The book sat for nine months
Don’t miss part one of The Creation of Bernie Gets Bullied. It is really simple why “Bernie Gets Bullied” sat on a digital shelf for nine months…life. Life just got in the way. Our daughter, Kennedy, was four at that time and my wife Deb was pregnant with our now one year old son, Paxton. It wasn’t until November of 2014 that I was able to take the next step in bringing “Bernie Gets Bullied” closer to reality; I hired illustrator Barbara Morrow.
Barbara got to work on the character sketches right away and the excitement of Bernie the Bull was building inside me. I hadn’t spoken to anyone about the book except Deb, because until it was more of a reality, it was only a dream. About seven days after Barbara got started on the character sketches she delivered the first round of black and white pencil sketches. There was a lot of good stuff from her first attempt. I believe three of the six main characters are from her first endeavor, (yes, she really is that good)!
Another 14 months went by
We were working on the illustrations for a year until we could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. From months and months of copy editing, illustration revisions, color revisions, layout revisions, you name it…we were picking this book apart from cover to cover. I wanted to make sure it was the best produced, most unique product available to convey the message of “Bernie Gets Bullied”. Finally in January of this year (2016), we all agreed the book was finished!
We had spoken with several printers to discover where we could receive the best quality possible. We finally settled on a printer in February. I thought, “Yippy, I’ll have a book by next week!”; not even close! Little did I know, the back and forth of revisions would now begin in the printing world. First, it was the size of the book, which luckily we had already determined in the illustration process. After we determined the layout, the paper type needed to be selected. I was given many to choose from: the cover, the text, multiples of both. All of this took time.
Then it was on to the paper selection. It was laid out in a mock style of the book (nothing printed on the paper, just white) to determine the weight and ensure sizing of the paper selection. Great, are we ready to print? No! Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Next up, a printed version of the book to ensure that the illustrations and text fall correctly onto the paper as desired. Finally, after all of this one mock up version of the book, it was printed for for final approval. It was breathtaking! Of course, I absolutely approved and we moved into order creation. Two days later and 27 months since the day Kennedy brought home her “incident report”, I have my creation in my hands!
It was truly a milestone in my life and certainly one of my proudest moments. The best part about it was not just the amazingly beautiful product with a strong, sincere message; it was also the previous 27 months in which I had been developing my go-to-market plan on introducing Bernie the Bull and his message to the world. Over that time period, I dug deeper and deeper into the bullying issues throughout the country. This helped me develope an even stronger case for the message of “Bernie Gets Bullied”. The Creation of Bernie Gets Bullied (part 3).