About Joy Findlay

‘As a full-time mother of two gorgeous pre-schoolers. . .’ blah-blah-blah – that's what my Author Bio is supposed to say, but basically, without the pretentious fluff, I'm a self-published children's book author/illustrator based in Auckland, New Zealand (NZ). I sell over 60 kids' ebooks in Amazon's Kindle Store and have over 180,000 (yes that many zeros) copies of my ebooks out in the 'verse now. Not bad for a mama of two with no formal training in writing/illustrating/publishing/social marketing – yes that is right – I have no English-Lit Degree, no Fine-Arts Degree, and no idea what I am doing half the time!
I started over a year ago tripping up over my own two feet as it were, learning how to illustrate using freeware photo manipulation and desktop publishing programmes, learning HTML editing, and learning to spell correctly! I went through every online resource that I could find that wasn't going to charge me a million dollars, and eventually – with the help of my aaaamazing technical manager/husband – we figured out how to get a book idea with funny looking images into a fully developed MOBI file ready for publishing on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform. My first ebook was a basic concept ebook teaching pre-schoolers their colours using some of the most amazing space images NASA has to offer.
60 ebooks, a website and a million social networking pages later and I still have no idea what I am doing half the time. :) I have over 30 ebook ideas, three half-written scripts, five un-illustrated books, and one that was published but needs to be reworked because I've discovered how to sell it better. :)
Next week my Technical Manager (please don't make me do it!) will be digitally formatting five ebooks for clients from all over the North Island of NZ. And that is what has lead to this blog. I've discovered how cool it is to help other authors and illustrators get their ebooks published, and it gives me a buzz seeing their work selling online too. The coffee might be contributing to that though – don't get me started on the coffee! I never used to drink it and after a year of self-publishing I can't seem to get through a day without a caramel latte!!!
So this blog is all about how you can learn how to get your finished story/book published by either digital publishing (ebook), print-on-demand publishing (PoD) or through vanity publishing. If you have any questions regarding anything that is posted here, please email me at findlaybooks@gmail.com.
My websites are: