Behind the Scenes: How We Got Book 4 Ready for Preorder

Yesterday we shared some exciting news on Facebook: not only is our Casper the Cat Who Got Lost in Africa series now available on Apple Books, but Book 4 - The Baboons - is officially up for pre-order on both Apple and Amazon!

That post felt like a big milestone, but the journey to get there was anything but simple. Since we often hear from other authors and small publishers who are curious about the process, I thought I'd pull back the curtain a little on what it takes to go from a finished manuscript to that shiny "Preorder Now" button you see online.

From PDF to eBook

Our starting point is a polished, ready-to-print PDF created by our wonderful layout designer. This file is perfect for print editions, but online platforms like Amazon and Apple require EPUB files for their digital bookstores. Now Amazon provides a simple tool - Kindle Create - that anyone can use to turn their PDF into an EPUB file that Amazon will accept - unfortunately it is proprietary to Amazon. To format an EPUB from a PDF suitable for Apple and IngramSpark requires a different solution. Rather that wrestle with this formatting challenge myself, I turned to a trusted contractor on Fiverr who specializes in ebook conversions. Within a few days, I had beautifully formatted EPUBs that matched the look and feel of our print editions.

Uploading to Retailers

Next comes the part that sounds easy but can take hours without a system: uploading files to Amazon KDP, Apple Books and IngramSpark. Each platform asks for slightly different things - metadata, descriptions, BISAC categories, keywords, pricing, ISBNs - and if you don't keep track carefully, it's easy to make mistakes or end up with inconsistent listings across retailers.

To streamline this, I built a master metadata spreadsheet in Google Sheets. It's basically the brain of our publishing process. A seperate sheet for each book, separate sections for the various formats, and rows for each of the key details: ISBNs, trim sizes, word counts, categories, key words, pricing, weight, etc. Instead of typing everything out multiple times, I just copy-and-paste into the retailer dashboards. It saves time, reduces errors, and ensures that whether you're looking at The Pangolins on Amazon or The Baboons on Apple, you'll see the same information.

Why it Matters

For us, announcing that The Baboons is available for preorder is more that just a sales moment. It represents the sum of many small, careful steps behind the scenes - the collaboration between illustrators, editors, layout designers, contractors, and us as publishers. Each book in the Casper series is a team effort, and every release gets us a little better, a little more efficient, and (thankfully) a little less stressed.

So the next time you see a preorder link, know there's a mountain of invisible work behind it - and a very grateful team on the side, thrilled to share these stories with you.

Thanks for following our journey! If you haven't already, you can join our Little Boola Books Club to get free activity packs and updates on new releases.

Until next time!