Revising My Second Children's Picture Book

I ordered a print copy of my second children’s picture book. It looks great — the paintings, that is — but the text bubbles suck. Several text bubbles were placed so close to the spine that they were unreadable unless the book is mercilessly flattened. There were ten pages that needed fixing, and six pages that were too high resolution (600 dpi) to pass through Ingramspark’s file validator. I used Clip Studio Paint to adjust the text bubbles, and I used Photoshop to change the resolution of the hi-res pictures. When you revise your Ingramspark book, the charge is $25.

My text bubble problem is the result of my desire to keep the text from intruding on the images. I squeezed the text bubbles into edges of the page without thinking about how they would look. That was a bad idea. For the next book I’ll give the text bubbles and other important details a generous 1/2-inch margin. Lesson learned.