

With all the little feet, Times New Roman.

The reason they have those, the little feet, is a psychological reason to help guide the reader to string the characters together to form a complete word.

You often see that with newspapers, larger text books, with children's books, depending on the age range, you can get away with either one because you're working with a larger, fewer type and it becomes more of a stylistic approach.

Again, someone who's doing the book formatting would understand all of those.

Yes.

Let's jump into, as you described earlier, the book formats, because I think this is where people really get bogged down or they have a fear of that whole process.

And also I've talked to some people who have tried to take the role on themselves, having no skills to that somehow they've got on to something.

Somebody's told them, watch a YouTube video and you'll know how to put the book on Amazon or put the book on Ingram Sparks.

But that's not true, folks, for the most part.

So I would like to talk to you about.

Let's start first of all with the most common thing in a children's book is generally the soft cover.

If you can talk to us about book formatting and just describe.

Because the way the process works is Amazon is a little bit different than ingramsparks.

And I've talked about ingramsparks before on our show.

Ingramsparks is a company that generally helps you reach all other online book retailers except for Amazon.

And actually ingramsparks actually can get you onto Amazon.

But I can tell you that process to me just adds time, money and slows the whole process down.

So talk to us about softcover, Amazon, ingramsparks and the book formatting process.

Yeah, so we've gone over essentially the entire process to get the digital files done.

So we did the COVID front and back, spine, interior formatting and front and back matter.

Everything is ready to go.

You're generally given two files, two PDFs, often PDFs, which is your interior and your cover and back.

So those are the two you end up working with for your softcover and the other formats if you chose hardcover or ebook.

But with softcover you have to choose a printer.

And we briefly talked about that where working with one, finding a printer that'll work best to get them done.

And the interesting thing about sites like Amazon, IngramSpark is they play both a printer and, and a distributor.

So they will print your book and distribute it.

Where if you are sourcing another method to get your books printed, maybe a local one or overseas or something, those you're just getting the books printed and then you've got to figure out how to distribute it.

So slightly different, but with Amazon, you got such a large market, they're the most well known across.

Just so everyone understands for the most part, Amazon and ingramsparks are a print on demand service, correct?

Yes, that is right.

There's two types of printing off, offset printing and then print on demand.

And print on demand is likely the direction you're going to go.

Because the traditional route of printing you got to order hundreds if not thousands of books for a cheaper cost per unit, but you have to pay a larger amount upfront and then store all these books where print on demand makes you a little more lean, a little more flexible on how much you order.

And let's say your book gets an award or you got some awesome reviews that you want to put on the COVID or the back later you can update your cover on the second print run because you ordered let's say 50 or 100.

And then the next run you've got this nice review and you order another.

50 more than what Kohen's talking about.

When we first printed our book, we didn't have our book plate.

What we had mentioned earlier, where it says this book belongs to, we add our book plate probably about a year and a half after our first print.

And so Kahn went and did the small change, added the book plate.

We uploaded the new file to both IngramSpark and Amazon and we didn't have any large amount of inventory sitting around as we made that positive change.

And that's what we're talking about.

And that's what the benefit of Print on Demand.

The downside is you are paying more per unit and it's really up to you and your business directions and plans with your book on which way to go.

But if you do want to sell on Amazon, the most common direction is through their KDP program.

Kindle Direct Publishing.

Technically you can set up a whole Amazon store like a retailer.

That's.

I couldn't even talk about that.

And generally when someone comes to you and says, I've got the edited words, I've got the illustrations, I'd like you to do the front cover, back cover, the spine, the front matter, the back matter.

Now we've got this book ready to publish.

Generally as a book formatter, you would also take them to the, to, to the finish line.

Correct.

Part of your services would include helping them get the, the books in whatever file they needed onto Amazon or ingramsparks.

Is that correct?

Yeah, yeah.

Any designer should provide those PDFs that we were talking about, the two final ones you need to go on Amazon.

Ingram anywhere.

Your cover, back wrap PDF and your interior file, which is the entire inside of the book.

They should be able to provide you the right file formats that the printer needs.

So let's say Amazon Print on demand.

They have specific requirements.

Ingramspark has specific requirements.

The designer should know what those all mean and give you the file so you can go to your Amazon account and upload the final piece.

And Amazon should give it an Ingram.

They should both give it a green light.

If not, they'll have errors.

There might be.

And then you bring it back to your designer and say, hey, came back with some errors.

Can you fix this?

And you know what, just so everyone knows, Con and I have run into that.

I generally not with Amazon.

They've seen a little more user friendly.

Ingramsparks.

I've come back to Kann a couple of times because somehow it wasn't reading the file correctly.

But eventually it gets fixed and get it downloaded.

Okay, so now we've got your files produced for your soft cover and like you said, your front cover, the spine, the back cover, one PDF file and then the interior another PDF file.

Then you download them, I think, oh, that's great.

So now can I just Take that and do my ebook and my hard hardcover book with these files.

Con.

No.

Oh, unfortunately not.

Okay, so tell us about that.

Yeah, the ebook is very different than the physical counterparts.

But the ebook, some designers might not even know how to do that.

We were way back at the beginning we were talking about print designers, web designers, logo designers, illustrators.

Ebook formatting is a different type of designer as a whole.

And there's different tools that are used for those that are curious.

An ebook is essentially just web pages wrapped up into a different file format.

You're working with HTML, the coding language, or there's software that'll actually do it.

And I think you use one, Rick, you're enjoying one.

And there's a few others that I use, one called Sigle, that's handy as well.

But essentially, when you've got your final edited interior book with your front back matter, the actual story, all your illustrations, you have to hand those individual files to a designer that's going to format your ebook.

And because that's different than how they're going to process and use different tools like InDesign to format the print book.

And just so everyone knows, Kahn has that skill.

So not only did he format our softcover to get it to through Amazon and ingramsparks, Kahn also formatted our ebook format also.

Yeah, the ebook.

And this is why it's really important to make sure your book is fully edited.

And you're really happy with your book because as you mentioned, hardcover too, and we haven't even talked about audiobooks.

So you have three or four different formats of your book.

You make one change to your book, you have to apply it three or four times.

So every change is just going to keep multiplying, which costs time and money.

So, yeah, you'll want your book available on ebook because kids also read on tablets and E readers.

You want your book available on Amazon.

Ingram also can do ebooks, I believe, But Amazon's your big marketplace where you'll want to have your ebook available.

I want to just pick up on that for a second, just because it's fresh.

I did a book reading yesterday at my grandson's school and they use what's called, I think it's called a lob board.

I have the terminology, but it's just virtually a big screen TV that I took my iPad plugged into the port and I read the book on the screen.

Oh, fun.

Yeah.

And that's the way because I even said to the teacher, do you have flip charts?

And she said, no, it's Today, everybody's using technology to K's point.

Having at least your soft cover in the ebook format to start I think is extremely important.

And so.

So let's jump into the hardcover.

Yeah, hardcover is.

They're just another print format.

We didn't even talk about sizing with the softcovers.

Oh, sorry.

So let's definitely come back to sizing.

My apologies.

No, it's all good.

It's my mind too.

And whether it's soft cover or hardcover, the size of your book matters too, which is your physical dimensions.

You could go square, you could go portrait.

Portrait is a tall rectangle.

Some people do landscape format, which is a wide rectangle.

Some do square format.

And it really comes down to your personal preference.

There's larger formats are often where things go.

What was your size, Rick?

You were.

It's a square nine by nine.

Nine by nine?

That's what we went with.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I find I.

I find probably about half the children's books that I've so far.

The children's book authors, I always buy one copy of their book.

Yeah.

When they come on as a guest.

And so I get to see exactly what the format is about half of them come to me in the traditional, what I call traditional nine by nine size.

But I have gotten like, I was showing you, someone called this the diaper bag size.

So that was cool idea.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I've gotten others that are showing the hardcover, but I'll show you the softcover.

Yes.

It's.

Yeah.

Almost portrait.

So definitely all kinds of sizing.

Now, how does that affect you as the book formatter?

Why is that important?

It's important to know how to lay out the text, which is the interior of it.

And even the COVID it changes how your cover is going to look, which is why you probably see so many do 9x9 square format.

Because square format also works really good for marketing.

For example, like on social media, a lot of posts prefer that square format.

It'll show better across the board versus the landscape format doesn't look good on, say, Instagram.

So square is a great format for that.

And a designer needs to be conscious on the basically the layout that their play field.

Where do they place things or place the text?

If it's square, they don't have as much of a tall real estate to play in.

It's a landscape one they're going to have to really think about.

Oh, how does this illustration fit with the author's, author's name and the title of the book?

So they really have to be wary of that.

And when someone comes to you and they're thinking about a book format size, does the sizing determine your pricing or not?

It can.

Yeah, it does.

Another thing with size too is it really depends on what you got the illustrator to make.

Is the image, is each illustration going to get clipped?

Basically cut part of it cut off.

If you go with.

If they provided you, let's say a square, an illustration in a square format.

But you went with a portrait format, you might as the illustration you get zoomed up and parts of it cut off.

Or you're just going to have the square sitting in the center of the page and you got some empty space around which might look weird.

What you get from your illustrator is really going to be something to think about and maybe something you have to talk to the illustrator about.

And you had a have a vision of what you want the size to be if you wanted it to be landscape.

And just so everyone knows the nice thing about today's world is you can actually go to Amazon site.

It's called kdp.

Yeah.

And they will.

You can actually see the different sizes recommended for children's books.

And there is, there's a large variety.

So I think Kwan hit it right on the nail earlier.

Go to the library and look at children's books and look at children's book formats and then decide, make sure you take a measuring tape, decide what size that you would love to have.

And generally if it's in the library that sizing is available to print.

Yeah.

And bring it all the way back to hardcovers.

They are different sizes.

They are not mutually the same soft cover sizes and hardcover.

So that's another formatting project as a summary.

And so everyone understands that when you come to someone like Kahn and they're now assembling your book as a book formatter, the thing to remember is that they're going to talk to you about and these are all separate jobs.

Softcover, ebook formatting, hardcover formatting.

Is that correct?

And I can't speak on every designer.

They all have their different processes.

Sometimes they provide bundles they might do hourly.

Personally, for me, I've always been more of a project for project type because specifically with self publishing books, there are so many moving parts in each one.

I just don't want anything to get confused.

Do one one format done because and it happens whether even it's been through beta readers editing, polished.

So you think, let's say you start with a soft cover, you do all the formatting, get the proof copy in your hands and then you see a typo, it can happen.

So just one project at a time just keeps it.

Then you don't have to keep going back and trying to fix everything.

Great advice, great advice.

I just want to talk a little bit about because you brought this up is primarily we focused on becoming a children's book author.

Amazon and ingramsparks are probably the easiest things to do and to go to softcover and ebook formats to start.

And on top of that you don't have to, as Kahn mentioned, you don't have to tie up thousands of books in your garage wondering how am I going to move these things out of my garage?

Because we're not talking about marketing and sales here folks.

We're just talking about getting your book in distribution and published because you brought it up.

Let's talk about offset printing.

Yeah.

So are the files for offset printers different for softcover or hardcover?

Yeah, a little.

The print shop will generally provide the specs they need which you would pass on to your designer.

Usually it just comes to color profile term the designers will be wary of.

But that's basically the big difference is making sure the color is correct.

And it's more on a technical side.

But the even for the print on demand, a designer probably should be what's known as rasterizing the TypeFace for the PDF.

Again, that stuff gets into the more technical realm.

But print on demand is more forgiving if you slip up on some of these things or the designer does just a few things to know, definitely have your designer in touch with your chosen print shop.

Great advice.

Some self published book authors think self publishing with Amazon and Ingram Sparks can be daunting.

But as you've been listening to Khan, if you get a good graphic designer who does book formatting, you don't have to go shopping or get a third party to do this.

Just make sure you once you've got yourself a good graphic designer and book formatter, I'm telling you, it just takes out a lot of the risk in terms of your time, in terms of the money you're spending in terms of bringing your book to market.

So it just really helps you a lot and I'm hoping you're getting a sense of that.

And then if you do decide to go the hardcover route, understand that Amazon doesn't do children's books in hardcover and they have a minimum page count, I believe it's about 78 pages somewhere in that number option before they do a hard cover.

So most children's books as we mentioned are about 32 pages.

So you're never going to get a hardcover book printed through Amazon or at this point or kdp.

However, ingramsparks does do hardcover children's books and they have that service available.

Just remember again checking on the costs of doing that to.

Kahn mentioned it earlier that when you're doing a print on demand and you're doing a one like a one off copy or maybe you get five printed or whatever, the costs tend to be much higher than as if you went to offset printing and you went overseas or even locally and did a bigger run.

Yeah.

And the other thing I wanted to mention is most cases if you go with Amazon or ingramsparks especially on the soft COVID side generally I know for Amazon for example every time I purchase one of my guests books I can tell how they've had it set up and formatted and the service they've used.

Because if they've gone directly and used a book formatter and set it right up on Amazon themselves, I'm getting the book in one to two days and beautifully done.

Or if they use a third party service.

I had a guest who I loved her book and I actually showed it on the screen here.

It was called Hope is a Blanket.

Oh yeah.

And as you can see the reason I'm only showing this book is exact.

It's the same format as our children's book.

This took nine weeks to get interesting from Amazon because it was printed, it was printed in the States like we're in Canada.

My book, if you order it, if you order our book in the United States it gets printed in the United States.

If you order it in Canada, it gets printed in Canada.

And Amazon has many printing facilities so it's just not coming out of one location.

When you use kdp.

Yeah.

Printing.

That's.

And so that's why you're get.

Can get it in next day or two day delivery.

Yeah, yeah.

They're.

I think they're print shops out east if I'm not mistaken.

I'm sorry, I think their print shop, Amazon's is on summer eastern in Canada.

It's not, it's not Ontario.

Oh you know what, it's interesting if you order your.

And just so everyone understands, if you order let's say 10 copies because Amazon gives you authors pricing.

Yes.

So let's say you order five or 10 copies that would come from a different print shop than if you ordered one book locally.

And I know this for a fact because I've done that.

I ordered our book locally one book, it came from 15 minutes from my house and printed.

Yeah.

And When I ordered 10 copies, it came from a printing service in Bolton, Ontario.

Ontario.

Okay.

Yeah.

I did not know that.

That explains the quality difference you get sometimes.

So, you know, I don't notice much quality.

People always say that to me.

But I put.

I've put the books up against each other.

I've really not noticed.

Oh, good.

Yeah, a heck of a lot of difference in quality.

And again, remember, it's a children's book that's going to get bust and must and the breakfast mustard and all that all over it.

They don't care.

Yeah, exactly.

They like the illustrations and story.

I guess the thing I want to mention is when someone needs a book formatter, generally they're the book formatters.

Probably got a graphic design background and then they've taken on the skill as a book formatter.

Is that how you would see it?

Yeah, the two go hand in hand.

Way back before computers started taking over, a typographer was a type of designer.

And their entire career was just to build faces used by formatters.

But as technology keeps getting better and more tools keep becoming available, the design role has mutated quite a bit and everything just blends together.

But a formatter without a graphic background is probably a little wary, should probably ask to see their portfolio.

I just wanted to make sure people understand that.

I think having the graphic design skills from my experience is extremely important if you're going to go and look for.

A book formatter, especially for children's books, because the typeface is very specific for readability.

Okay.

And we're just about to wrap up here.

Kahn, is there anything you thought, oh, you know what, maybe I should have mentioned this or we pretty much stay to the inside of the book and bringing the book to life after we've had the edited and illustrations or anything else you'd like to add.

We were talking just briefly before.

Have a business plan.

Know what you want your book to do.

It's across all types of authors.

Know what you want from your book.

Some people are just happy to physically hold their book.

Others are happy just to sell to friends and family, maybe make it to 100 sales locally.

Others want to go big.

Others are somewhere in between.

And that is where knowing your path will determine your business plan.

And I think those terms are interchangeable with writing.

Knowing your path and seeing at least a little bit down the road past just getting the book published.

Because we were talking about all these little things that come up just to get the book done.

What comes after that?

Because often with books you get that first initial launch.

There's the hype, it's exciting, the book's out, everyone's excited for you, you're making sales, reviews are coming in and then the book just plummets and everything's dead.

Just so everyone understands, Klein can help you get the finished product.

But that even though that sounds like the end of your journey, it's just the beginning of your journey really is.

And books can take you into all sorts of places you would have never expected.

Your book becomes your adventure.

And yeah yeah, Kahn, thank you for all your great insights, your straightforward answers.

They definitely taken some of the mystery out of self publishing a children's books.

What's the best way to connect with you?

You can find me at for my design work if you're curious is revealedesign ca and that's R E V E A L Design Ca My portfolio is there, my contact information.

Or you could just Google Con Lavery.

I'll show up whether it's my author site or my report.

Design portfolio with email is usually the fastest way you can get a hold of me.

Social media, I'm a little slower on because yeah, I'm usually writing or designing.

No, no problem.

Well, you know what folks, we'll provide you with all the links to Kahn's website and the other links that he mentioned, the social media links in the show notes and if you found this episode to be valuable and could benefit others, please pass it along.

Also, if you could give us a five star rating and review and subscribe to our show, that would be awesome.

Thank you Kahn.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

This was fun.