It’s finally here! My new children’s book The Nap Time Song is published and available for purchase!

The Nap Time Song was inspired by a song I made up when my now 10.5 year old was a toddler. I sang the song to him and then my next two kiddos. The kids caught on to the simple song and we would sing it together.

When my youngest (now 4) was little I realized that, while we have mountains of bedtime books, we didn’t have any books for nap time. And so the idea was born to turn our family song into a book.

I’ve always wanted to write and publish my own books, and have worked on various ideas off and on, never fully committing and dedicating my time to making it happen.

I realized, for me in this season of life with three kids, a husband and a full time job, it was ‘easier’ for me to focus on bringing a children’s book to life rather than writing my novel as I could work on The Nap Time Song not only in front of my kids, but with them as well.

I wasn’t originally going to illustrate the book myself. I have many talented friends that I had hoped to potentially work with in bringing my book to life. In the end, it didn’t work out and I decided to illustrate myself. Why not, right?

I looked at all of my children’s books, specifically the baby and toddler bedtime and nap books, and the illustrations are so wildly different. There is no one right way to illustrate a children’s book. With so many different styles, I thought, I can do this.

So I did, I spent countless hours drawing and redrawing and taking in honest, sometimes brutal, feedback from my kids and husband. I was happy with them. Then, we scanned. Once the images were scanned I knew I had to edit them further and enhance them for better quality and general look…but I struggled to do so with the resources I had.

Yes, I could have spent money to have someone else do, but I wasn’t quite sure what exactly I needed nor the best way to go about it. I could have spent money to get new devices and/or programs at my disposal. At the end of the day, I took a friend’s suggestion to recreate my illustrations digitally.

That is what you see today. This in itself required a learning curve for me and took some time. Once I got going and adjusted to the new look, I knew I had made the right choice for me, for this first edition of my first book.

It wasn’t a quick and easy process, but I did it. I figured it out and made it happen. For me, the writing and ideas were the easy part. It was the illustrations and technology that presented the biggest challenges for me.

I did extensive research on all the self-publishing options out there and ultimately decided to go with the Amazon KDP for this first edition of my first book. While there are many pros and cons to the different self-publishing options, this was best for me in keeping costs low and control high, ha!

Other options for self publishing do offer more channels for distribution, for a price. A little bit of a pay to play vibe, but with lots of additional resources and support included as well. While I would love to make my book available at libraries and book stores, I also like that anyone can order from Amazon from anywhere and get my book. As for further distribution, perhaps I’ll get there with a future edition and other books.

This process of creating The Nap Time Song and getting it to print was a long and educational journey. It was a family affair, my kids and husband giving feedback and their own ideas which I incorporated.

Now I’m so excited to share my labor of love, The Nap Time Song, with other families!