Mortimer’s Sweet Retreat is the story of a young boy who befriends a ferociously friendly Boo Woolly named Weave. After his initial fright at being lifted off by the Boo Woolly, Mortimer comes to a wondrous land made of candy and treats. While exploring, his new friend is Woolly-knaped and Mortimer must venture off to rescue him. Available in print or ebook version.

At first glance, I wasn’t sure how this book was going to be. I’m a little picky about what I read my daughter, she absorbs so much from books, and was not sure a land of sweets was going to end up morally endearing or just cause a toothache. I was also a bit concerned that in the description it mentions Mortimer trudging off with his “marshmallow shooter”, which sounds harmless but I try to avoid gun-like violence at this age.

I was more than surprised then, to discover not only a charmingly told tale of friendship, but some rather whimsical rhyming reminiscent of Little Miss Muffet. Simple and fun yet full of delicious details, my daughter and I loved this story. We especially had a great time giggling about the chocolate commode!

I also became enamored of the coloring book style illustrations, which at first may seem rudimentary, they go on to include some photo touches and layout that shows the attention the creator gave her characters and their world. I think the drawings actually are perfect for the target audience. Many books for kids forget they are actually for kids. Having a childlike style, colored pencil and line art, can connect with a young reader inspiring them to make their own books even.

While I was still a little put off by Mortimer taking up marshmallow arms to rescue his friend, the book was darling and I will read it again. I may even splurge and order the hard copy!

*No compensation, other than a review copy of this title, was provided for my review.

Artist Nina Paley created a set of DRM-Free logos at ReadersBillofRights.info

DRM, or Digital Rights Management, may seem like a good idea at first glance. It is an encryption process that makes files un-sharable, files like ebooks, music MP3s, and other multi-media. But does it stop Piracy of those files? Really?

I don’t believe it does. I believe pirates know how to strip, copy, and distribute pretty much any file type. What I do think it does is restrict the usability for honest users who have purchased their copy. Why punish your readers by making them unable to copy your work from device to device? I price my books very affordable, and in my opinion they are quality works. I believe and trust my readers will pay me accordingly. I for one have chosen to NOT encrypt any of my ebooks. Do I want them pirated? Of course not. Do I want them read and enjoyed? Yes!

I see… Savannah, the first in my I see… Animals series of Children’s ebooks, is now available for Kindle in the Amazon store! It was a bit tougher to wrangle the file format to work through Amazons Kindle Direct Publishing platform than working with Smashwords and Barnes and Noble. I will have a post about that process coming soon.

Since my book is illustrated in color I highly recommend it be enjoyed on a color device (it looks great on iPad and iPhone) running a Kindle reader rather than on an actual Kindle. That is until the Holiday season, if the rumors of a color Kindle are true…

Another blogger kindly took the time to review my book, here is a snippet from Pooh’s Den:

“E-books are a life saver when we are traveling and with a little girl who loves animals and books I knew this book would be a perfect hit with us.

It is compact and a perfect size to keep a 2-yr old (well-almost) occupied for 15 minutes. It is simple, small words and fills my toddler with wonder and joy.”

Like all good reviewers Pooh’s Den also had some critiques. I know some authors get touchy about anything not super positive but I value everyone’s input. To read the full review visit Pooh’s Den Here.

In memorium… the greatest of hounds

We were contacted recently by FLAAG – Fingerlakes Adopt A Grey, a group in New York that works with retired Greyhounds to find them forever homes after racing, and were asked if we could do anything to help support their upcoming fundraiser Grapehounds Wine Tour.

From thier site:
“The Grapehound Wine Tour^® is a multi-day celebration of greyhound adoption held in mid-May in Leesburg, Virginia, and again at the end of July in the cool, cool Finger Lakes area of New York.

The event features wine tasting, music, a custom wine glass for registrants, vendors, and beautiful scenery, while benefiting participating greyhound adoption groups throughout the country.

Registration for the Grapehound Wine Tour^® in the Finger Lakes of New York, July 28-31, 2011 is open.

Our Grapehounds-New York event will be hosted by Atwater Estate Vineyards on a beautiful property high on a hill overlooking Seneca Lake.”

As we are big supporters of animals, dogs, and specifically those of the sight-hound persuasion, we jumped at the chance to lend a hand. If you happen to be in New York and attend this neat fundraiser you will have the opportunity to bid on a few of our handmade glass pendants. Of course, if you can’t make it, all of our pendant sales support Greyhound rescue as we donate 20% of net proceeds to local rescue groups from direct and Etsy sales. Long live the Greyhound!

VS

Now that I have successfully created and published my first picture book through both Smashwords, and PubIt!, I can share some tips I learned along the way that may help you decide which route to take and also make it a bit easier for you to publish your own picture books. These tips are assuming you have already created images with/without text rendered in them, saved down in a web optimized format suitable for eReading devices. I created my pages to be single vertical images to avoid issues with some readers and spreads.

Smashwords
Since they only allow the upload of a particularly formatted Word file (you can use some other word processors too), your layout options are rather narrow. They even admit in their style guide, a must read to get your file to work, that they specialize in narrative and picture books may be mangled. However, it CAN be done, and with their widespread distribution it may be worth your time to make it work.

Pros and Cons:
Pros – Smashwords is relatively easy to use, provided you take the time to study the style guide and create clean resource files. They grind your single file into many different ebook formats making it available to more devices without extra work on your end. If you follow their rules and make it into the Premium Catalog you can assign a free ISBN and also be sold in many major ebook stores. With their coupon generator and free marketing guide they help you drum up some buzz. It took minutes to upload, grind, and put my book on sale within the Smashwords site. They also pay out higher than going direct through PubIt!.
Cons – Limited formatting control in word processors. They do not accept epub files directly. To gain the distribution benefits of the Premium Catalog (i.e. being shipped to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, etc.) seemed to take forever. My book was pending review for 20 days. Of course compared to legacy publishing this is nothing. They do not yet ship to Amazon, but that will be coming soon. You don’t get instant sales reporting from the distributors, or have any control over how they tag your book.

Here are some tips:
Tip #1
Read the style guide! Yes, really. The whole thing. Then, go back through each step and create your Word file starting with all the “Front Matter” and “Back Matter” required, and optional, you will need. This file should be very simple, clean, and edited. Then save it as a template. You now have an easy way to start off your picture books without starting from scratch each time. Especially useful if you somehow add weird glitches or whatnot as you add the images, since you won’t need to redo any of the basics.

Tip #2
When you create your table of contents, the text portions are simple. Tagging the images themselves with bookmarks to insert into your TOC is a little trickier. I found the easiest way to do this was to insert the cursor right before the image you want to jump to. You can also click on the image once to select it, but since this is harder to see it is easy to miss the target. Smashwords will build the NCX (epub’s navigation file) based on your documents TOC so try to make some well thought out breaks in your story and name them in a way that will help someone navigate your book. Take the time to test each link in your final epub file after Smashwords creates it and fix any issues before publishing it.

PubIt! by Barnes and Noble
I decided to try my hand at going direct through Barnes and Noble rather than Smashwords as an experiment. So far, it has yeilded mixed results. You can upload either an RTF document like Smashwords, or if you are savy you can upload a custom epub file directly. NOTE: You can NOT cheat and use the Smashwords created epub. It is a breach of your agreement with them to sell thier file without going through them. However, you can use your original word file.

Pros and Cons:
Pros – You can easily upload an epub file, or just like Smashwords you can use a word document, and they will convert it. You have complete control of your categories and keywords. This allows you to place your book where people who would like it can find it, and change it up if people aren’t. You can obsessively check your daily sales. Since you can upload an epub, you can have much more control of the final look of your book if you have the skills or money to have one created. Once your account is set up and approved it takes 24-48 hours for your book to be on sale, however, I found it to be even faster. You don’t need an ISBN.
Cons – If you price your book under $2.99 or over $10.99, Barenes and Noble will only give you 40% of the sales instead of thier normal 60%. I believe this is to try to appease panicked publishers who think us little Indie guys are threatening thier sales. So far this has been the only real drawback.

If you’d like to tryit, here are a few tips:
Tip #1
Use your already cleaned up Smashwords ready file.If you’ve followed the style guide it is going to be pretty good to go, why start over. You will need to change some wording on the Title page to not be Smashwords specific, and also any links to your Smashwords pages (unless in the back as part of your “about”. Also, you will need to add the cover image into the very front of your book if you want it to be in the resulting epub. Unlike Smashwords, the “cover” you load is not linked into the epub file as it is converted, it is only used on the sales page. Your cover must be at least 750px tall.

Tip #2
Navigation can be an issue. Smashwords epub converter creates a nice NCX navigation file based on your Table of Contents. This makes it really easy to move through the book if you took the time to create one that makes sense for your images. PubIt!, on the other hand, creates it’s NCX based on the chapter starts being defined as “Heading” style, which you can’t assign to images. Although  not as pretty as in iTunes, I made due by adding a few extra links within the book. I added a ‘Title Page” link and at the end of the images added a “Back to Table of Contents”. Your TOC within the book will still work.

Hopefully this will help you decide which way to go with your own picture book. If you can’t settle for the look you end up with within these limitations you can always go the extra mile and create epubs from scratch, buy an ISBN, and distribute to each major ebook retailer on your own.

So far, I’m torn between the ease of Smashwords and the control of PubIt!. Perhaps once my books have earned enough to cover the costs I’ll try my hand at creating and distributing my own books to iTunes and Amazon. I really love the concept behind Smashwords though, so for now at least, I’m going to try sticking with them.