My Son Wanted to Be an Author. We Didn't Wait.
We were at the library when Charles looked up and asked if his book could be on these shelves one day. I told him we didn't have to wait! We can make a real book! That conversation became Pizza Shop! Comic — Book 1. By the time I finished formatting it for print, he was already drafting Book 2: Muffin Shop!
Before I started scanning the pages, he asked if he should write something about himself in the back of the book. I was surprised that how good a sense he’s already got of what it means to publish YOUR own book! I encouraged him — 'Of course! That's your About the Author page.' Let's do it!
Before sending Charles's artwork to print, I wanted every word he wrote to come through crisp and unmistakable. Using Adobe Express's AI Photo Editor — currently in beta — I was able to clean up the scanned pages directly: removing stray ink dots and rough pencil outline marks cluttering his hand-lettered text.
However, AI does not always get it right on the first time. There were moments it overcorrected — erasing not just the stray marks but actual drawing lines that were part of Charles's original artwork.
So I treated it like any other skill: prompt iteration. Each attempt refined the instruction, narrowing what the AI targeted and what it left untouched. After a few rounds of practice prompts, the output landed exactly where it needed to be — clear texts & intact drawings, Charles's lettering standing bold and confident on the page.
With every page cleaned and edited, the next step was bringing Pizza Shop! to life as a real book. I uploaded all individual pages into Blurb's book-building tool, where the layout and page arrangement came together. The complete book landed at 17 pages — a good amount of pages for the first publication.
Blurb's minimum print order requires 24 pages, including front/back covers, so a few pages were padded to meet production requirements. After Charles was informed about the minimum page requirement, he has been constructing his Muffin Shop storyline in a proportional chapter sections.
After several rounds of inspection and page confirmation, Pizza Shop! was ready for its final milestone — the print order submission. I kept the format straightforward: a trade book with soft cover at $3.99, plus a PDF version at $4.99 for digital archiving. Shipping was an unavoidable $6.99. Total investment for Charles's first published book: under $16.
For context, that is less than a standard children's hard cover book off a retail shelf. And yet what arrived in that package would be something no bookstore could sell — a real, printed, bound book authored entirely by my 6-year-old who once stood in a library with a big question asked.
Blurb also offers a free ISBN — making Charles's book a legitimately registered publication available for sale on their website and global retail network. Here are the description, preview, and the "Add to Cart" for Pizza Shop!:
A secret recipe has been stolen from the best pizza shop in town. Can a young detective crack the case and save the day? Pizza Shop! is a comic adventure with heart — and a very happy ending.
Final work received in just 10 days at the time of submission.
