Tonya Parker
Michelle Isenhoff was the miracle I didn’t know I needed.
It took me ten years to write my book, and when it was completed I thought to myself, “Now what?” I had no idea how to get it into a book format and published. I reside in Texas and had two writers here who recommended her. I didn’t know how it would work, as she was several states away, but I decided to contact her, and we corresponded for several weeks through email and phone. She is a genius at what she does and a complete joy to work with. She had tons of patience with this rookie writer. She took my vision, thoughts, and ideas and skillfully crafted them into the book I now hold in my hand.
Someday I hope that our paths will cross and we can physically meet so that I can hug the one who made it all possible for me to now be known as “author!”
Tonya Parker is a motivational speaker and certified personality trainer who has worked in the beauty industry and the Miss USA organization. This inspirational nonfiction volume was her first book.
Project Overview
When Tonya contacted me, she had a speaking engagement scheduled three months out and needed paperback copies of her book to take with her. She requested a final copyedit and formatting for digital and paperback editions, which would include a handful of images. She also needed some coaching on what to put in her front and back matter, feedback on trim sizes, and some help getting everything up on Amazon. Originally, Tonya planned to create her own cover but later asked me to create it from image she provided. I also put together the front-and-back cover for the paperback. I’m happy to say that her books turned out beautifully and arrived in plenty of time for her event.
My Work
Tonya’s manuscript was well written and needed only basic copyediting. The bulk of my contributions came in formatting, as well as some publication guidance. Below is a sample of an email I sent to her with information about publishing on Amazon. It is followed by the full cover and several images of the finished paperback interior.
Here are some links for you, Tonya:
The big one is the sign in for the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) dashboard, Amazon’s platform. Conveniently, your paperback and digital editions will both be created and maintained here, even though the platform specifically has Kindle in it. It’s fairly intuitive and easy to navigate. Just sign in with your Amazon account and you can use it immediately. Later, because your regular Amazon account and this new author account will be linked, you’ll purchase your own paperbacks through the regular Amazon checkout process, and your author discounts will be automatically added (during checkout, not in the cart). https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/
Go ahead and click on the big “create” button at the top and choose paperback from the next page. This will open the first page of the actual creation process. There are three tabs at the top: details, content, and rights and pricing. Go ahead and fill out the details page but don’t sweat it. You can change all of this before you hit publish on the last page. You just have to fill some stuff in here before it lets you go on to the content page where most of the helpful information will be. Book sizes, color vs black and white, etc. There are some fields in this tab that can’t be changed (they say as much), so you don’t need to fill anything out or save anything under this tab yet. Just look around.
And here’s a link to KDP’s help pages. I sent you specifically to the paperback cover formatting specs. Don’t worry about the manuscript specs. Those are for the interior, which I’ll do. Scroll down to the cover specs and look around. Once you know what size you want (on the “content” tab in the KDP dashboard above), you can get specific specs or even a template. https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834190 Also note along the left side of the screen all the other help topics available here.
That should get you started! 🙂
