A short, illustrated story of Mary Taylor
I just checked on Amazon and “My Grandma Mary” is there and available for sale! It is amazing to see it there for real. I Just had to share this milestone in family stories here. Plus we got it done by Pioneer Day, which is July 24th. The day that Brigham Young and the first batch of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. I seems like a fitting day to complete this step of my journey to learn about Mary Taylor and share her story.
So I’ve official finished editing “My Grandma Mary” and now we are just waiting for the box of books I’ve ordered to print! I’m so excited and nervous as the same time. That takes me to the next step in the Doable approaching to telling your family stories, link. This book brings a whole new area to learn in sharing it with a broader audience.
One of the fun things about this book is that we have put hidden images throughout the book that represent other stories from the Martin Handcart Company that we didn’t put into the main storyline. The book refers to this blog for help in finding these images. I decided to do 4 levels of hints. The first level of hints in under the “My Grandma Mary” tab above and the rest I wrote as post that you can see below. I have links to these posts of the “My Grandma Mary” tab. Hopefully that this will work well in helping those who get stuck finding all the images. Some of them are really pretty easy but some are much harder. 
Key to Finding the Hidden Pictures:
A Goose: hint – fireplace – page 2 lower left
A Wooden Box: hint – resting place – page 14 lower left
A Coin: hint – river crossing – page 24 upper right corner
Scales: hint – Brigham – page 27 lower right
False Teeth: hint – ocean – page 12 lower left
An Apple: hint – elms – page 4 upper left
A Teacup: hint – sewing – page 11 lower right
Salt Shaker: hint – train – page 15 lower left
A Bar of Soap: hint – baptism – page 9 middle right
Buffalo Chips: hint – Indians – page 16 lower right
A Musical Note: hint – clouds – page 22 middle
An Onion: hint – carriage – page 29 lower right
A Pair of Shoes: hint – fun – page 20 & 21 middle
Can you find the hidden picture that isn’t listed in the back of My Grandma Mary?
A Wolf: hint – sleeping – page 19 lower right
After the snows came, the ground was frozen so hard that graves could not be dug, so they covered the bodies of the dead with brush and snow. This only provided a temporary barrier from the hungry wolves who were waiting nearby. In Martin’s Cove the burying-ground was up over a little rise which sheltered the main camp from the howling and snarling of the wolves over the bodies of their loved ones.
Hints in Finding the Hidden Pictures:
A Goose: hint – fireplace – page 2 lower left
A Wooden Box: hint – resting place – page 14 lower left
A Coin: hint – river crossing – page 24 upper right corner
Scales: hint – Brigham – page 27 lower right
False Teeth: hint – ocean – page 12 lower left
An Apple: hint – elms – page 4 upper left
A Teacup: hint – sewing – page 11 lower right
Salt Shaker: hint – train – page 15 lower left
A Bar of Soap: hint – baptism – page 9 middle right
Buffalo Chips: hint – Indians – page 16 lower right
A Musical Note: hint – clouds – page 22 middle
An Onion: hint – carriage – page 29 lower right
A Pair of Shoes: hint – fun – page 20 & 21 middle
Can you find the hidden picture that isn’t listed in the back of My Grandma Mary?
Wolf
A Wolf: hint – sleeping – page 19 lower right
After the snows came, the ground was frozen so hard that graves could not be dug, so they covered the bodies of the dead with brush and snow. This only provided a temporary barrier from the hungry wolves who were waiting nearby. In Martin’s Cove the burying-ground was up over a little rise which sheltered the main camp from the howling and snarling of the wolves over the bodies of their loved ones.
Hints in Finding the Hidden Pictures:
A Goose: hint – fireplace
A Wooden Box: hint – resting place
A Coin: hint – river crossing
Scales: hint – Brigham
False Teeth: hint – ocean
An Apple: hint – elms
A Teacup: hint – sewing
Salt Shaker: hint – train
A Bar of Soap: hint – baptism
Buffalo Chips: hint – Indians
A Musical Note: hint – clouds
An Onion: hint – carriage
A Pair of Shoes: hint – fun
Can you find the hidden picture that isn’t listed in the back of My Grandma Mary?
WolfA Wolf: hint – sleeping
After the snows came, the ground was frozen so hard that graves could not be dug, so they covered the bodies of the dead with brush and snow. This only provided a temporary barrier from the hungry wolves who were waiting nearby. In Martin’s Cove the burying-ground was up over a little rise which sheltered the main camp from the howling and snarling of the wolves over the bodies of their loved ones.
I got the proof for “My Grandma Mary” on Friday afternoon! Yeah! Overall it looks good but a few of the illustrations are too dark and I forgot the retail price on the back cover. So today I’ve adjusted illustrations and made some more edits. I plan to upload the revisions tomorrow and go from there. One disadvantage of Lightning Source is that there is a charge for every time you upload a new file.
I seem to have jumped through all the hoops to get a proof copy of “My Grandma Mary” printed by Lightning Source! I got an email today confirming the order from last week. The holiday has slowed things down but if I understand how it works, I should have the proof copy in my hand this week! I’m really excited to see it. If everything looks good than I will make it available for sell asap. My mom is usually really patient about histories but on this one she asks me about it every time I talk to her. It has taken a long time to get to this point. I’ve learned so much. But I’m sure there is a lot more to learn.
One thing I’ve realized is I’m glad there are places like Blurb and places like Lightning Source. Even though they are both print on demand companies their business models and target customers are completely different. I can see that I’ll be using both companies in the future depending on the project. For small runs, Blurb is a better choice. For books with a larger audience Lightning Source can be the better choice. While Blurb has a higher price per book they have no set up costs and no on going cost to keep the book available to print. While LSI has a much cheaper price per book they set up cost of about $100 mean you have to order at least a certain number of books to make it more cost-effective than Blurb. In the case of “My Grandma Mary” you have to order at least 5 copies to make LSI a more cost-effective option.
I’m still waiting to see how the quality of Lightning Source compares to Blurb.
I’ve been trying to finish things up on “My Grandma Mary” for several weeks now. Because I want to make this book available to more than just my extended family, I decided that we needed another printer than Blurb. Blurb is still great for printing a few books and their quality is wonderful. But to get “My Grandma Mary” into more distribution channels there needs to be some room for wholesale and retail mark-ups.I looked at:
I’m trying to jump through all the hoops to use Lightning Source. There are lots of new stuff to learn and things like ISBN numbers to deal with. Today I stumbled across a new option that is coming in July called IngramSpark. It is a sister company to Lightning Source but geared for smaller publishers and more user-friendly. Now I don’t know if I should wait and see what it is like or keep working it through with Lightning Source. My mom is getting anxious to get copies for her brothers and sister, so I think I’ll keep working on the Lightning Source route and if IngramSpark comes up before I get through it all I’ll check it out.
All of this has overwhelmed me at times. The layout for the book needs to be done again to fit their trim sizes and the export files have different specs than Blurb. I still haven’t got all that figured out but I think I’m getting close. I’m so glad that there are printers like Blurb to use for most of my projects.
Fedex tracking say I’ll be getting a proof copy of the book about my great-great-grandmother, Mary Taylor tomorrow. I’m so excited to see it. I’m expecting to need to make some changes before it will be ready but this is a big milestone for me.
cover illustration by Kimberli Johnson
We are so close to being ready to print a proof copy of our Mary Taylor story book. In a perfect world we will be doing that the end of the week. Since the world isn’t usually perfect it might be a few days later than that. Kim got me two more illustrations done. The one above will do double duty as the cover and one of the middle illustration. On the cover I cropped the image in to show just Mary.
The illustration below will be the first one in the book and then we will crop it down as tight as we can for the last image in the book. I’ve got at least one more edit on the text to do. And if a friend who teaches writing classes has time there will be another one before the we print the proof. The plan is to present the proof copy to my mom on her 90th birthday at the end of the month. I know she is going to love it even if no one else does.
first and last illustration by Kimberli Johnson
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