On this Coronation weekend I am absolutely delighted to welcome children’s author Iona Chisholm to my blog. Iona’s books about royalty make perfect follow-up presents for youngsters who’ve been watching proceedings on the television or been involved in parties and activities at school. Here’s Iona to tell us about the books, her writing journey plus she offers some useful tips for publishing illustrated books on Amazon KDP:

It was an unexpected opportunity to write that led me to self-publish my first children’s picture book on Amazon. Isolating with Covid in 2022, I wanted to be productive and so I challenged myself to write a rhyming story about The Queen’s forthcoming Platinum Jubilee. ‘Jubilee Bee’ was born!
I experimented with collage illustrations using paper, card and magazines. I inserted photographs of them into my word document. It proved straightforward to publish this as a Kindle edition. However, I encountered teething problems producing a paperback and made several mistakes. Firstly, I selected an 8 by 6-inch book size and, secondly, I had issues because my word document didn’t convert properly into paperback through the Kindle Kid’s Book Creator.

By the time I produced ‘Jubilee Bee and the King’s Christmas Present’, I had learned that an 8.5 inch square book size was best. Further, if I transferred my word document into a PowerPoint presentation with 8.5 inch square slides and saved as a PDF, it converted perfectly into paperback.

I’ve now released my third book, ‘Jubilee Bee and the Coronation’.

Each storybook I’ve written contains suggested questions and associated facts for children, whilst promoting looking after nature, the earth and each other. The positive feedback that I have received always refers to these features.

I learned recently that Amazon picture books must be fewer than 43 pages to be able to retail at an affordable £5.99 and produce a reasonable profit. I’d done so much work for the Coronation that I ended up with an 87-page document! Therefore, I split it in half and published my fourth book, ‘The Coronation of King Charles III and Queen Camilla, The Queen Consort.’ This non-fiction text contains acrostic poems, illustrated anagram puzzles and journal space to make a personal souvenir. Self-publishing allowed me to quickly utilise all my work and ideas.

I am proud of my writing journey and the progress that I am making. I have now produced a second edition of ‘Jubilee Bee’ in an 8.5 inch size. Holding my set of 4 books in my hand was a real high point!

Wanting to make my family proud and improving with every project really motivates me and I am finding it easier to prioritise writing, dip my toe into social media and integrate into the online writing community where I have felt welcomed, supported and nurtured. Everyone has been so keen to share their experiences and I hope to be able to encourage other newcomers to press that ‘publish my book’ button!

As a mum of four, primary school Governor (with a focus on writing) and keen gardener, I strongly believe in the inspiration and well-being that we can all gain from words and the outside world. Therefore, I aim to promote nature, learning and positivity in whatever I write, whether it be an article for Garden News, a poem, a short story for a woman’s magazine or my next book! In the future, I hope to complete and publish a novel, but must remind myself to take things one step at a time….

Find out more about Iona at www.ionachisholm.co.uk or follow her on Instagram Ionachisholm01 for gardening and writing posts!