Crochet Doll Book News

It’s been brought to my attention by a great horde of people (two to be exact), that although I titled my last post Finished My Book Amidst Pandemic, I actually didn’t talk much about my book…at all. It was suggested gently (not so gently) that I actually talk about, you know, the book!

The book: What’s my book about? It’s a tutorial on how to create your own simple dolls (that don’t look simple), as if explained to you by a friend. It’s picture heavy as it’s more about inspiration on how to create your own dolls than about patterns. However, I did include three patterns to illustrate what the end product could look like.

Here’s the cover:

I might still change the subtitle. 

To start off, I thought I was done with the book after a few tweeks. I had my friends and family read it to see if there was anything majorly wrong with it. A few edits and suggestions came in, and the more I went in, the more I changed.

First off, it’s taken me a few years to get this project done. Unfortunately, the more I waited to get back to it, the more things changed. Things like software and app changes, which forced me to relearn how to use them again. Or say I was happy with pictures years ago, now they looked dated or not as good as what I can do now. So what I’m basically saying is that I drastically started fiddling with the book and moved away from the finish line, AGAIN.

BUT, since I was treating working on my book as a job, I worked on it every single day and figured out how to better use the apps and software I needed, more so than I ever had before. After all, social distancing has allowed me more time to research and educate myself on what I needed to learn to get this book done. By doing this, I was able to get my book to look and flow how I wanted it to.

One thing that absolutely made the experience better at fixing and finishing my book was having an iphone 11. I never thought I’d see the day when I would choose my phone over my DSLR to take pictures for my book. Cell phone cameras have NEVER been better than my camera in terms of picture quality. But I started taking pics with my new phone, and they were amazing! And the convenience! If I didn’t like a previous picture, I could just grab my phone and run out and shoot another one, and the pictures are better! And downloading them is quicker. My new phone has really changed my workflow and has allowed me to really move my book along.

Let me backtrack. I’m making an ebook for now, so as long as the quality looks good on screen, it works. I don’t know yet if the quality will be good enough for printed books, but for now, I’m not going to worry about it. After all this time, I want to get my book out there and an ebook allows me to do it as I can self-publish without much overhead.

For the iTunes bookstore, it’s pretty much ready to go, once I have those final tweaks done. For Amazon, I have to do a little more research. Once I figure that out, I’m going to also opt in for the print on demand option. I’ll purchase my own physical book to see if the quality of the pictures holds up.

So what stage is my book in today? It’s almost done. I have a layout and pictures I like but I’m still working out the kinks in the patterns. Step one was to let friends and family read it and tell me what I needed to focus on in terms of improvements. Then I had my patterns tested, and I’m tweaking them now. Once that’s done, we’ll be sending it to an editor on Upwork (this is budget friendly). My husband is a graphic designer and created the cover. Once back from the editor, I’ll make final tweaks and I’ll publish it on iTunes and Amazon! Then it’s on to promotion and updating my website (hubby creates websites as well).

Since I’ve been reshooting some of the pictures, I was inspired to take a group picture of the dolls that appear in the book. Sadly, I don’t have them all. It’s been so long since I started the book that I’ve given a few of them away. Even so, I still have the newer ones, and it’s a lot!

Regardless of how the book does or doesn’t do, I’m super excited that it’s almost ready for publishing. It was one of those things I always wanted to do but was worried it would be on the back burner forever. I was so close for so long and now I’m actually there!