Any one can create “your own e-books”
Some close friends of mine, Von and Kari Brimhall have gone completely nuts on e-books! They are two of my very best friends from college and have always been into art and design. We had a conversation about producing e-books and they opened the flood gates on their creativity. Together they created 39 – YES! – 39 e-books in about 4 months but I’ll let them tell you more about that below. Von is a computer geek and has a great full time gig working for the chain saw company, Stihl, and Kari is a home schooler, storyteller, and artist and they have a gaggle of successful kids.
How to create and publish your own e-books
Before you read their letter you have to check out the amazing tutorial Von has made for anyone to download and make their own ebooks – he’s made it available for free right here – click to download. If programing your own e-books sounds scary you have to check out Von’s step by step tutorial – he makes it really easy for you.
Von and Kari are proving that if you have ideas, motivation, and hard work you can realize your dreams in this new medium. Have a look at their titles and read a little about their new journey.
Confessions of the e-Book dudes
We’ve been friends with Will Terry for years and avid fans of his art! When he posted his two awesome video series How to Illustrate Children’s Books and Digital Painting in Photoshop, we signed right up! Both my husband and I like to draw and paint, and I love to write. Just watching the video courses on Folio Academy’s website, opened our eyes to all kinds of possibilities.
Self Publishing our E-Books was fun and easy
We instantly pulled out a story that I had told for years to our children when they were young… and Von started drawing and painting–digitally! We couldn’t believe how fun and easy it was. Thus, our first eBook was born! Freddie Frog is Hungry was so exciting to share with friends that we decided to take the plunge and upload it to Barnes and Noble.com.
With e-books there are no boxes of inventory in the garage
This is not my first book, I have self published and still have copies of a fabulous book in the garage…just waiting for a market. Having Barnes and Noble sell our books is great. They take care of the money end of things and I take care of the marketing. Writing eBooks is very nice–the expense of self-publishing and printing, then marketing and working out prices, taxes, mailing to customers, and buying all the supplies that go with it, etc. is a thing of the past. With eBooks, you don’t have boxes in the garage of unsold books.
E-books available at a PC near you
All of our Nook E-Books are available for sale on Barnes and Noble.com. We currently have 39 eBooks for sale and hopefully more on the way! Our target demographic is 0-6 years old so these are all books that parents would be reading to and with their children. Besides being clever, our eBooks have an educational slant to them. They include learning basic colors, numbers, animals, seasons, the alphabet, etc.
We’re not selling large volumes like Will Terry yet, but we’re working on it. If you would like to see what our eBooks are like you can download a free a PDF version of our eBook ‘Who Says Moo?’ right here. If you are interested in how we make our eBooks, you http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifcan download a detailed PDF tutorial that my husband wrote at http://vonlogan.com/sunshine/indesign.html . It describes how to create illustrated children’s eBooks using Adobe InDesign.
Hope you enjoy it and go on to create your own fabulous eBooks. ~Kari Brimhall