The photo features the first two of my children’s book that became available on Amazon.com about a week ago: Clyde and Friends Three Books in One and The Duck Upside Down.
Amazon.com and others are now offering eleven of my children’s books in hardcover format and with 70-lb paper pages for additional durability.
It was quite a project finding a printer who would do them at price points that worked for me and hopefully for readers. Most printers I contacted were set up in a way that I’d have needed to buy a whole bunch of copies at a time to get a low enough cost per copy. I finally decided on IngramSpark. They needed to have all the files reformatted. Once again Gail Nelson came through and reformatted them all for me.
I’m proud of how they came out.
With Love,
Russ
Russ Towne's A Grateful Man 
They look great! Did you go with Lightning Source?
Sort of. I think. I went with IngramSpark, and entity I believe is connected to Lightning Source in some major way.
Russ
What great news! I recall, with extreme fondness, the books of my childhood and of course, the hardcover lasted until there were grandchildren in the family! 🙂
Me too. I’ve started collecting some that were my favorites as a child and refer to them from time to time to attempt to ascertain the attributes that made them my favorites. “Horton Hears a Who” is my favorite. My favorite line from it is: “A person’s a person no matter how small.” In tribute to it, my book “V.G. and Dexter Dufflebee” has a line that is repeated throughout the story: “I have big ideas for a little guy.” The little guy is only as tall as the length of the nose of the person he rescues but his big ideas and efforts rescue the big man.
Russ
Oops-I see you did mention your printer as Spark. Were they good to work with? Congratulations on the new format!
Their site was good to work with and I found their terms to be pretty reasonable, however in my judgment their phone support was terrible. I tried three times to reach a human being and the elapsed time was over an hour. The first two times I tried to call I had to hang up after a very long holding period. I believe the wait the first time was about 45 minutes before I had to hang up. When I finally reached a human she said I would definitely get a shipment by that Friday (so I’d have them for the Parent Resources Fair the next day) if I approved them the following morning. I did, but the books actually arrived the following Tuesday (3 or 4 days late and far too late to do any good for the fair.) That was after I paid quite a bit of extra money to ensure they’d arrive on time.
Russ
So, was the product of the quality you had expected?
Yes. I think the quality so far has been fine.
Russ
Great, I prefer hardbound and will look into this in the future.
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Looks great, love hardbacks too, I do treasure the ones I have though!
Also, I like the idea of combining the Clyde and I series.
Thank you Mrs. P!
Russ
they turned out lovely, russ. even with all the behind the scenes trouble )
Thank you, Beth!
Russ