I Published a Book

February 01, 2026

I can now add 'Published Author' to my resume and if you look at my book on Amazon, I'm sure you will be impressed! Not everyone is able to churn out a book with OVER 40 pages like I can, and I didn't even need to include any pictures! Hopefully by now you realize I am being facetious. My 'book' that I published has less than 300 words. It would be more appropriate to call it a coloring book, however, that is exactly how I want it to be used.

I try to read a fair amount. Any given year, I will read between 15-20 books which does not account for the countless articles I read on HackerNews. I typically read non-fiction, but am drawn to the books that read as if they are fiction. Gripping stories with plenty of character development help me imagine the scenes in my head. And I think that this is one of the most important parts of reading. Simply processing the words on the page does nothing if you are not able to build a world in your head that they represent. That is where Imagine That! comes into play.

For years I have had the idea of creating a book that has simple prompts on the left side of the book with a blank page on the right side. But while the page is blank to start, it should not end that way. After reading a prompt, it is time for the child to take out their crayons/markers/colored pencils and draw what they picture in their head. My hope is that by reading the text and then immediately drawing a picture to go with it, kids will be able to quickly learn to associate the words on the page with more than black letters on white paper.

Now I can admit, this is not the most polished book. There were points in the process that I rushed and I am okay with that. Reason being, I wanted to actually produce this. As I said, I have had this idea for years and never spent any actual time figuring out how to produce it.

Through my research, I landed on self-publishing through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. This is an easy way to self-publish a book without having to go through the full publishing process. The perfect approach for a project like this. I doubt any publisher would even respond to my requests to publish something like this, and if they did, I would have an even tougher time trying to convince them to give me an advance. Quite frankly, it wouldn't be deserving of one.

While I would love for this to go viral and make me thousands of dollars a month in royalties, I am realistic. This book has a very high chance of selling less than one copy, and I am okay with that. When I have kids of my own, I will be happy to purchase an author copy for them to work through and bring their imaginations to the page.

For those curious, AI was used throughout the process. But don't worry, an LLM did not help with any of the text outside of the Amazon description. Yes, you heard that right. The prompts in this book are the result of my authentic, human creativity! But LLM's were great for me introducing me to things I have never even thought of coming from a technical background. Things like what should go through a publisher vs. self-publishing, dimensions of the book, dimensions for front/back cover and spine, and a plethora of other things.

As I have been blogging more, I have started to enjoy writing more and more. It is a new skill that I have plenty of room to improve. With that, I have had other ideas for actual books to write and after going through the process of publishing this 'book', I am in a much more confident position to try and tackle those ideas. In the off chance you have a new reader in your life and you purchase this, please share with me how they liked it and if you have any suggestions!