how to create a children's book just like this to sell on Amazon KDP using mid Journey artificial intelligence is exactly what we're going to be talking about today so make sure you stick around to the end of the video because I'm going to be showing you in four easy steps from start to finish how to put your book together using canva and how to publish to KDP welcome back to my channel if you're new here I'm Latoya Nicole and a few years ago I published my very first book that grew into a successful coloring book business so now I teach women entrepreneurs just like you how to establish and expand your author brand so if that's something you're interested in I highly recommend you checking out my marketing program at book bag University because after you publish your book you're going to need to make some sales right so yeah check it out at book bag University and if you like this type of content be sure to give the video a thumbs up and subscribe so that I know to keep putting out more content like this so the reason I'm doing this video today is because two ministers from my church came to me wanting to know how they could publish their own children's book because I wanted to help them I decided to go ahead and make a full video about it so you could go ahead and get blessed too isn't God so good so yeah go on and get your blessing girl so yeah if you're ready to learn how to publish your children's book then go ahead and leave me a comment saying I'm ready now as a disclaimer this is not showing you how to create consistent characters but more so to show you the process you take to create your book using AI if you choose this method now there are also some alternative methods to getting your book illustrations because you can also hire an illustrator for original artwork or you can use freelance sites like Fiverr if you go to Fiverr you would just do a search for KDP illustrator or KDP children's book and see who comes up and here's one person and then here's another person you would just make sure you go through their reviews I'll leave the links in the description but like I said in this video we're going to be walking through the process step by step so you'll know how you could create your own children's book so let's get into it so the first thing we need to do is decide on our book detail so we're going to be creating a children's story book celebrating the love between a father and a daughter since Father's Day is coming up the dimensions will be 8.5 by 8.5 it's going to be 32 pages and that includes any blank pages and dedication pages and it's also going to be a paperback book so this information is going to be very important when we get ready to start working on our book cover because it's going to help us set the outline for our book so we're going to go ahead and set our trim size and our margins and to do this we're just going to go to the KDP help center I'll leave the link in the description for you and so we're just going to scroll down until we get to this section and we're going to click on examples of page size with and without bleed for amazon.com because that's where we're going to be publishing the book is on.com for the US and so then you would just look on this side of the page to go ahead and find the size that your book is going to be for this example we're going to be using 8.5 by 8.5 in and then we're going to go ahead and and look to the right of that because we're going to be doing our book with bleed and so we're going to use 8.625 by 875 to create our interior now if you're not familiar with bleed versus no bleed if you just scroll right back up you'll see the difference is that no bleed it just stops the picture in the middle of the page and then it still has like this white border around it when it's printed and then when you choose with bleed it does not have a white Bard at all your image goes to the end of the page so if you're creating a children's book you're going to want your image to go to the end of the page so that's why we're choosing with bleed so now let's head to Canvas so that we can go ahead and enter in these Dimensions to start on our interior and you can click on my link in the description if you never signed up for canva but we're going to go ahead and click on the create a design Tab and then we're going to do custom size we're going to switch this to inches and then we're going to go ahead and put in our page size with bleed Dimensions so we have 8.625 in and guys if you hear snoring in the background I'm so sorry my dog is resting so she's over there snoring and then we also have 8.75 so we're going to plug that in as well and then click on create new design this is going to give us our blank template that we're going to need to go ahead and start working on the inside of the book now we're going to go ahead and set up our margins so that none of our important information gets cut off from from the inside pages so in order to do this we're going to go to file and then settings and then we're going to go to show rulers and guides this is going to bring rulers on the left and at the top now we're going to go back to the help page for Amazon we're going to scroll down just a little bit until we get to this section now under this section we're going to be looking for the number of pages in our book since our book is going to be less than 150 Pages this is the line we're going to be looking at to set our mark margin all right so of course we have with bleed so that means the outside margins are going to be 375 and then we also have our inside margins which are going to be 375 so these are the two sections that we're focused on with bleed because if we're going to do no bleed then we will focus here and here but because we're doing bleed we're focused here and here where it says bleed so both margins need to be set at 375 so let's head back to canva and set those margins so 375 so we get it as close as possible so that's 378 which is good because it goes over a little bit so that's fine then I always come here and I go ahead and grab an element like a square and then I resize my Square then I bring it over here so it's the same size as the line then I go ahead and duplicate it and bring it over here so that that's the same size so I'll bring another ruler here duplicate it again and turn it around bring it down here bring my line from the top duplicate it one more time and go ahead and do the same thing here bring another line then I can go ahead and get rid of all of these and now our margins are set now that we have those set we can go ahead and duplicate our pages so that we have 32 pages so I'll go ahead and duplicate that if you go to where it says grid view you can see the pages and then you can simply like um click on these three dots and then you can dup at the page this way and you can do it till you get to the end and then you can just highlight all the pages and then click duplicate six pages and then you'll go ahead and save a little time so see here we're at 18 so let's keep going now we're at 24 we're at 30 and now we're at 36 so since we only need 32 we're going to go ahead and delete the pages that we don't need now we have 32 let's go back to our layout and now we can start working on our interior so the first page we're not going to put anything on because the first page is simply going to be the right side of the page after you print the book and so the next Pages which is page two and page number three those are going to be pages that are side by side so this is going to be the left Page and then page three would be the right page so I'm going to go ahead and add the this book belongs to section on page two so we can just grab a little text doesn't matter which subheading just pull some in and then um this book this book belongs to then I'm going to go ahead and search under elements for a line bring that in drag it across a little bit all right so I have my thisbook belongs to so then you can make page three a dedication page a copyright page whatever you want it to say you can add that information here just going to go ahead and duplicate this text and bring it down here here for the dad um will never stop loving and to the daughters who need to be loved you can put your ISBN information here once you get it from step four when we get ready to upload the book so we're going to be starting our artwork on page number 4 but before we start working on our illustrations we need to know what our story is going to be about so that is where I'm going to be using chat GPT as an assistant to help me craft the story and decide what type of images I will use in the story book so I'm putting create me a children's story book about the beautiful bond between a father and a daughter including the ways they connect and have special moments and memories from the time she's a little girl through adulthood I want my book to be be 32 Pages total I want it to be a hard woman Story the little girl's name can be twia and the father's name can be Cornelius all right now let's see what we get all right so once upon a time in a cozy little town lived a girl named Twilight and her father Cornelius Twila had big bright eyes and full of curiosity page two Cornelius was a kind man with a warm smile and gentle hands he loves spending time with Twila teaching her about the world from the moment Twila was born Chamilia her to close and promise to be there for her that is so cute yeah so this just give you some ideas never copy anything from chat GPT word from word this is simply to give you ideas about how you may want the layout of your book and to spark inspiration for what you may want to include but it is always best to know what you want to write in your own book and then just use chat GPT for inspiration about things that you may not have thought about that you also may want to include on some of the pages all right so now I'm going to ask chat GPT what layout or images should I include on each page and then these are some of the prompts I'm going to go ahead and copy and paste this prompt in mid Journey just to see of course we have to do backs slash and then we're going to click on imagine that's how we start all prompts in mid Journey then I'm just going to paste this prompt and see what mid Journey gives us I'm also going to go ahead and copy and paste this prompt as well so we can go ahead and see to simultaneously to know if these are going to be the right types of prompts that we're going to use or if I need to improvise or just start over with my prompts all right so for the first prompt that we used these are the images that it gave it's not horrible but these are not the types of images that I'm going for and then this is what it gave for the second one now I like that one that one is actually cute but this is not exact what I'm going for either so I'm going to start from scratch and just use prompts that I think will actually work so for example I Ed a book illustration of a dark skinned girl with two afro puffs in a single pink hair bow in a cozy house holding hands with a dark skinned father sunny day bright colors kids friendly smile happiness yellow dress pink slides red ball and that's what we got for that one I'm going to come and just grab the image that I wanted and save that and then I'm going to drag that into the Cana all right so that's loading and then I'm just going to bring that in we want the image to cover the full page of the book so even though we have our margin set we just want to make sure none of our important information goes over the margin so any of the people that are on your pages you want to make sure they're in between the margins and any of the words that you put you want to make sure that that they're in the margins so I think I'm going to change the text to this one I like children's one that's pretty cute now you'll notice that it has the crown besided that means it's for um canva Pro so you have to be on a paid plan in order to use fonts like this so again if that's something you're interested in then make sure you click on the link in my description to get your first month with canva Pro for free all right so let's change this to the same font then I'm going to go ahead and duplicate that we can bring that down here then I'm going to go ahead and paste in the first part of my story and you don't want the text to cover up any of the important stuff so I'm just going to [Music] make the text a little smaller and then just bring it above them maybe like that or you can always resize the image and kind of keep them a little lower than the text so you can do it that way you can also go to elements and search for something like Splash and then bring something like this over and then we can make this transparent a a little bit so that it's not taken away from the image and then you see you can still kind of see it it stands out something else you can also do is let's say we wanted to duplicate this page and now canva has where you can click on the image and then click on edit the image and then you can go to magic grab and when you go to magic grab you would just click on what you want to grab so let's say I want to grab both of those character so now I can actually move that character or delete that character and then I could use this as just a page with text and then maybe on my next page I only want to have the two of them and you see that when you keep basically everything the same except maybe changing the setting the images are as similar as they can possibly be but they are not exact so that is one of the things that you will have to just take into account if you do want to use AI in generating your book images so this is not a deal breaker for me because I use images that look as similar as possible so for example this guy kind of looks similar to him so I'm going to use this one and save this one bring that in I'm going to go to edit image and do the magic grab again and I'm just going to grab both of them then I'm going to duplicate the page I'm going to remove them and just have a duplicate page so I'm going to flip the image and make it horizontal I just want to see if it matches it up so if I go to grid view I'm going to add a blank page in between here you see how this can be a spread because these two pages match each other side by side I like that so let's keep working though go ahead and bring my text down here we'll put that here I'm going to space the lines out just a little bit all right so then once you have all your images we can come here and rename this and daddy and me interior then we can come and download this as a PDF document so we'll do PDF print flatten PDF and then then we'll do um CNY YK for professional printing um but if you don't have the pro version then you can just do RGB and then once you get your proof copy you can see if it comes out the way you want it now although mid Journey does allow you to upscale your images and I've never had a problem with any of my images if for some reason you get your proof and you see that it's not as sharp or as crisp as you want it to be you can always use sites like vectorizer doai you you just drag your image in here to start all right so now we're going to go ahead and start working on our cover head to Google and do a search for KDP cover calculator and then we can go here and we can enter in all of our Dimensions that we talked about from step one so we're going to do paper bag interior we're going to do standard color white paper is the only option with standard color and then we're going to do left to right measurements in inches and then we're doing 8 and 1/2 by 8 and 1/2 in and then our book size is 3 two pages then we're going to click on calculate dimensions and this is going to give us our full cover width so we're going to come back to canva create a design custom size and then we're going to plug in our new dimensions for our cover so 17 point 322 by 8.75 and then this is going to give us our full cover Dimension we can go ahead and title it um daddy and me cover we can also go ahead and download the template once you download the template you'll see three options so we can copy the PNG option and then we'll go ahead and paste that in and then we'll just bring it to match this perfectly all right so now we have our front cover which is going to be over here and then we have our back cover which is going to be over here we don't want any of our important text or images to go outside of the white area all right so the pink area is just letting us know you too far out honey you need to back on up to that white area all right we also don't want anything to go over our barcode and we can go ahead and start designing our cover for the cover I'm just going to go back into one of the um illustrations that I actually like so let's do image number three since this one has like her hand kind of weird and it's weird right there that's the I guess the neatest hand is there so we'll go ahead and save that now I'm going to just bring in my image and while that's loading I'm going to go to elements and I'm going to go ahead and grab me a square I'm just going to bring the square the whole entire image so that that's going to end up being our background we can change the color later all right so then I'm going to just make this transparent so that we can still see what's behind it then I'm going to bring my image over to the right since this is going to be the front and I'm going to make this let's see if I flip it going bring this over here make it as big as possible and then just kind of crop it okay now I'm just going to click on the color now this is the image we're using so you can see that canva actually gives you the photo color so you can just play around with any of those so you can see if you need to bring the transparency up just so you can see what it will look like so I like this one so you can either leave it as a you know plain background in the back and then if you wanted to just have her by herself grab him out of the photo so we can just delete him and then we can do background remover so that she could just be a plain image if we wanted to have her on the back cover like that and then maybe bring some text say something like love is never ending and then let's go to effects and let's say we want to curve the text to put it over her head like that and so then if we click on it and bring the transparency back down we see that nothing is covering that barcode everything is within the margin so that's one way to do it and then we can also even let's say we wanted the background to extend to this part too so all of it could look the same we can go to edit image and I love these new features C has added so let's go to magic expand and see if it'll work for us lock all right so it says currently images that are locked rotated flipped or in frames are not supported okay so I think we have flipped this image so let okay let's flip it back and see if it'll work then all right so let's flip it back and now let's go to edit image and Magic expands and then let's do whole and see if it will do it and then we have the background as the full full cover and then we can go in and make our spine bring this down a little bit so we can see that background all right so to make our spine just grab our Square our Infamous Square bring this over so that we can see what we're working with on the spine bring this down and then we can change the color to one of the document colors all right make sure we drag this all the way down and then we can go ahead and move the other background down so that we can get to the template that we were using and we can go ahead and delete the template we don't you know we don't need it so it's fine and we really don't need the background anymore since we changed it and then we can just drag our new background up like so like that and then we can start working and then we can put our text I think we had children one for the text so let's go ahead and keep it the same children one let's duplicate that so we can work with that and we're going to do daddy and me bring it down just a little oh no that's too much and we're going to do bring the spacing back up a little bit we'll make it as big as possible let's make this white make a Shadow all right so Daddy and me let make that white I'm going to just bring in our um template one more time just to make sure our text is not too big all right so I text is kind of right there at it so I'm going to bring that down just a little cuz we don't want it getting cut off all right so nothing is over the important information or the barcode we can go ahead and delete that and then we can go ahead and save this as a PDF print document as well go ahead and flatten it and then we can download that as well now we have our two files that are needed to upload our book to KDP so let's go to the last step and get ready ready to upload so we're going to head over to kp. amazon.com we're going to click on the create button then we're going to create paperback and I'm not going to go too detailed into this section because I've already created this video that goes step by step but essentially you're just going to complete your book details including your book title and then your um subtitle choose your categories Amazon allows you to choose up to three categ ories for your book so make sure you fill that out completely then after you choose your categories and your keywords you're going to want to upload your manuscript those are the two files we saved which is the interior as well as the cover file when using mid Journey or artificial intelligence you do want to declare that you have used AI generated artwork and then you'll look over your book in the print previewer to make sure everything is okay and that you don't have any error messages is then you'll enter in your pricing information cuz you got to get paid and then you will publish your paperback book so those are the steps to publish a book on Amazon KDP if you do need to watch the full step-by-step video about how to upload your children's book you can watch that here and like I said at the beginning if you want to know how to Market and sell your books and get to the bag then join my marketing program at book bag University I'll have links in the description thank you so much for sharing this video and let me know if you'll be using AI to publish your children's until next time bye-bye