At the start of the year, my friend and I did something really cool — we published a baby book together. It was fun planning out what the book would look like, getting together to talk about our project at a Starbuck’s (obviously) and putting it all together. I wrote the story, she did the illustrations, and we took over a month trying to figure out how to self-publish on Amazon without ruining the illustrations.
I thought it would be such a joyous moment, publishing my first book, thought it would feel exciting to brag to people that I did something I had only dreamed of doing. It didn’t really work that way, though. Imposter Syndrome was taking hold of my brain and there was nothing I could do about it. After the exciting moment of hitting publish wore off, I started to worry about what people would think. Would they hate the writing? Would they think it sounds stupid? Would they hate the illustrations? Would they think they could have written a book like this and make more money than us? Would people laugh in our faces for even trying?
There were a lot of ‘would theys’ running through my mind, more than I thought could fit in there at one time. I always knew I would have some nervous feelings and doubt in that I could do something like publish a book – I just didn’t know it would take a hold of me so strongly.
Some of it came down to the fact that the book didn’t look exactly how we imagined it to. We couldn’t do an actual board book, which is best for babies who like to chew and rip at pages, because Amazon doesn’t offer that type of printing. We had to change some of the colours we used on the illustrations as when it was scanned into the computer it didn’t take properly. We had to re-imagine what the layout would look like as the book needed to be a certain number of pages to be published and the writing wouldn’t show up as nicely as we thought it would on the pages.
Not only did I have the regular Imposter Syndrome, I was having doubts on how our book looked. Changing styles and formats can happen when publishing, of course, that’s nothing new. Having to do such things yourself is stressful. A lot more stressful than people make it out to be. This is also why people don’t self-publish automatically. We decided we didn’t care and just wanted to do it, a thought-process that has taken me literally over a decade to realize.
Even though the publishing process wasn’t as exciting as I thought it would be, I’m still feeling excited for the future. We’ve already started on a second baby book, getting ready to publish that bad boy by spring. As any writer knows, sometimes you just need to get the story out, regardless if anyone reads it. It may not be a novel (yet), but it’s a fun way to tell a story. It may not have been perfect, but what road is? Stop listening to that Imposter Syndrome and go for your dreams; it may not lead you where you thought, but you’ll have taken the chance on yourself and that means so much more.
Want to check it out? I made a whole page dedicated to my published book right here on this blog.
Juniper and Daisies 