Welcome to Tuesday Debut, Everyone!

Today’s edition promises to be an interesting one – a self-published author who’s book is surprising her with its success!

Before we get to the main event, though, because we had 2 Tuesday Debuts last week, we have a plethora of giveaways to announce!

First, Raluca Sirbu, author of My Gift, offered 3 unsigned books to 3 different people who comment on the post – 1 to a commenter, 1 to a commenter’s favorite library, and 1 to a commenter’s favorite school or teacher!

The winner of a copy of My Gift is. . .

Debbie Moeller!

The winner of a copy of My Gift for a commenter’s favorite library is. . .

Sara Patten Dykstra!

The winner of a copy of My Gift for a commenter’s favorite school or teacher is. . .

Lynne Marie!

Second, Rebecca Rose Mooradian, author of Rose By The Sea: An Armenian Story of Courage and Hope, offered winner’s choice of either a copy of her beautiful book, OR a query letter critique!

And the winner of Rebecca’s giveaway is. . .

jeanmartinyoga!

Congratulations to all of you on your winnings! So many great prizes! If you can all please email me, I will organize getting you your prizes!

And, this week we have TWO new giveaways: a manuscript critique from today’s debut-ess AND a Zoom visit with a classroom or library group of their choice. To put yourself in the running to be one of the two randomly selected winners of one of these two prizes, all you need to do is leave a comment on today’s post by Monday, March 30th at 3 PM Eastern!

And now, at last, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Kelly Riera, author of WHAT TRUCKS LOVE TO DO: Wreck and Build Construction Crew, and creator of Bright Voyage Books, her own imprint!

Title: What Trucks Love to Do: Wreck and Build Construction Crew
Author: Kelly Riera
Illustrator: Gal Weizman
Publishing House and Date of Publication: Bright Voyage Books, June 19, 2025
Fiction or Nonfiction: Fiction
Readership age range: 2-7 (but smaller kids seem to love the bright color images too, my friends have sent me videos of their 9mos just starting at it and reaching for it in a group of books.  It melts my heart)

What Trucks Love to Do is a rhythmic children’s picture book that follows a team of playful construction trucks as they complete their favorite tasks including demolishing old structures and designing and building a grand new building.   These hardworking trucks demonstrate the value of teamwork and show that hard work can still be fun.

SUSANNA: Welcome, Kelly! Thank you so much for joining us today! We’re really looking forward to hearing about your journey to publication with WHAT TRUCKS LOVE TO DO! Where did the idea for this book come from?

KELLY: This idea sprang out of my son’s absolute love of trucks, trains, planes and all things that “go”.  I would buy, and borrow from the library, every book under the transportation section and found that there just weren’t enough truck books. There weren’t a lot of well-written rhyming truck books.  I hear that big publishing houses say that rhyming books and truck books are overdone and aren’t super interested in them and while I appreciate that they know the market better than, I just felt that was not true. I wanted more books like this, and they aren’t available to buy.  I browsed every bookstore, I went to every library, I scrolled through the depths of the book pages in Amazon and it was either the same 10 books (which are great but I have those!) and other books that just weren’t as good.

So, I started jotting down little rhyming stories as we played and would read them to the kids at night.  One day when my other son was in a phase where he loved to draw, we sat down to draw together.  For drawing inspiration, I read one of the books about my love for my children that I had recently jotted down and totally separate from this one and he started drawing pictures of trucks holding hearts and together we started making up new parts and ideas.  It was then a lightbulb went off.   I thought, I have to make one of my books come to life for them.   

SUSANNA: How long did it take you to write this book?

KELLY: Forever! Well, it felt like that, but it was a little over two years from that day drawing with my son to the launch date.

SUSANNA: Were there any mentor texts that helped you zero in on the direction you wanted to take your book?

KELLY: Not really, but I did listen to a lot of podcasts on meter.  I love rhyming books with a great meter.  When I was much younger used to write poetry. I even had one published!  So, I was able to write with meter then, but that was a long time ago and I’ve been doing legal writing for my day job for the last many years and that part of my brain was a bit rusty.  I essentially had to re-train my brain to hear meter again.   It was actually harder than that sounds.  

SUSANNA: Did you go through many revisions?

KELLY: Yes!  I probably re-wrote it over 100 times and I’m not exaggerating. The story started so simplistic as a repeating fourth line in every verse with simply sentences like this –

“Knock, knock, knock it down. 

 Down, down, to the ground.

Build, build, build it new.

That’s what trucks love to do.”

But that was too narrow of a structure to write a whole book (though I certainly tried many times) and so I had to pick a new meter and just practice, practice, breathe, yell in frustration, take a walk, practice, until I got the hang of it. 

Kelly’s workspace – often her treadmill!

SUSANNA: Rhyme is tough! When did you know your manuscript was ready for publication?

KELLY: I value the feedback of others and so I joined a local critique group for children’s and YA authors, and a virtual one that focused on rhyming books.  Both were exceptionally valuable.  The local group was helpful in identifying whether the story was interesting enough and readable in general, and the meter group provided honest feedback on what lines just weren’t there yet.  I could have tweaked every line a zillion times, but the meter group was helpful in getting me to realize when it was ready. 

I urge you to find peers that aren’t friends and family to help read your text because they can be more honest. And just as importantly, I urge you to listen to their feedback even if it isn’t what you wanted to hear because it is so valuable.  I found the local group through SCBWI and meter group through a Facebook group.

SUSANNA: At what point did you decide to self-publish rather than submit to traditional publishers?

KELLY: I think pretty early in the process.  I really wanted to do this for my kids to have something from me that they could enjoy and maybe one day read to their kids.  I realized that I would likely spend two years trying to find an agent, possibly another two years trying to find a publisher, then it takes about two years for them to actually finalize the book.  At which point my kids would be way too cool to want to read it.  So, I decided to move forward with what I had learned by my research and give it a try.

SUSANNA: How did you find an illustrator?

KELLY: This was admittedly a time-consuming process.  I would scroll through my phone on a million illustrator websites looking at little thumbnails at the end of a long workday with tired eyes noting those that were interesting then forgetting why I thought so when I looked at them the next day.  HA!  Through this process I started to learn the names of the different illustration types and just continuously narrowed from there.  I looked for people that had a certain joyful and colorful style and bonus points for someone that had drawn a vehicle before.  I think I started on SCBWI, then Fiverr, Facebook, Instagram and others.  I had someone do a test drawing which was awesome but was not the style that I wanted so I kept looking.  I kept coming across a few images from Gal Weizman, my illustrator.  One day I finally decided to reach out to her and the rest is history.

SUSANNA: Did you and the illustrator have a contract of any kind? What types of items did it address?

KELLY: Yes, as a lawyer I had to. Mine is pretty long and includes all sorts of terms including timing, exact number of pages I wanted, pricing, what happens when things go wrong, who owns the rights to the images, representations that these are original images she created, rights related to sequels, compliance with laws and jurisdiction (since she was international). 

SUSANNA: Are you able to give a ballpark figure of any kind (or a specific one if you’re so inclined) about the cost of the illustrator?

KELLY: I would rather not in case she charges others more or less.

SUSANNA: What was the illustration process like since you were directing it? Any particular challenges? Anything you particularly enjoyed?

KELLY: I don’t recall if I did this right away but I did create a page-by-page note on what I thought the images should be so that we could align expectations early.  I think that really helped me explain what I envisioned.  I occasionally tried to draw inspirational photos which are hilariously terrible, but I think that is helpful for an illustrator who has a more visual mind. 

Gal would probably say I made too many revision requests at the start because I was still new at this but now that we have a flow, I try very hard to condense the edits into one instead of little by little.  (Gal, if you’re reading this, thank you for your amazing level of patience!)

My favorite parts of this process were of course seeing the book come to life but also our Zoom brainstorming sessions.  These were not only a fun way to get to know each other a little bit but every conversation resulted in a new idea, even if it was just something little. We just collaborated so well together.

SUSANNA: How did you format your book for publication?

KELLY: I tried to do it myself but realized I wanted the font to be more fun and the person I was discussing this with did both design work and formatting which was so very helpful.   Eventually, I want to get better at this point I wanted to get it done and knew I needed help.

SUSANNA: How did you select a printing service?

KELLY: I researched the options and decided that initially KDP for the paperback and IngramSpark for the hardcover were a good starting point.  I honestly wasn’t really expecting the book to be so successful as it is.  It was just going to be something fun for my kids and friends and family.  However, since it has started selling so well in stores, I have started doing some offset printing so I can control the quality and do some consignment deals. 

I did this by researching online mostly.  I had a large local order to print so at first I focused on proximity to me so I could pick up the copies quickly and not wait for shipping.  They were ok but not amazing and so started looking for another US based one.  I am excited to work with them based on the sample they sent me, but I haven’t done so yet as I’m also testing out a China-based printer that my designer recommended for my next large run.  They ship in a couple weeks, so wish me luck!

SUSANNA: Good luck! (Though it sounds like you’re doing pretty well already!) Did you do a print run so you’d have inventory, or is your book print-on-demand?

KELLY: Sorry, my long answer above addressed some of this already but the short answer is a little bit of all of this.  I still allow print-on-demand because people love Amazon Prime and prefer to have the book in their hand in two days.  But the quality of offset printing is much more consistent and reliable so that is what I use to sell to bookstores and at events. I do plan to dabble in selling these offset printed hardcovers on Amazon and my Website directly, but I haven’t sat down to learn all about that yet.  All of this is a huge learning curve and I’m taking it step by step.  If your struggling to learn it all, just give yourself some grace.  You can prioritize your goals and learn step-by-step.

SUSANNA: How long was the process from writing through publication of your book?

KELLY: Over two years!

SUSANNA: Were you able to get your book reviewed by Kirkus, SLJ, Hornbook, Booklist etc?

KELLY: Ugh, no!  This was a rookie mistake, I didn’t really understand how important these were, so I didn’t prioritize that prior to the book launch.  However, I am learning that you need at least one of these to get into many libraries and bookstores, so I am submitting to Kirkus now.  It seems a bit expensive for a short picture book but hopefully it will be useful in the long run.  If you can afford a Kirkus review, you should strongly consider it.  Sometimes they have $50 off in Facebook advertisements. 

SUSANNA: Can you describe any marketing/promotion you did for this book?

KELLY: I think your readers will agree, this is the hardest part.  I love to write but I’m not a salesperson by nature.  I did a blast on social media, lots of reach out to press, local stores, libraries, etc. I created some free coloring pages, local flyers for around town and to send to the teachers I knew.  I would say that word of mouth was the most helpful. Someone would buy the book and say they loved it, so I would ask them if they wouldn’t mind recommending it to another parent with similarly aged children and most actually would do so.  Honestly, most parents with a kid that loves trucks would instantly buy the book based on the cover or description alone, because they agree with my earlier statement – there just aren’t enough good truck books out there!

SUSANNA: Anything else you’d like to share about your book’s journey from inspiration to publication?

KELLY: You asked me to share a photo of my workspace but I get the best inspiration on a walk outside or on my treadmill.  A little oxygen to the brain is so helpful for my creative side!

There is so much free advice available now on podcasts, YouTube, Facebook and other groups that you can use to figure this all out.   It’s a doozey sometimes.  Be kind to yourself and try to enjoy it!  

SUSANNA: Thank you so much for taking the time to visit with us today, Kelly. We so appreciate the opportunity to learn from your knowledge and experience! Wishing you all the best of luck with this and future titles!

Readers, if you have questions for Kelly, please post them in the comments below and if she has time I’m sure she’ll respond! And remember, your comment on today’s post by Monday, March 30th at 3 PM Eastern puts you in the running to be the randomly selected winner of one of Kelly’s two amazing givieaways – a manuscript critique or a Zoom visit with a classroom or library group of your choice.

Author Kelly Riera

Facebook: Kelly Riera Author https://www.facebook.com/p/Kelly-Riera-Author-61557268696979/
Instagram: @kellyrieraauthor
Website: https://brightvoyagebooks.com/about/

You may purchase Kelly’s book at:
(all links below are book-specific)

Indiebound/Bookshop.org
Amazon
Barnes&Noble

We can help our debut authors successfully launch their careers by:

– purchasing their books

– recommending their books to friends and family

– recommending their books to our children’s teachers and librarians

– recommending their books to our local libraries and bookstores

– suggesting them as visiting authors at our children’s schools and our local libraries

– sharing their books on social media

– reviewing their books on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and other sites where people go to learn about books.

Thank you all for stopping by to read today!  Have a lovely, inspiration-filled Tuesday!  Maybe today is the day you’ll write your debut picture book 😊

Missed any previous Tuesday Debuts?  Check them out HERE!