I always share all of it. So here it is. All of it.
I have made a habit of telling you everything about this publishing process. The blank page for the barcode. The platform chat that may or may not have been a human. The print test arriving and feeling surreal. All of it. Because I think you deserve the full picture, not just the highlight reel.
So. Here is the full picture for My First American Coloring Book.
THE GOOD - The print test arrived.
The size, the finish, the illustrations, the layout — all right. All exactly what it was supposed to be.
THE BAD - The font had a problem.
Little white spots inside the letters on the cover. The kind of thing you cannot unsee. I saw it immediately.
THE UGLY - Was it a crisis?
No. But my readers deserve the best. So we changed it. That is it. That is the ugly. Fairly tame as uglies go.
The font we chose had those small hollow spots inside the letters — you could see it clearly on the printed cover. Not a catastrophe. The kind of thing that most people would probably not notice at first glance and that I noticed immediately because I made the book and that is apparently what you sign up for when you do that.
Was it a big issue? No. Could I have left it and moved on? Probably. Did I? Absolutely not. Because the people who pick up this book deserve the version that is right, not the version that is close enough. New font. Problem fixed. End of story. Slightly longer road to launch. Worth it.
🎉 AND NOW FOR THE GOOD PART
My First American Coloring Book is available for purchase tomorrow. April 28th.
The font is right. The book is ready. The crayons are waiting. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Saxo in Denmark, Yes24 in South Korea, Morawa in Austria, and Magers & Quinn in Minneapolis. Everywhere. Tomorrow.
And while we are here — the list of places this book now lives keeps growing in ways I did not plan for and have completely stopped pretending to be calm about.
🇦🇹 AUSTRIA - Morawa
One of Austria's most established online bookstores. The book is listed. Austria is on the map.
🇺🇸 MINNEAPOLIS, USA - Magers & Quinn
Minneapolis's largest independent bookseller. Founded 1994. Over 250,000 books. And now one of them is mine.
🇺🇸 UNITED STATES - Walmart + Barnes & Noble
Both. Yes, both. Still processing this.
🇩🇰 🇰🇷 🌍 Saxo · Yes24 · Amazon
Denmark. South Korea. And Amazon, doing what Amazon does — everywhere.
This is what independent publishing looks like when you do it honestly. You catch things. You fix things. You take the longer road because the shorter one would mean sending something out that you know is not quite right. And then you launch. Tomorrow, we launch.
Fixed, ready, and absolutely launching tomorrow,
Jessica Gabrielzyk
✦ MY FIRST AMERICAN COLORING BOOK · AVAILABLE APRIL 28TH · EVERYWHERE ✦
