I recently heard of an expat author, publisher and illustrator of children’s books. Her name is Sophie Kittredge and her books about dogs are quite beautiful. I asked Sophie to share some of what she has learned from her experience with you here. Over to you, Sophie:

I work as a freelance illustrator. It has, therefore, been a natural progression for me to write and illustrate my own children’s books. I use my childhood travels and family pets as inspiration.
I was born in France, and I grew up in Europe, Southeast Asia, the Far East, and the Middle East. I graduated from Art College in England with a BA in Illustration, then moved to New York City where I worked in the publishing and animation businesses. I now live in coastal South Carolina with my family.

My book series is called ‘Tails around the World’. I have two self-published books in this series and I’m working on the third. The ten lessons I’ve learned along the writing road are: 

1. Writing children’s books is harder than I thought.
2. It’s important to make every word and sentence count when you’re limited to 1000 words.
3. Read your children’s story out loud, because that’s the way it will often be read.
4. Rewrite and get many pairs of eyes to proof your text.
5. Don’t use text to describe an illustration, that’s been done, presumably by the picture.
6. When incorporating foreign words be sure to get a native speaker to proof read. This can avoid embarrassing mistakes!!
7. Although I’ve set my books in the past, I have not attempted to be slavishly historically accurate. That has given me more creative freedom, and fewer headaches!
8. I will probably get a professional picture book editor to look at my next manuscript before I publish it.
9. I did not research the market before making my books, they were made purely for fun and creative pleasure. Next time, I might attempt a more commercial idea.
10. Next time, I will spend more time on the plot. I tend to be very focused on the illustrations, and assume they will carry the weight of the story.

​This month sees the launch and the Worldwide Virtual Book Tour for the fourth edition of A Career in Your Suitcase.

As part of our promotional efforts, my co-author, Colleen Reichrath-Smith and I, have done a few things that we hope will guarantee we not only sell books but that we share the news of the book as far and wide as possible.

​One of the things we have done, is to get ourselves a speaking engagement or opportunity to present the book everywhere we go. Colleen has already been doing this in Washington DC and The Hague. I have done so in Miri, Sarawak and next week I go to Singapore to run workshops for Shell Outpost, CRCE and a private writing workshop too.

Donating a copy of Career in Your Suitcase to the library at Outpost Miri, with Annie Irlapati
When CRCE asked me to make a short promotional video with them, to promote the workshop Jacinta Noonan and I are running called Passionate About Your Portable Career on 15 May, I jumped at the chance. Using Google Hangout, we recorded this interview by webcam, though I was in Brunei, and they in Singapore.

When you produce a video you get the chance to embed it on your website and share it on social media platforms. CRCE want people to book to attend my workshop. I want to sell more books.
Do you think you should consider creating a video too?

Colleen Reichrath-Smith and I have set aside April  and May as the months we really promote our newly released book A Career in Your Suitcase. We are so determined to make sure that more people get to hear about it than ever before (this is its 4th edition) that we share here our top six methods. Feel free to copy our ideas. We’d be flattered.

1. Make a book trailer. We use Camtasia to make ours, combining not only recordings of we authors speaking about the book, but also book jackets, our photos and some music. I pay my son to make them for me and it takes him about five hours. Videos are the most shared items sent out via social media, so it was no-brainer that we made one too, sending the link to all our supporters so they can share it too. Here is the link to our book trailer.
2. Create a website just for the book. If you only plan to publish a few books then it can make sense to give each their own unique website, using the book name as its URL. Colleen is a career counsellor so it makes sense that she manage our site. Be sure to keep your site dynamic with an active blog, a call for contributions (we want your portable career stories) and links where people can buy the book in print and kindle format. Here is the link to career in your suitcase.
3. Create and send a press release. As the publisher at Summertime Publishing, it was vital that I create a database of expatriate clubs, organisations, websites, magazines and journalists, who were interested in my niche – books by and for people living abroad. My list so far has about 400 names on it and so, as soon as a Summertime book is available on all the Amazons worldwide in print and kindle format, I prepare a release that inlcudes all the relevant information about the book, written in a way that people could lift the text and use it as it is. I offer review copies and add contact details, suggesting the authors may be available for interview or to write articles for their publication. Our press release will go out in April. 
4. Run a worldwide book tour. Grab every opportunity to present the book, at book signings, by giving workshops and by donating books to libraries. Take photos of every event so you have more stuff to share on the website and via social media. But a book tour does not simply work if it includes you in person. Additionally, create a proof PDF of your book (put the word ‘proof’ on the pages so folk can’t copy it), create a Facebook event and invite everyone you know to do a review of the book on Amazon, or Goodreads or on their blog or in a magazine in exchange for a free PDF/kindle copy. If you see folk in person then you can give them a ‘real’ book to review. A review is a great way to get the word about your book out there. The official date of our book tour is 19th April. On that day we will be sure to have a Google Alert set up for Career in Your Suitcase to be sure we ‘catch’ every mention of our book out there and then, in turn we will share that with our networks too. We have also set the #careerinyoursuitcase4 hashtag on Twitter for people to use so we can track all tweets. 
5. Do a live book launch where you live. We always encourage authors to run a book launch event for their book once it is freely available on Amazon worldwide. We usually run the Hague events at the American Book Centre, because they have a room upstairs for just this kind of event and we can do our own catering. In addition, ABC, advertise the event to a database of book lovers and buy a stock of the book too, so it is win-win-win. They often even put a display of the book in the window too for a few days! We invite all our local supporters, the press and even ExpatTV along as well as all those who have helped with the book – editors, designers, proof-readers and so on. It’s a bit of a celebration. We run ours from 6-8pm on a Friday usually, and have drinks and a few nibbles on offer. During the launch, we have an MC who supports the work of the book. We will have Canadian Deborah Valentine, who is executive director of a local expatriate support network called Access. Then Colleen and I will read extracts from the book for 10-15 minutes before we open for questions.
6. Join Kindle KDP select. When you produce a kindle version of a book, you are encouraged to enrol in KDP select. This means that you can select a five day period in which the book will be available on Kindle for FREE. We have set our KDP days for just before our live launch (12-16 May) but after the worldwide virtual book tour. This will allow us to give promotion another boost and keep momentum going.

Just over a month ago, Brit in the Dominican Republic, Lindsay de Feliz, saw the publication of her first book, a memoir, What About Your Saucepans? With no previous experience but a determination that can be seen leaping from the pages of a story that includes attempted homicide, bankruptcy and politics, de Feliz leapt into action. Today I learned that What About Your Saucepans was Summertime Publishing’s bestseller on in both kindle and printed formats for the month of March. Here, Lindsay shares her success story:

I wasn’t a writer but I knew I had a good story to tell, so I wrote it down, got in touch with Jo and she and my editor Jane Dean helped me to turn my pedestrian account of the last 10 years of my life into a real book.  Jo told me the publication date would be February 27 and a few days before then I checked on Amazon.com and there it was. A truly amazing feeling. The next stage was to get people to buy it, although I was somewhat apprehensive in case they didn’t  like it, and I really had no idea what I should be doing, never having written or sold a book before. I decided on  a staged approach,  and I have just finished stage one.

• Setting up details on author central for Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
• Finding people to be local distributors. I used friends and family and asked Jo to send them 50 -100 copies of the book each. My mother for the UK, me, a friend in the east of the DR and a friend in Canada.
• I sent an advance PDF to a couple of friends to write reviews on Amazon.com as soon as the book appeared.
• One of them also posted a review on the main DR expat forum with details of how to buy the book.
• I posted on Facebook, not only my page but relevant group pages such as Dominican spouses and my blog/book page.
• I emailed everyone who has contacted me via the blog in the last 18 months, some 100 or so people.
• I carried on blogging and blogged about the book. I put a picture of it on the main page of the blog, linked through to Amazon, expanded the page about the book. I carry on blogging a couple of times a week and mention the book every other time.
• Once people posted on FB or on the forum that they had read the book and enjoyed it, saying they could not put it down, and when would the next one come out, I hassled and badgered them to write a review on the forum or FB so more people would buy it, and also on the place they had bought the book from.

​
Stage one results

• I checked Amazon.com sales on a weekly basis and it appears that since launch at the end of February up to the end of March I have sold 50 books on that site. The site has sixteen 5 star reviews and one 4 star review.
• The book is regularly in the top 10 on the Canadian Amazon site in the Caribbean section, and has been number one in Kindle sales, Caribbean too. Every time it is number one I tweet it and put it on Facebook.  I don’t  know sales numbers yet.
• A week after launch, the book was number one in kindle sales and number two in book sales, both Caribbean section, on the UK Amazon site. It has dropped back a bit now though.
• My mother has sold 30 of her 50 to friends and family, many of whom have written reviews on Amazon.co.uk which has thirteen 5 star reviews and one 4 star. Friend in Canada has sold 22 of her 75 and is about to go to the national book store chains to ask them to stock it.
• Friend on the east coast of the DR has sold 7 of her 18, and has taken 10 to a local gift shop to sell.
• I had a sales and signing session at a north coast bar, as a lot of expats live there, and I sold 25 and two people took 15 to sell on for me.
• I have been asked to represent British writers in the DR at the Annual Book Fair in the capital city Santo Domingo

As the reviews were so good, my confidence began to grow and I am now carrying out the next stage.

• I contacted the newspaper where I grew up and they interviewed my mother face to face and me via Skype. I sent them a picture of me and one of the book cover and the article will be published on March 3. Readers will be told they can by the book on Amazon.co.uk, or via my mother while her stocks last. I will reorder more for her from Jo if she needs them.
• I have written articles for www.expatsblog.com, entered a writing competition there (didn’t win but had 500 FB shares) , article for www.expatfocus.com and www.britishexpats.com all of which have links to the Amazon sites at the bottom of my article. I haven’t heard if the British expat site will publish the article yet.  I will keep on with the articles for as many sites as I can.
• I have contacted a friend who has a PR agency in the UK and she is getting in touch with the BBC and Woman’s Hour to see if we can set up some interviews.
• I have been interviewed by Claudia of www.expatclic.com and that will be published in May. The book is now featured in the expatclic blog. That was thanks to the press release organised by Jo and Renata at www.expatbookshop.com .
• I have also been contacted by www.theculturetrip.com who want me to write articles on the DR and have agreed to sell the book via their website.
• I am going to get in touch with national press in Canada, the US and the UK and see if I can get them to review the book. That will not be easy but in order to make the next leap in sales I need national press exposure. They can only ignore me and I will nag until they say yes if needs be.
• I am going to send free copies/pdf/kindle version to fellow bloggers to see if they will read and review for me.

My goal is for the book to be a best seller and then a film. Oscars here we come!