Well, mostly. I only have to create the three bundles.
But I wanted to document my journey. This will be loooong.
About two years ago, I bought a set of clipart because I needed lots of maps. I purchased a bundle that included each state’s map and symbols (flower, mammal, and bird). I knew I wanted to create a product line of books that included all the clipart that I had.
I did my research, and I didn’t find a lot of resources about that. And I found zero in Spanish.
And so, I went on to create 50 books in Spanish, 50 books in English, and 50 bilingual books. One for each state, right?
I batched the process. I didn’t create the books one by one. I had phases.
Phase I: I created the files for the 50 bilingual books first. Then, I inserted all of the clipart and wrote the sentences for all 9 pages of the book.
I was ready to duplicate these files, but then I thought that the books were in black and white, and it would be nice if the teachers could get the state symbols in color. Since I had them, I decided to create a poster with labeled “cards” that teachers could cut or use as a poster. Then, I created posters with the state image in the background. They ended up really nice.
When I was done with all posters, I duplicated these files twice: One for the English version and one for the Spanish version. I deleted the Spanish sentence from all 50 books in English, and I deleted all the English sentences from all 50 books in Spanish.
Phase II: When you are making all these books, you are prone to making mistakes. So phase two consists of reading ALL of the books. It took me a few days, and I found quite a few mistakes.
Phase III: Once I had revised and edited, I needed to duplicate each page, since these are mini books and they print two per page. As I did that, I was watching for more mistakes I may have missed. I barely found any… but we’ll see. I guess teachers will let me know if I messed up. There are 150 books, after all. Once the books were ready, I created the PDFs.
Phase IV: Now I needed to create 150 covers and 150 previews. Usually, I convert my file to jpg, but I couldn’t do that here because I need only half the page in the jpg file, since the book prints two per page. That meant I had to print screen 10 pages, plus 2 posters for 150 books.
It took me three whole days.
Finally, I was ready to publish… well, almost.
Phase V: I needed to use Acrobat to join the cover, the file, and the ToU page for all 150 books. This time, I did it one by one, and I published as I went. That meant that I created the final file for the first state three times (Spanish, English, and Bilingual), and I published all three.
I barely managed to publish half of them on the first day. By the end, I was exhausted from the repetitive action, so I distracted myself by creating a new resource (or… 9 of them). I didn’t finish the resource; I just started it to clear my mind of creating files and publishing them on TpT.
It took me two whole days to publish 150 books, but I did it!
Now I only need to publish the three bundles. To be honest, I can’t think of ANYONE who would be interested in buying books about all 50 states, but it’s an easy way to point people to the set of books to search for the one they need.
Did I mention I have another project just like this one? The next one is also about the 50 states, but it has animals and plants in it… AND it will be decodable books.
Now I’m going to go publish those bundles.