ow Karen for her inspired freeform beadd tutorials. She had a hard time originally
to mainstream publishers. She says
onse was silence, and one letter explainet simply wasn’t there for such a book.
side for a couple of years, before stumalization that I could do it all myself.
ailblazer in the world of self publishing.
ered the amazing world of print-onng, with direct access to the Amazon
ew the software I’d need, I had experinotes and other how-to instructions.”
ok off on Amazon. “Truthfully, I never
eform Peyote Beading would sell so well
gely envisioned it as something that I
I taught my classes. But it took on a life
rst year of publication it even hit the top
ading category on two memorable oce the 10,000 mark in Amazon’s rankings.
ing to receive an email from halfway
from someone who has just purchased
etting set to give freeform peyote a go
about her current publishing project.
year, I’m working on the sequel volin Freeform Peyote Beading. With Exto take everything I’ve learned from
wo books and from the last four years as
nt online beading community and crew, expanded volume packed to the gills
and ideas.”
net. Each book is a full-time project, taking five to twelve
months to complete, all the while hoping that the book
will sell once it’s published.”
But with this last book she tried something a little different. She did something called a Kickstarter.
Karen explained, “I saw the Kickstarter as a way of testing the waters. To see if there was a sufficient interest in
a new book on the subject? The answer was a resounding yes. With the community’s support, Explorations will
be nearly twice the length of either of my two previous
books, with new projects, new photographs, more and
expanded beading diagrams covering more techniques,
works by other artists and so much more. My goal is to
have it available on Amazon by December of this year .”
Karen really seems to enjoy teaching, so I asked her if it
helped in publishing? She said, “I love to teach. I love the
sharing of information and watching people in my workshops make the techniques their own. I’ve learned a tremendous amount about the needs of different learning
styles in teaching workshops and have tried to incorporate that into my tutorials and handouts. I consider all of
my instructional materials works in progress and actively
watch how my students use them and the questions they
ask to help improve my writing, illustrations and photographs.” She also said, “many of the shorter tutorials available through my Etsy originally came from class handouts. My handouts tend to be on the longish side.”
I asked Karen what advice she would give someone thinking about getting their work published? She said, “my first
suggestion would be to teach, if you are thinking about
she’s discovered as a self-published au- publishing a how-to article. My second set of advice is to
the boss. She told me “Both of my previ- go for it. There are so many publishing and distribution
ompromises, as I was forced to cut whole options available today, from online marketplaces like
to include due to both time and budget- Etsy or Artfire, to print-on-demand publishing houses and
ut with this book she has “the ability to online magazines, to more traditional outlets like Bead
I think is most useful.”
& Button, Beadwork and the mainstream book publishers. Whatever route you take, believe in yourself, and do
ome of the harder things were about
the research to determine what exactly is necessary to be
aid “I’m working without a safety
successful.
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