The Highs and Lows

Oh, the highs and lows of deciding to self-publish a children’s book.  Each day is filled with them.

High—the immensely positive feedback I receive from everyone who hears about my project

High—discovering the wonders of print-on-demand technology and realizing there was a way to make the books happen

High—Catching that perfect camera shot or figuring out just the way to phrase an idea

Low—Realizing Lightning Source puts a white strip in between color page spreads eliminating the possibility of two-page photographs

Low—Getting a quote from the web company I wanted to use with a base price way beyond my means

Low—Having my older brother tell me I’d be a fool to try to do the website myself and that the quoted base price was “way cheap”

High—Discovering easy web templates and hosting from GoDaddy—where I already had an account from buying the domain name!

High—Quickly figuring the web building process out and getting a basic site together

High—Watching the site go live instantly even though it said it would be a 48-hour wait

Low—Googling “Juno Knows” just after the site went live.  Realizing a blog post that is inappropriate for children is the first search result.  Reading through the post and finding no reason it needs to be titled “Juno Knows”, except perhaps that it was written in the month of June almost a year ago.  Recalling having searched “Juno Knows” on Google prior to beginning the entire project and knowing that this was not the top hit at that time, or even amongst the top hits. 

So now I’m in a conundrum.  Do I pay GoDaddy extra fees for SEO, gambling that this will put my site at the top?  Didn’t I hear that SEO is dead due to Google’s new search protocol?  Do I contact the blogger and see if he’d mind changing the title of his post?  Do I completely change the title of my project? 

Insert cliffhanger!  What will she do?  What will she do?  More on this when I find out.  

Welcome to “Juno Knows (the Making of),” the blog where I will be documenting the exciting journey of self-publishing a children’s picture book featuring full color photography of my very best friend: Juno the Jack Russell. This journey has been a while in the making—I recently stumbled upon my fifth grade yearbook and discovered that even at twelve years old it was my dream to be a published author.

The dream certainly waivered and almost disappeared as various interests came and went and I changed majors about a dozen times before somewhat accidentally ending up with a degree in Economics. Even then, I was still on a roundabout path and decided to begin my career at a small publishing house in San Diego rather than follow any of the likely routes a budding economist might take. That’s when my dream started getting back on path and the more I learned about publishing, the more I realized I wanted to delve into a project where I could be in control of nearly every aspect of a publication—the writing, the design, the layout, the marketing, the sales (though not necessarily warehousing and shipping—thank goodness for print on demand!).

Originally, my plan was to travel the country interviewing people with especially interesting jobs who had gotten undergraduate degrees in Economics. I figured it would be a great guide for people like me who need inspiration for what to do with their degree after graduation. If the book was a hit, I could start a publishing company to make follow up books for people with degrees in English, Physics, Engineering, etc. Unfortunately, I wasn’t passionate enough about the project to ever get started and I almost gave up on the idea of starting my own small press completely. Instead I found myself applying for jobs in larger publishing companies, where I would still only focus on one aspect of publishing at a time.

One day, preceding an important interview, I spent some time looking over the many excellent benefits the company had to offer and thought about the healthy salary I was to expect. The only drawback, I thought, was that the little company I worked for at the time allowed me to bring my dog to the office with me each day and I was sure a big corporate company would not allow such a thing. I looked up doggy day care and realized that it was not only going to take a large cut of my salary, but that even the places that offered lots of space for dogs to run and play were not a very good fit for my Junebug who prefers human company and can get a bit snappy with other animals. Not only that, I wondered why was I looking into a job where I was going to have to work my butt off to pay someone else to take care of my pet when there is nothing I would rather be doing than spending time with her.

It was at that moment I knew that I wanted to find a way to combine my passion for writing and publishing with a way to spend time with my dog and be outdoors as much of the day as possible. That’s when the idea for the Juno Knows book series was born.