CAMP TOMBSTONE: Night of the Pickled Donut

This has been a fun little project. Back in the summer, I thought this story would sit in my hard drive and go no further. I wrote the original script when I had an agent. She loved it but couldn't sell it, so I thought that was the end of the road for this little story. But during the summer, listening to a podcast called the Self Publishing Show, I heard Karen Inglis talk about her own self published children's books. Until then, I never thought self publishing was an option for children's authors. The simple reason that kids don't buy ebooks and as that it the primary income for most self published authors, it wasn't a viable business.

But, there was something I didn't consider. The reason that self published authors make most of their money through ebooks is because the paperbacks are too expensive. The printing costs are high meaning the cover price has to be high in order to make any profit. Even just a 50p profit margin is enough to price yourself out of the market, so for many KDP authors, paperbacks are simply not worth the effort. However, children's books are shorter. Less pages = lower printing costs. This makes a huge difference.

So I decided to hold back on the illustrations and trim the story to see how it would play out. Any scene that did not push the story forward was chopped, dialogue stripped down, descriptions to the point. As far as the story is concerned, it worked wonders. The story is better paced. Tighter, faster and funnier.

The cover was a bit of monster. What looked great on computer looked terrible printed out. It took about four or five proofs to get it right.

I do have ideas for a second book, but held back from including chapter one in this book - I also made sure to give it a decent ending so the book acts as a stand alone story - there's nothing left hanging as there was with Buttercup. I'm not going to rush into book 2 though. I wanted to get this out just to get a feel for kids books on KDP.

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Colin Mulhern

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