My Early Book Production Errors

I've just received a pallet of shiny new "Birthday Snow'' books that I wrote with writing partner Kim Messinger.

The books look great. You can see the cover at the bottom of this blog.

It reminds me of all the production problems I had with the first attempt at printing this book. That was when I was publishing books at LuLu. LuLu is a POD company and they served me well for non-color books but I knew that I was in for headaches when it came to trying a full-color picture book. Of course I can now see that it was an excellent testing experience but to be totally honest back then I was a brand new newbie so I knew success was just around the corner. I didn't need no stinkin testing.

Back then LuLu couldn't do hard covers on books with 32 pages. I charged ahead anyway. End papers weren't possible. End papers are the inside front cover and inside back cover. A children's book needs to have some artwork there not a totally white, blank page. For some reason I left in another blank page before the first page of the book. Then I screwed up the copyright page.

That's not all. On a couple pages the color hid the text. In preproduction I had the feeling that was going to happen. LIFE LESSON: WHENEVER YOU THINK SOMETHING IS WRONG IN PRODUCTION, 95 PERCENT OF THE TIME IT IS WRONG. (This does not apply to crazy people like my co-writer.)

Just change it and move on.

Oh and the big one. I had a big fat typo right in the middle of the book. It took two more production runs to fix it. A picture book is only 32 pages and has very little text. A professional cannot let a typo through like I did. Several of us read it but as the publisher I'm responsible.

It wasn't a misspelled word, it was a word than had an ing on it when it shouldn't have. Can't let that happen. Don't ever think spellchecker is going to save you.

The good news is if you sell your manuscript to a publisher you don't have to worry about the production, art, artists, etc. The publisher does that. If you're going to self-publish it's all on you baby. My eighteen years of production/publishing experience didn't look so formidable after that first try at a book.

Michael LaLumiere