Infographics

Recently, I browsed Amazon looking for a book on financial planning to give my grandkids for Xmas. I found one and ordered five print copies of it. Here’s a partial screenshot of the Amazon page.

Notice it’s an infographic edition. It’s loaded with graphics and colors. When I got the books, I looked through one and had an idea: it would be really cool to put together an infographic edition of my Creating Stories book. The new edition would be aimed at middle and high school kids. A screenshot for what may or may not be the cover is below.

So I started on this project and immediately ran into a big problem: I don’t know squat about infographics. It took a day or two to fix this problem. I’m using Canva to develop the infographic pages, after rejecting several other sites for various reasons. After putting together a dozen pages, I came to another big problem: how to publish the book?

The pages don’t have text in it like a normal book: instead each page is a single graphic file. Stacking the .png files into a word processor doesn’t work. Canva won’t export the infographic files in a suitable format (8.5 x11 or 6×9) and neither will any other infographic site. I checked a few online book sites but they seem to only handle text, not graphic files. Finally, I found a desktop publishing app, Swift 5. I bought it ($19.99) and it works fine. I can export the files in a 6×9 pdf file and upload it to Kindle and/or IngramSpark (or so I think: that theory will be tested later on.). From experience, I’m sure it won’t be that simple. Nevertheless, I’ll persist.

Editing is different with the infographics. When I find a typo, I can’t simply change it. The entire page with the typo is a graphic file and can’t be changed in Swift. I have to go back to the original Canva file and make the changes there. Then I download the revised file and use it to replace the one with the typo.
Shown is a typical page from the new book.
I should have this ready for publication by the end of the year. Maybe!
Anyway, it is different and I’m having so much fun I’m thinking of making more infographic editions of my books.

For vacations, Hank and Pat usually visit distant parts of the galaxy. Occasionally, they also time-travel.

Besides writing novels, Hank lectures on fiction writing, publishing and book marketing. He is most proud of his talk showing grammar school kids how to create a short story. He used these lectures to create an advanced ebook with embedded videos to coach the students on how to create characters, plots and settings. The target audience is 4th to 7th graders. The book’s title is Fiction Writing Workshop for Kids.

Blogs & Books

Hank’s Amazon PageCreating a Story

How to Self-publish and Market a Book