Last time when I visited Korea, one of my sunbaes (college seniors) told me that even startups need practice (she is a CEO of Biotech CRO) and practice with any kind of business. I thought about what I could do. That was making books, since I already had personal notes. However, I did not know how to get ISBNs, how to calculate cover thicknesses, how to choose papers, or where to print and sell books.
In Korea, I used Indipub for distribution. Actually, I arranged for the printed book to be delivered directly to the Indipub’s office. In the US, I used Amazon KDP to publish a poem book, both as an eBook and in print. Printing price is cheaper in the US than in Korea, but the quality and variety are limited in the US.
This year, I tried creating children’s picture books using Pages and JPEG images by exporting as ePub. While I worked on them, I realized that JPEG (file size) is smaller than PNG, and iBooks does not support any more ePub previews, so I used Cradle instead of iBooks. I just published two books through Amazon KDP and Barnes & Noble. One book was by my first daughter, and the other by my second daughter. I hope to continue supporting other kids to publish their own books. Writing and publishing seem to help them grow and become more thoughtful about the world around them.
Furthermore, working together with my kids makes me happy and helps me learn more and allows me to better understand how the world works and how the world changes quickly. Today, I discovered how to make eBooks available for free. At Amazon KDP, authors can not offer their books for free all the time, but through KDP, we can make them free 5 days within a 90-day period.
From today, Sep27 to Sep 30, the book, Returning to Origins, is free : https://a.co/d/cIdHYP5
Thanks
Life and Biology stories with Sooyoung and Others 