Publishing my First Craft Book, Part 1
Updated: Jun 16, 2022
This is a 4-part series where I share the process of writing my first ever Crepe Paper Flower book. Click on the links below to read the whole series.
PART 1: Finding a publisher and receiving my first book contract (this post)
PART 2: Writing my book and photography woes
PART 3: Things get real! Editing and putting together the final copy.
PART 4: Marketing and announcing the news!
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PART 1: To quote my favourite guilty pleasure TV Show The Bachelor, "Let the journey begin!"
A snapshot of my book proposal. I designed it on Keynote on my Macbook.
After that crazy whirlwind pandemic year that was 2020, I decided to embark on a new adventure for 2021: I wanted to publish a flower-making craft book.
Truthfully, it's a pretty long story on how this decision came to be. I'll spare you the details, but to summarize: I was in a bad place emotionally, and while I was praying and chatting with God about a completely different matter, he shared a vision of this book with me, and asked me "Why not give this a shot?"
How curious it was, the timing! Publishing a book had always been a fantasy to me, and I'm sure many of us as artists had the same dream too. Yet, it was a fantasy I didn't take too seriously, it laid in the back of my mind under a pile of other dreams as I witnessed other paper florists reveal their books. I didn't think it was possible unless a publisher approached me first. Nonetheless, on that New Year's Eve, I felt like God was telling me to go for it... and so I did.
So here I am, documenting the entire process, from the very beginning until the book materializes (if it does). Most of these posts were written in real-time, and I came back at the end only to elaborate on certain details and 'touch up' the text.
If you're an aspiring craft book author, I hope you find it somewhat useful, and if not, at least somewhat entertaining - enjoy the journey!
JANUARY 2021
Pages and pages of research!
I began my journey with RESEARCH with the goal of putting together a short list of publishers who appealed to me. Mainly, I was looking at their craft releases and design aesthetic. I knew I wanted an overseas publisher who would have a larger audience, so I targeted US and UK publishing houses. Here's some things I did for my research:
I studied each publisher's website to get a feel for their brand, business goals, and their priorities (for instance, some publishers only featured Asian authors, or some focused more on cookbooks rather than crafts even though they published both categories)
I went to my local bookstore to see what each publishing house offered
I flipped through the books to study their designs, layouts, cover designs, and overall aesthetics
I visited the Instagram pages of each publisher to see how they marketed their authors.
I also studied the Crepe Paper Flower books that I already owned (i.e. competing titles) and made a list of how my book would differ from them.
From there, I compiled my top choices, studied their submission criteria and prepared my proposals. The proposals I sent out were generally pretty similar: I shared about who I am, what I envisioned for the book, who the target audience was, etc. Plus, I included competing titles and sample chapters. Most publishers wanted a text document, so I would send that, plus an extra link to a Keynote presentation I had prepared (with much more visuals), just as a bonus.
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FUN FACT: The final book does look quite different from the one I proposed... though most of the projects are the same! For instance, I initially wanted to include a story-telling element in the book, where I share personal stories linked to each flower. I'm glad we didn't go with that idea, because it was hard enough writing the instructions!
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Once all the proposals were ready, on January 21st, I took a big leap of faith into the unknown and emailed 5 publishers.
Something that my research revealed was that the standard time for publishers to respond was 2-3 months, so it was a total surprise when one publisher emailed me within 15 minutes of me clicking 'send' on my proposal. I was stunned to get a response so quickly, I thought it was one of those auto-replies. What a miracle that it wasn't!
The email was a short one from a lovely lady called Ame from the publisher David & Charles. She shared that she liked the proposal but she had to discuss it with her team, which was great validation and a very exciting email to read!