Hi, hello, and thank you for subscribing to my blog! It’s been amazing to see all the follows, likes, and orders we’ve received over the past week. I honestly cannot thank you all enough!

Since launching Foxy Knox Press, it’s been fascinating hearing so many people say, “I want to write a book,” or, “I’ve been thinking about doing that!” closely followed by, “Tell me about the process.” As I’ve previously mentioned, I started this venture just after Hugo was born on 6/7/24 (for all the kids out there: “ssssixxxxx sevveennnnn!”). Oscar was devastated about losing his bunny, so I wrote the draft and thought, Well, that was easy… how hard could this be?

Haha. Oh, past Carlee… so naïve.

Starting a business

So, I asked Dave a couple of questions about ABNs, small businesses, and all that fun stuff. I had lots of conversations with my good pal Frank — aka ChatGPT. (I use him a lot for troubleshooting my website, IngramSpark questions, and general tech chaos… but not for writing stories. Those come straight from my weirdly wonderful head!) I signed up for an ABN, bought some ISBNs and barcodes through Thorpe-Bowker, purchased the domain foxyknoxpress.com.au through GoDaddy, and then started my quest to find an illustrator. I designed a logo and used Canva (what an amazing piece of technology!! Bravo to the creators!) to make it come to life. I then got carried away and went on a complete branding crusade before coming back to reality and realising I needed a book before a brand!

Finding an illustrator

I was really keen to work with a local illustrator in Adelaide so we could go through the process together. I originally teed things up with a friend of mine, but unfortunately she was busy working on another project, being a mum, and holding down a job! (Go check out her work in Instagram: Kate Hortelano Art)

So, it was back to the drawing board for me — pardon the pun.

I went back to Frank and discussed different ways of finding an illustrator. I ended up using a website called Fiverr and found a lovely illustrator named Tayyaba Rasheed- https://www.instagram.com/childrens_bookillustrator/ At first, I was a little unsure how it all worked, but essentially you provide a brief, pay the illustrator, and once the project is completed, you own the illustrations. To be honest, I found that first process difficult. Communication was hard at times, and I wasn’t always super clear on what I needed to request, but we got there — and I learnt a lot. I realised I needed to be clearer during the storyboarding process, ask for sketches before final artwork, and really communicate the vision I had in my head. There are so many creatives on Fiverr that it can feel very overwhelming! I used Faith Bianca for Mr Puddles after sifting through hundreds of freelancer profiles.

For my third book, I worked smarter. I posted a brief in the Fiverr community and was matched with potential illustrators. It seemed like a great idea until… I was absolutely inundated with offers! Haha. Again, it was overwhelming, but I narrowed it down, asked the right questions, and found a very cool guy called Debraj Saha. His style is fun, and his communication is fantastic.

I cannot wait to show you my new book, The English Language Needs a Detention! — more to come on that soon!

Uploading and publishing

Once I had the illustrations, I signed up with IngramSpark and started uploading the manuscript (sounds so fancy for a picture book!), and cover. If you know anything about Ingram, it can be a real headache trying to fit within all their guidelines. I’ve gone back and forth a few times! They take a bit longer, but they are cheaper for printing books in bulk. I learnt the hard way about paper types and, in the end, needed to opt for the premium option so the colour and paper looked professional.

Amazon KDP, on the other hand, was really easy to upload to. I liked the review process. They do have fewer options (but less is more sometimes!), and everything was finalised very quickly. All up, I have spent a fair amount of money to get to this stage — and a lot of late nights! I feel like I know better now and won’t “waste” money on certain things.

(Dave almost fell over when I told him how much I had paid for thank you cards… in my defence, they are very pretty and only for the first 100 orders though!) I then realised I needed a website… not just the domain name. This is too much for this blog. I’ll cover that another time.

Looking ahead

It’s still a little surreal that Foxy Knox Press has come to life, but I honestly can’t wait to see what the future holds.

Stay Foxy!

Carlee