How I Made a Book in Less Than 2 Months with No Free Time
2016 started off great. I had just graduated from UCF with a BS in Computer Engineering, and just started working full time. For Christmas my mom bought me a brand new Wacom tablet, and I was determined to put it in good use. The tablet comes in handy because it took no learning curve, since it feels like I’m drawing by hand. I used to have to use the regular mouse pad for sketching, inking, and coloring, which was a pain because I was limited with things like pressure sensitivity.
My drawing process used to be unconventional and borderline nonsensical. I would sketch and ink something by hand, then use a free scanning app for my phone, only to color it in MSPaint. Yes, MSPaint. I was finally convinced to start using Photoshop and Illustrator like a normal person in 2014.
Now modernized, I wanted to do something big with my new tablet. I kept hearing how adult coloring books were all the rage, but I didn’t want to draw a bunch of shapes and patterns. My biggest interest is drawing comics, so I realized I could just draw up a bunch of comic book panels with blank speech bubbles. This was great for me, as I didn’t have to think of a plot or serious character design; things that were preventing me from doing my own comics. “Comics-Inspired Adult Coloring Book” was born.
While regular people at this step would start planning out pages, I just decided to start out drawing the cover. Having never done a book cover before, I finished it in a couple hours and posted it on Facebook to a pretty decent response.
It was a great feeling, knowing that I could potentially have my first book out in the world. Shortly after that I did one of the first full pages. After that I started planning how many pages I wanted done, how each page should look, and how long it should take me from page 1 to publishing. Strongth was still in the back of my mind, and I was still working, so I know I had to really take advantage of the tiny amount of free time I had every day.
The average coloring book had at least fifty-something pages, with half the amount in actual images to color. I planned for thirty 8.5x11 inch images, picking the best from fifty page ideas I brainstormed.
Sketching, inking and formatting were the three phases I broke the work up into. I made sure no matter what happens, every day I came home from work I made sure to knock out at least two to four rough sketches a day with no excuses. That took about nine days.
Inking is a very time consuming task, but I made sure I was knocking out at least one a day and up to eight every weekend. This took less than four weeks.
The next step was formatting and making sure the book was ready to be published. Originally I planned on using Adobe Indesign, but I found it way too complicated for what I needed. I ended up slapping everything together in a Word doc.
Since I was self-publishing, I was between using Blurb and Createspace for uploading the book. I found Createspace to be a little cheaper, even though Blurb has way more printing options. Both have the print on demand model, so I didn’t have to buy anything upfront. Super convenient.
By early March I had my book live on Amazon. This was more fun and straightforward than any app I’ve ever done, and it took less than two months. Can’t wait to do more!
Happy Holidays! You’re probably annoyed by my constant book promotion, so check out my website and my newest app. Shoot me an email if you happen to know anything about marketing this thing, haha.
