I am waiting for the physical proof of my book to show up before it is released for distribution, but let me tell you a little bit about it! The title of the book is "Mermaids, Fairies, & Other Girls of Whimsy: 50 Fan Favs". My beloved family and I painstakingly went through all the coloring pages I currently have between the 8 volumes of coloring books (total of 120) and chose 50 of the best fan favorites to go in this sort of "ultimate collection" type coloring book! I then stopped every. single. activity. that wasn't health, safety, or urgent related (and even then some questionable calls were made hehe), to complete the book in just over a week. I put in 12-16 hour days with 6 hours sleep for 8 days in a row, and opened every. single. file. and added every. single. detail. I could find, and even some that just needed to be added!! That's over 100 hours of editing work. My family suffered on pizza and cereal dinners while I just worked, worked, and worked some more! I call this "project immersion". It was the ONLY way I knew I could get it done. Because I would normally only get about 3 hours of this sort of project done each day if I just kept going the way my normal schedule would have allowed, it would have taken me literally 37 weeks to complete a project of this magnitude. Um, no. Sacrifices were made, and dreams were born!
The book is being self published through Amazon's CreateSpace platform and will be on 8.5x11 regular, white, single sided paper, bound, with a beautiful glossy cover with a gorgeous price tag of just $9.95!!!! I have been having trouble keeping up with managing the coloring books I have, spending over half my days facilitating their manufacturing, stocking, and physically shipping the books out myself, which has been stealing all of my creative time! Unacceptable! Self-publishing through Amazon will free me of these chains, as *they* will now print and ship each book ordered directly from the Amazon warehouse =D! For local distribution here in Idaho Falls I will order a batch and schedule a signing and also stock the local shelves =D.
I will still have the "current" versions available for a little bit longer, but the plan is to discontinue these books and move forward with the new Amazon books only. The next book in the pipeline will be the pocket version of the artworks that were too "simple" in design to fit into the 50 Fan Favs book, (which are mainly the up-close faces), in a 5x8 format. After that, holiday books like Halloween and Christmas, and another sweet "secret" project book I have been dreaming about for a while now will be on the schedule for release. My proof will be here tomorrow, and if all looks good, it will be released and ready for purchase on Amazon as soon as tomorrow! I'm SO excited!!! And. very. tired.
If you have read this far, THANK YOU!! Stay tuned for a new holiday design!!
Thanks for all the amazing support
<3 Hannah