Dreams of a Rocking Pony is the first self-published title I feel really good about putting out there and promoting. Not one single typo, cover-to-cover, glossy finish, attractive artwork, “Luminare Press” stamp at the bottom of the first, beautiful blue page. The book makes me feel alive. It makes me feel like me. The me who writes–and publishes–books.

But I can’t really take the credit…money can.

I have been writing poetry, essays, memoir and children’s books for well over a decade. I began writing in high school, and in 2023 I will have been out of high school for 20 years! I have multiple projects just sitting in my writing den collecting dust bunnies. There’s the big project, a memoir, which I have spent most of my creative time on: I’ve workshopped it, critiqued it, hired a professional editor, had my best writing friend beta read it, and I’m critiquing it again, now. It still doesn’t feel perfect, but in August I will be pitching it at a professional writers’ conference. (Fingers and toes all crossed.)

My other projects include: “Do Nothing, Alone,” a children’s book on meditation, “Earthside and Other Everyday Miracles,” a collection of essays, “Mama Bird,” a farm memoir…I also have two other projects that don’t have names, but tons of material has already been written for those books, too.

Dreams isn’t the best representation of my work. (I realize that saying this risks putting you in the position of not wanting to buy the children’s book. But don’t let what I’m about to say stop you, just hear me out.) Dreams is the best representation of my grandmother, the illustrator’s, work. The book also illustrates the level of professionalism that comes from hiring a publisher to print it, and what a little money, used with the right intention, can do.

This experience–publishing Dreams–will probably change my outlook on self-publishing forever. In short, I will never do the formatting, cover design, and publishing work again all on my own. I will only hire professionals from here on out…as long as I can afford to. (And if I can’t afford to, I will save the money until I can!)

My first two self-published titles–Love, Blues, Balance and New Moon, were 100% free and 100% created by me. It was a painstaking process formatting the pages, creating a table-of-contents, and getting it all to line up appropriately formatting-wise on KDP (Amazon’s direct publishing platform). I don’t even think that one of the books has page numbers. It was perfect at the time, however, because it cost me nothing. It was a good experience and I had fun. Especially designing the covers.

But I didn’t LOVE the books. I could see all the little errors.

Fast-forward 5 years and my grandmother and I have just co-created Dreams. (I wrote about that experience here, in my previous blog post.) We joked about having the book published for real and I knew that self-publishing a children’s book myself through KDP was going to be a challenge. Publishing a book with illustrations was next level! I would need some help.

Honestly at first, when I got the price quote, I tabled the idea for many months. The pandemic was dragging on and on and, finally, while taking stock of my life and priorities, I decided that publishing a book with my grandmother was the thing I wanted to do most. My intentions around book publishing came into clearer focus when I received an unexpected financial boost. And yet the entire experience has taught me that I should value my work enough to have it bound professionally, even if I have to save money all year to do it.

Writers write. Book cover designers create book covers. Publishing presses print books. I learned through all of this to let others do what they do best. And then do what you do best. For a long time, I thought I had to become all of those other things…just to bring my words into the light. Now I know better. Now I see the piles of dusty papers in my writer’s den from a new, more optimistic, angle. They will, someday, get published. And I credit this book, Dreams of a Rocking Pony, for teaching me a valuable lesson about writing and publishing: That for 1/3 the price of a used car, I can bind–and sell–a beautiful freaking book.