Start to Finish

People have asked us "How'd you do it?" when they hear about our the Ranger Roy book. To answer that question I've posted our timeline below.


2009 - Idea of creating the character Ranger Roy was born. We can't remember exactly when.

07.09 to 08.09 - Jarrod wrote the copy
 

09.09 to 03.11 - Jessie created illustrations
 

02.24.11 - confirmed venue for Boneyard Arts Festival, Follett's Bookstore. A book in a bookstore. Perfect!
 

03.05.11 - Illustrations finished
 

03.07.11 - Started setting up book in InDesign to www.lulu.com's standards. Bought ISBN number from www.myidentifiers.com ($125.00)
 

03.09.11 - Bought font, Sharktooth ($60.00)
 

03.10.11 - Took illustrations into the photo studio. Cara Vetter photographed them using awesome lighting techniques.
 

03.13.11 - Prepress work for www.lulu.com. Put illustration photos into InDesign. Started to typeset Jarrod's copy.
 

03.15.11 - PUBLISHED through www.lulu.com!! for the first of three times. I had many issues following lulu's instructions to get this far. Wanted to switch to blurb.com, however I made the illustrations the proportions of a book size on lulu & not on blurb, so I was stuck with lulu.
 

03.16.11 - Ordered first proof (apx $15.00 per proof).  

03.17.11 - Two people bought the book! This is the moment we realized we created something that other people really wanted to buy. Wow.
 

03.20.11 - Got first proof. It had been rained on while out on our front step. After opening it we found all of the pages off by one. I hadn't accounted for the back of the front cover to be blank. Color looked awful. Dark & dingy. Found out who had bought the two books. Warned them of problems. Figured out how to make book private on lulu.com so others couldn't buy it until the actual book release date (04.07.11).
 

03.21.11 - Made needed changes. Added front title page & made color corrections (magic photoshop curve #1). Bought second proof.
 

03.24.11 - Got second proof. Much better, but the perfectionist in me wanted to make one more color adjustment. Plus, Jarrod found some small copy changes he wanted to make. Even with these changes in mind we CELEBRATED!
 

03.29.11 - Made final changes (magic photoshop curve #2 did the trick! I really should sell this curve to lulu customer's to fix the yucky printing! Ordered 10 copies of the book for the upcoming show. Also ordered 4 photos from mpix.com of the illustrations we framed for the show.
 

04.02.11 - Got books & mpix photos. Created "live reading" video for facebook of "Ranger Roy" aka Jarrod's dad reading the book.  

04.03.11 - Set up marketing email in Dreamweaver
 

04.04.11 - Finished marketing email & uploaded it to campaignmonitor.com. Set send time as 04.05.11 at 6AM. Matted & framed illustrations. Final touches on lulu.com (created final preview image & made book public). Created "stuff" for the show. Enter to Win box, cards with tinyurl on them for people to order book online when I'm not at the show, etc.
 

04.05.11 - Set up the show at Follett's Bookstore!
 

04.07.11 - Jarrod & Cadence bought trail like refreshments for our guests. BOOK RELEASE CELEBRATION! 5PM-7PM