Coaching KidLit Episode 46: Steps for Self-Publishing Success with Guest Darcy Pattison

[00:00:00] Sharon Skinner: Welcome to coachingkidlit.com, a podcast about writing and publishing. Good KidLit. We dig into various aspects of writing craft through a KidLit lens and provide inspiration and clear actionable items to help writers like you move forward on their KidLit writing journeys. I’m Sharon Skinner, author accelerator, certified book coach and author of Speculative Fiction and KidLit, including picture books, middle grade and young adult.

[00:00:29] Hello listeners, I have a special treat for you this month. We have Darcy Pattison with us today. Children’s book author and indie publisher Darcy Pattison has written over 70 award-winning fiction and nonfiction books for children. Five books have received starred PW, KIRKUS or BCCB reviews. Awards include the Irma Black Honor Award, five NSTA outstanding science trade books, five Eureka nonfiction, honor books from the California Reading Association.

[00:01:03] Two Junior Library Guild Selections two CLA notable children’s books in language arts, a notable social studies trade book, a best STEM book, an Arkansiana Award, and the Susanna DeBlack Arkansas Children’s History Book Award.

[00:01:20] She’s the 2007 recipient of the Arkansas Governor’s Arts Award for individual artists for her work in children’s literature, as she should be, and her books have been translated into 11 languages. She’s amazing. welcome. Darcy Pattison, to the show.

[00:01:38] Darcy Pattison: Thanks. It’s so great to be here to talk to you, Sharon. I’m excited.

[00:01:41] Sharon Skinner: I’m excited to have you here and as we were talking right before we started recording, I am, one of your biggest fans. I have. Been following you for many, many years because you are so encouraging and so thoughtful and so willing to share your knowledge with others. And that’s just such a glorious thing to find in someone of your caliber.

[00:02:04] Darcy Pattison: so much. I do want to encourage people. It is one of my favorite things to do because everybody has a voice that needs to be heard.

[00:02:11] Sharon Skinner: I agree and that’s why I book Coach because of the same reason. I wanna help people write the book of their heart, get their books out into the world and write great books. Especially for kids. ’cause it’s such an important thing.

[00:02:23] Darcy Pattison: Yes. So I don’t wanna be a book coach, but that’s the same reason I write the blogs that I write.

[00:02:29] Sharon Skinner: Yes. And you have a substack that is very, very. Informative and I’ve been following you on the paid version as you go through the process of publishing a children’s book, so I was really excited to see that you have a book all about that.

[00:02:44] Darcy Pattison: Yeah, so publish will actually be a Kickstarter, , starting in September, and then it will hit the retailer’s. In January, so I’m very excited about it. I’ve worked in children’s literature for years and I’ve had my publishing company for over 13 years now.

[00:03:00] Sharon Skinner: Yeah, so just let’s back up and talk a little bit about where you started and how you decided, and when you decided that this was the path that you wanted to go down.

[00:03:10] Darcy Pattison: so I have seven traditionally published books, and then there came a space of time when I could not sell a book. Now I teach, writing on very high levels. I teach at highlights. I have done that for seven or eight years now. Uh, picture book writing, and then I was doing a novel revision retreat.

[00:03:27] In order to come to the retreat, you had to have a complete. draft of a novel, and we spent the weekend talking about revising that novel. Many people, said that that retreat helped them break through. it was the first time they were treated like professionals. Kirby Larson’s, came to the retreat to revise her novel.

[00:03:45] It sold in 11 days flat and went on to win the Newberry Honor that was, Hattie Big Sky. So I knew that I was writing good things, but I couldn’t sell anywhere. So I came to a point where I had to decide would I quit writing at all, just leave the profession or would I bring books to market myself? And I decided that I would bring books to market myself and look out, ’cause I’m coming and I still have, hopes of winning a Newberry award someday.

[00:04:16] Sharon Skinner: Well, and you haven’t looked back at all 70 books under your belt and most of those are self-published, and that’s a lot of work.

[00:04:24] Darcy Pattison: Yes, so the first five years I just put my head down and worked. These are books that I wanted to do. They were books I believed in. and. At that point, you just, you just work, you work hard. You put books out. I’ve been doing about five books a year, and that’s a lot of work, but it’s been worth it and I’m thrilled at the position I’m in now.

[00:04:46] Sharon Skinner: And you do a lot of. Nonfiction books. So that takes a lot of deep research and investigation and interviewing, and that’s additional work.

[00:04:56] Darcy Pattison: Yes. So I decided very early on that I would do nonfiction children’s books because then, a teacher wouldn’t just like my book and want to use it. Instead they needed my book. So one of my most popular titles is called Clang. It’s about sound and it’s about the German scientist, Ernst Chladni , who was the father of acoustics.

[00:05:20] He actually went to Napoleon’s court and entertained him with his science experiments. So if you’re a teacher and you’re trying to figure out what book to use to help you teach about sound, do you want a book that says. This is about sound. There are waves in the air. They hit your eardrum, or do you want one that talks about Ernst Chladni going to Napoleon’s court?

[00:05:44] Yeah, it’s, a no brainer. So, those kinds of history combined with science topics do really well for me because the teacher needs those, books.

[00:05:55] Sharon Skinner: So you also have written about Nefertiti the spider in space

[00:05:59] Darcy Pattison: Yes. So part of the joy of these is actually talking to the scientists. So for that one, I talked to, Stephanie Countryman. She is the lead scientist for all live animal experiments on the International Space Station. Like how cool is that? And then the astronaut involved, Sonny Williams actually called me and she called me.

[00:06:20] I wasn’t. Allowed to have her phone number in between meetings. She called me and talked for about five minutes. So, the process of doing the nonfiction research has been fabulous also because I’ve talked to amazing

[00:06:34] amazing people.

[00:06:35] Sharon Skinner: Yeah, you get to hang out with the cool kids, right?

[00:06:38] Darcy Pattison: Yeah, right.

[00:06:39] Sharon Skinner: But also that takes a certain level of chutzpah. The willingness to put yourself in a position of vulnerability to ask for those kinds of interviews, right?

[00:06:49] Darcy Pattison: It does. I know that surprises some people, but it’s never been a problem for me. I just. Do it. It’s just, if I’m gonna write this book, I’ve got to have original, primary sources. That means I have to talk to the scientists. In fact, most of the animal books I’ve done, I have a series called Another Extraordinary Animal.

[00:07:08] There’s now seven books in the series. Most of those have been, interviews with the scientist who can give me the facts. Otherwise, I can’t write the book. I have to have that

[00:07:19] primary source.

[00:07:21] Sharon Skinner: That makes sense.

[00:07:22] Darcy Pattison: So it’s a matter of do you wanna write this book or do you not wanna write this book? Okay, I’ll do the hard thing and call them.

[00:07:27] Sharon Skinner: So you put your head down, you worked for five years. What did that look like for you and at the end of that five years, was there a pivot point for you in how you approached. Self-publishing.

[00:07:39] Darcy Pattison: Yes and no. I mean, I’m still doing basically the same thing. I’m still working on books that I’m passionate about. I know that in any business enterprise, 80% of your income comes from 20% of your products. so I know that some books will do well, some will not do well. But at five years I kind of lifted my head and looked around and I had books that had star reviews.

[00:08:01] I had, NST. Outstanding science trade book of the year. I had, a growing number of books that was giving me a career and I thought, yes, I can do this. Maybe I’ll do this till I’m 90 years old. I don’t know, but it’s under my control. I get to decide. It’s not a matter of sending a manuscript to an editor and waiting three months, six months, a year to find out if this will be a book instead.

[00:08:27] I can decide when and where a book

[00:08:31] comes out.

[00:08:32] Sharon Skinner: And you also get more of the return on your investment, but you are also the person making the investment, right?

[00:08:41] Darcy Pattison: Yes, yes. So the buck does stop here. I mean, you know, my decisions directly affect my bottom line, but yes, I keep all the profits. I don’t have to share them with a publisher. I don’t get just 10%. I get more. Depends on where I sell it. 40%, 70%, whatever. it also is really fun because I get to decide things like, I have an agent, for foreign language rights in China and I just signed a nine book deal.

[00:09:09] yeah. ’cause I decided I would send that series to her and see if she could market it for me.

[00:09:14] Sharon Skinner: Congratulations.

[00:09:15] Darcy Pattison: Thanks.

[00:09:16] Sharon Skinner: so you’re doing all the things and then you are working on this book on your Kickstarter Publish. And I’m just going to put a plug out there for it because I’ve got to see an arc and go through it. And I am just so impressed with, you’ve covered it all. You’ve covered everything that I could think of that it would take, and I have coached some authors.

[00:09:39] In self-publishing, there are some things that you’ve covered that I even struggle to understand, like the CIP components, the catalog information and you just put it all out there for us and I just, it’s such a generous sharing of knowledge.

[00:09:56] Darcy Pattison: Thank you. I just think that people need to know these things. You know, if I can do this, surely you can do this too, but let me help you understand there are issues that you have to work through. What kind of printer are you going to use? What are the norms in the industry? If you want your book to be sold in school libraries, how do you reach them? One of those things is you’ve got to have that information on the, copyright page. You’ve gotta have, the CIP block, the cataloging and publishing block. Where do you get that? Why is that important? I think all of those things need to be explained so that you can do this in an excellent way and get your books in the hands of kids.

[00:10:38] Sharon Skinner: And you do a beautiful job of being very clear and concise, but also, making sure that you’re giving us step by step for each of those items. And how to consider as a self publisher how we should ask the questions and what kinds of questions we should ask of ourselves as we enter into each of these potential areas in publishing.

[00:11:01] Darcy Pattison: Yeah, I’m glad you say that because just because I do it one way doesn’t mean it is the one and only right way to do it. There are many paths toward publication and yours will definitely look different than mine. So what I did try to do is to give you, Options and then to explain what those options are and what they mean in the long term.

[00:11:20] If you, offset print versus print on demand, what does that mean for your distribution and how does a person order the book? so understanding all of that sort of interconnection of things is really important for you to make the right decisions. So good. I’m glad it’s successful.

[00:11:38] Sharon Skinner: Speaking of the print on demand or offset printing, you even dig into and do some math for us, which is great because I’m an English major. Don’t love the math. And you dig in and kind of give us an idea of if the book is gonna cost this much how much, profit you could potentially make by pricing it.

[00:11:57] You lay it out there very thoughtfully and very helpfully for someone who is embarking on this journey. You’re the pathfinder, and this is the map, right?

[00:12:09] Darcy Pattison: I am the Pathfinder. I can’t tell you how many mistakes I’ve made. I should do a blog post sometime on, how many mistakes I make in a week.

[00:12:17] Sharon Skinner: okay. Let’s talk about that. What would you say was one of your biggest missteps that you had to back up and maybe go a different way? Are you willing to talk about that?

[00:12:26] Darcy Pattison: Oh, I’m not sure. It’s, a matter of small things. A lot of times I upload a manuscript and I get error messages. so then do I just throw my hands up in despair or do I go, okay. Let me see, you know, just approach it calmly as a problem solver. I think that’s one of the biggest, character qualities you need if you’re gonna self-publish, is to be a problem solver.

[00:12:49] And not to be a, drama queen, because there will be many, many problems. Every time I upload, I go, oh, is this gonna work or not? so it’s not a matter of. Really big things. I really was thoughtful setting up my processes, to make sure I wasn’t making huge mistakes. But I try lots of things and lots of things fail.

[00:13:09] I try this distributor and go, oh no, you know, a hundred dollars a year is not worth the accounting cost of working with this distributor, so I’m not gonna do them anymore. Things like that.

[00:13:20] Sharon Skinner: Talking about uploading, ‘ cause I know a lot of people have challenges with that. And you even lay out the various formatting software and ways to properly do flowable or non flowable. Books and especially for picture books, since they need to be the non flowable

[00:13:39] Darcy Pattison: Yes.

[00:13:39] Sharon Skinner: you give us all the details.

[00:13:41] So clearly you’ve tried all the things along the way and found what works.

[00:13:48] Darcy Pattison: I tried everything. Yes. So specifically on eBooks, being flowable versus un flowable, I’ve tried lots of options to do a picture book as an ebook. The methods I lay out in the book are. A result of testing and failing many times. and the problem is you can’t have a huge, file.

[00:14:07] So if you’ve got a file that’s 30, 50 megs, that’s reasonable, that actually based on. The full color art that you include in a picture book, but Amazon charges delivery fees of 15 cents a meg. So if you’ve got 30 megs, then you cannot make a profit. So it’s that sort of thing that you run up against.

[00:14:28] You don’t think this will be an issue, but then it becomes an issue and you have to solve it.

[00:14:34] Sharon Skinner: So, for our listeners, would you please tell us the difference between flowable and static or non flowable?

[00:14:41] Darcy Pattison: Yes. So a flowable is a novel and in that the reader can change the font size and make it bigger or smaller, and then the text reflows from page to page. So you can’t say, look, on page 12 of this novel because. Each person’s ebook reader and each person’s font choices will change what text is on that page.

[00:15:04] But a non flowable, which is what we do for picture books, means that you have to make sure everything,, is on that page position correctly. So the art is there with the text in the correct position so that it reads well. Because if you have. The images here, but the text is right across the person’s face.

[00:15:25] That doesn’t work. it’s gotta be in the right position. So basically what I do is I upload images, a jpeg, that’s compressed and, processed in a way to make it a small but nice quality image. and that works really well then for these non flowable, picture books for the ebook readers.

[00:15:43] Sharon Skinner: That makes perfect sense. And another thing that you talk about in the book is the quality of. Offset versus print on demand, especially for picture books. Do you wanna talk a little bit to us about the differences and why that matters?

[00:16:00] Darcy Pattison: offset printing is the traditional printing method, and the offset printers are the gold standard. Quality. So if you want the best quality, and I know people who come at this as illustrators always want that quality there. you do offset printing, but that means that you are printing first, selling later.

[00:16:22] So you print first, then you have a stock of books, 10,000, 5,000, whatever you ordered that you have to warehouse and then fulfill. Somehow when a person orders it, you have to ship it to them. So there are ways to do that, and I understand why people do that. Sometimes I choose not to do that. I choose to go to a print on demand.

[00:16:41] Printer. That means that my book lives as a computer file on the printer server until there’s an order. So in this model, you sell first. Print later. So when there’s an order, then they’ll pull that file, they’ll print it, and most of the print on demand printers also will fulfill it for you. They’ll ship it.

[00:17:04] So I never touch a book. They just print and ship when they get an order. KDP does this, that’s Amazon and Lulu does it. That’s the backend that I use for my Shopify store and Lulu’s. quality is amazing. So, a couple years ago, KDP or Amazon forced everyone with picture books to go to a premium printing, which is a really high quality print on demand.

[00:17:29] 20 years ago, print on demand was not very. Good quality. It’s just a big printer, you know, like a ink jet, like your desktops. But the quality now is very good. So the, KDP, Amazon’s printing is very good. And then lulu, which I love, has an 80 pound paper. So they measure the weight of the paper, the thickness, by calling it pounds.

[00:17:53] How many pounds is it for a ream, which is. 500 pages or something. Anyway, 80 pounds is a good, quality. But what they also do then is they have a coated paper. So they put a coating on it so the ink sits right on top of it. It doesn’t get absorbed into the paper too much. and they turn out a really nice quality book.

[00:18:12] So I’m really pleased with their printing quality. Then the other one that people use is Ingram. so you do KDP first, then you add Ingram. What Ingram does is Ingram’s print on demand. Ingram Spark is a sister company to Ingram Wholesale, who is the largest wholesale distributor in the United States, and they distribute to the world.

[00:18:34] So you want your book in the wholesale market through Ingram., And then I add Lulu because they’re the backend of my Shopify store, and they also act as my warehouse if I have a big order for something. My book Magnet came out last year and I had an order from a, PBS station for 600 books.

[00:18:56] So that goes through lulu because their quality is great, their shipping is great. They’re, a really great supplier for me. Lots of information.

[00:19:05] Sharon Skinner: Lots of good information. Speaking of printing and the way that the books ship and all of that, I noted in your book publish in the Arc that I was honored to get a early copy of, that you talk about, you release all formats all at once.

[00:19:21] Darcy Pattison: Yes.

[00:19:21] Sharon Skinner: Do you wanna talk a little bit about the strategy behind that?

[00:19:24] Darcy Pattison: so very early on I decided to do that. I know that traditional publishers will issue a hardcover first, and then, they will go for a year and then if there is enough sales, they will do a paperback. So I actually had a novel from a traditional publisher very early on, and it did, well, but it didn’t do outstanding. And so the publisher said to me, you know, really the market for this book is paperbacks, but we can’t do a paperback because it didn’t sell enough in hardcover. And I thought, Hmm, that doesn’t track for me. I don’t understand that. If the market is paperback, why don’t you just do an original paperback?

[00:20:05] Then it would find the market and sell well, right? They said, yeah, but that’s not the way publishing works. And I thought then I can make these decisions. I can decide what format to publish in when. So I think people need to get their books. In the format they want from the distributor that they want from the online bookstore or wherever they order it from.

[00:20:27] And so I make it available as a hardcover, paperback, ebook and audiobook. Immediately they can choose what format they want and what, distributor they want.

[00:20:38] Sharon Skinner: Have you found, because I know Print on demand has gotten better and better, but there was a time when if you tried to get a picture book done through Print on demand, they would fall apart. Say it’s a paperback, it wouldn’t hold up as well as a hardback.

[00:20:52] Hardbacks were extremely expensive. Have you found that that has changed over the last few years?

[00:20:58] Darcy Pattison: I just think the quality of print on demand is so much better than it was. I mean, the industry has grown up in the last 20 years. The quality is good. It’s not excellent, but it is good. And the business model is what I need. So I know people complain about. Name a, print on demand publisher and someone is gonna complain.

[00:21:17] I know that, and personally, I’ve only had a few times when the quality was not good and immediately they made it right, they replaced it. So I’ve not had any particular problems with it, but I accept the limitations of print on demand because it gives me a business model that works.

[00:21:36] Sharon Skinner: what is one of the. Key things that we should take away from your book and your journey if we wanna embark on this same path, where would we start and, give me one or two of the key things that we should be thinking about?

[00:21:50] Darcy Pattison: First of all, what are your goals? There’s many reasons to publish a book. You can publish a book so that you can give it to, your children and your grandchildren That’s a legitimate, wonderful thing to do. There’s nothing wrong with that, but. Do you have a goal of selling a hundred copies?

[00:22:06] So, one of the early winners of the S-C-B-W-I Spark Award, which is the, award given to the best self-published book of the year. One of the early winners of that award was a woman who had a deaf child. So she wrote a story about the deaf community and her deaf child. That book in a niche market, even winning the award is not gonna sell a hundred thousand copies.

[00:22:32] It will, however, especially because of the award, sell thousands of copies. Maybe if she does. Things really well. And so what is your goal? Do you want to reach people in your community or do you want to have a wider reach? Do you want to have an international reach? What? are your goals until you know that you really don’t know?

[00:22:53] What decisions you need to make to do that. So, my goal is to win a Newberry, i’ll just say it,

[00:23:00] Sharon Skinner: I’m rooting for you.

[00:23:01] Darcy Pattison: Or now I do a lot of nonfiction. My goal is to win a Sibert award, which is the best nonfiction book of the year for the kids. I want a national and international market, and when I, decided to do my publishing company, I wanted to make a profit.

[00:23:16] So for the last five years, I’ve, sold over a hundred thousand dollars worth of books. So yeah, that, motivates me. I want to do that, but that doesn’t mean that’s the right goal for everyone. It may be selling 1000 copies of your book to people who are committed to, conservation of a certain location That may be the best goal for that book. So you really need to think about why am I doing this and what do I expect and if your goal is reach those thousand people, how can I reach those

[00:23:48] thousand people?

[00:23:49] Sharon Skinner: That’s great Advice. And I note that you also talk about marketing in publish. So you even cover that aspect. And as we know, many of us are uncomfortable with marketing, but you lay it out in a way that is comforting actually. You know, you talk about the way that you market and the options that we have in marketing.

[00:24:12] But you also talk about the barriers in reaching our target audience since we’re writing for kids, especially middle graders. So I really appreciated that you dig into that. But the thing I think that is the most, exciting about this book, Darcy, is not only that you’re sharing all this incredible information with us and showing us how you got to where you are.

[00:24:33] Which is so impressive, but also how encouraging you are for everyone along the way.

[00:24:40] Darcy Pattison: Oh, thank you I do want to be encouraging and I did want it to be a book. That talked about you, I mean, I can tell you what I do, but really if you’re reading this kind of book, you wanna know how can I do this? and so I really dig in and ask you to make decisions, to think about, questions, to go at this stage, what’s comfortable for me?

[00:24:59] Is it comfortable for me to do a lot of speaking engagements? You’re an introvert. You don’t want to, you don’t have to. You know it will mean certain things for your sales, but you have options at every point. And when I teach novel writing and revision and I teach picture book writing and revision, it always comes down to the author has options.

[00:25:19] And the owner of the publishing company also has options. You can choose to do this and not that, it will have consequences, but. You accept those because you are comfortable with them. I don’t think business should be agonizing. I think it should be fun. And I, do find it to be fun in a different way than writing, but I think it’s fun.

[00:25:40] And I really want this to be about you, about your writing journey, about your decision that you want to bring the book to market so that you can put it in the hands of certain people, certain kids or certain adults or whatever applies. And so then what are the decisions you need to make? How can you make it a

[00:25:59] reality?

[00:26:00] Sharon Skinner: That’s great. and I love that approach and it’s very Darcy, it’s very you. The voice is you. I mean, I was reading the book and I’m hearing you in my head and , even where you got. Into the math, which is not my favorite thing. I’m like, yes, I’m along ride ’cause it’s Darcy talking to me.

[00:26:17] Darcy Pattison: You know that math is the hardest for me too. I never took an accounting class. Never. So the accounting has just been a bear. It’s been very hard.

[00:26:25] Sharon Skinner: and you talked about that in the book. I, don’t think there’s anything you didn’t cover I can’t think of anything you did not cover.

[00:26:31] Darcy Pattison: Well, I do know people who, would say, you must. Offset print and I respect that for their books. But I don’t think that’s necessary for everyone. I think print on demand works very well for, I think the majority of people, they would disagree. So I know that not everyone agrees with everything I say in the book, and that’s fine with me because we all must do this.

[00:26:54] In a way that works for us and for our books. You can’t just say, this is the one and only way to do it.

[00:27:02] That’s ridiculous.

[00:27:04] Sharon Skinner: It’s what I always say about writing, process is personal

[00:27:07] Darcy Pattison: Yeah, and publishing is a process also. So one of the things that’s important to do, especially in those early years, is to find the processes that work for you. So every single step of the way, I’m going, okay, how do I do this?

[00:27:20] You know, how can I do it in a way that I can repeat? So I’m finding repeatable processes that make the overall process of publishing work.

[00:27:28] Sharon Skinner: That’s great. So. At this point, I would like to ask you to give our listeners an action item that they can take away from this talk and help them on their journey.

[00:27:41] Darcy Pattison: Yeah, so I think basically you really need to think about what is your purpose? You know, what are your goals for. This particular book, why do you want to publish it? If it’s because, you want to reach the deaf community or to have people have a better understanding of that community.

[00:27:59] That’s great. if you want to make a hundred thousand dollars, that’s great. It just depends on what is your goal. And it really needs to come down to what is the book? What are my strengths, what am I willing to do outside of my comfort zone? And, how can I reach the people that I need to reach to do this?

[00:28:18] It’s always a matter of finding those channels and. again, they’re different for every book, every person. How can I find the channels that will put the book into the right hands?

[00:28:27] Sharon Skinner: And from. Me i’m gonna say two things. Number one, I really highly recommend that you go and join this Kickstarter so you can get your hands on this book. It’s so full of information, it’s solid, it’s really spelled out. And if you have even considered self-publishing, this is a book for you.

[00:28:46] And the second thing is think about how many hats you’re willing to wear.

[00:28:51] Darcy puts it all out there, how many hats you can wear. If you wanna wear all the hats, that’s great. If you’re not willing or able to wear all the hats, who are you gonna bring in?

[00:29:01] Who are gonna wear those other hats? Because I know Darcey, you mentioned that you actually have someone else who does your CIP information.

[00:29:09] Darcy Pattison: yes. Cataloging and publishing information that goes on the copyright page. I did at one point try to DIY it and I decided, nope, I’m gonna pay for that one. And I pay for copy editing, of course I pay illustrators. if I needed to, I would bring in someone to do marketing. I would pay for freelance people at any point that I needed to.

[00:29:30] If you need a book coach, it’s worth it.

[00:29:32] Sharon Skinner: Yeah, absolutely. I have an editor, so even a good editor needs a good editor. I think that’s really , an important point. And if you’re not a book designer, maybe get a book designer if you’re doing picture books and you’re not an art director, if you don’t know the layout exactly how it should look you can hire people to do those things, to help you with those things.

[00:29:53] Darcy Pattison: Yes, and it may be that the next time you don’t need that designer, but the first time you do. In fact, I hired a designer this past year because I’ve done. Illustrated books. But this year I did a photo illustrated book. I went to Prague Zoo again, those primary sources. And I talked to, the scientists there, at Prague Zoo, about the Przewalski horses, which are endangered.

[00:30:17] And they said to me, we will give you photos. And I said, oh, okay, let’s do this book. but I’d never done a Photo Illustrated book, so I needed a book designer for that. So I went to reedsy.com, a great place to look for freelance people and found a great, designer, and she did a fabulous job on it.

[00:30:37] So that book is called Not Extinct, just out this summer,

[00:30:41] Sharon Skinner: I’m excited to get my hands on that. I haven’t read it yet, but it’s on my to-do list. It’s a beautiful looking book. All your books are fun, and attractive, and they have great covers. they’re still you. All of the books that you’re writing and you’re publishing are still you.

[00:30:56] I remember the journey of, oliver k Woodman, that book came out. Quite a while ago,

[00:31:02] Darcy Pattison: 20 years ago, Yeah.

[00:31:04] Sharon Skinner: but the books that you’re writing now are still you. They’re very, Darcy voiced and Darcy focused so I love that you’ve got that continuity , even from the books that were published by a publisher other than yourself.

[00:31:16] Darcy Pattison: Yeah. You know, that’s branding. You, you want some kind of consistent look for your books. And I think if you lay my books out there is a look to them. you

[00:31:24] can look at it and go, oh, that’s a Darcy book. Yeah.

[00:31:28] Sharon Skinner: absolutely. Darcy, is there anything else that we haven’t covered that you would like to impart to our listeners before we do the sign off?

[00:31:35] Darcy Pattison: No, I just wanna encourage you. I know it’s hard. It’s hard for me, you know, to sit down to spill my guts on the page, I know it’s hard. But when you go to a school or you talk to a kid who has read that book. It’s worth it. It is a strange thing we do to put our thoughts on page, that we hope that page will communicate the same thing to the reader and put that same image in their head.

[00:32:03] It’s a really strange thing we do, and yet I think even in today’s crazy world, I think it’s an important thing to do. So I wanna encourage you, you can do this.

[00:32:12] It’s not easy, but it’s possible.

[00:32:15] Sharon Skinner: Those are fabulous words of encouragement which is not unexpected from you, Darcy. So thank you so much for that. So Darcy, where can we find you? Out there in the world,

[00:32:27] Darcy Pattison: My books are@mimshousebooks.com, M-I-M-S-H-O-U-S-E-B-O-O-K s.com. I have a personal website@darcyPattison.com and those are the two main places. If you want to know more about self-publishing, you can look@indykidsbooks.com.

[00:32:44] Sharon Skinner: That’s Darcy’s Substack where she shares a lot of great information.

[00:32:48] Darcy, you are a wealth of information and a wonderfully generous and kind person, and I’m so glad to know you.

[00:32:54] Thanks for being here.

[00:32:55] Darcy Pattison: Thank you. It was really great to talk to you.

[00:32:57] Sharon Skinner: Bye for now.

[00:32:58] Darcy Pattison: Bye.