I decided to create a custom AI pet, and it chose an owl for me. Of course, I had to turn it pink because that’s much more my vibe. 😂 What’s even funnier is that it named the owl Quill, which is the same name as @Dr. John Elcik AI tool! I’m still figuring out all the practical benefits, but I like being able to quickly access ChatGPT from whatever screen I’m working on. The little animations are pretty cute too. You can create a pet based on almost any idea or vision you have. I haven’t done a lot of customization yet, but you can also have it give you reminders and alert you when something needs your attention. Do you have an AI pet yet? Share a picture of yours in the comments! 👇

You would think creating a children’s book would be easy because the books are short, right? But honestly, writing the story is usually the easy part. It’s everything that comes AFTER the story that starts getting complicated. 😅 📖 𝟭. 𝗦𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗𝗦 A spread is when an illustration spans across two facing pages of your book. They can look amazing, but formatting them correctly for print can be a challenge. You have to think about bleed, margins, the gutter, where your characters are positioned, and whether something important is going to disappear into the center of the book. Unless you’re using a program like InDesign or Affinity that can properly handle those layouts, this can become frustrating pretty quickly. 🤯 🎨 𝟮. 𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗨𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦 You can hire a professional illustrator, but depending on the book, that can easily cost thousands of dollars. 💸 AI has made illustration much more accessible, but it comes with its own problem: 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗰𝘆. Your character looks perfect on page one, and then five pages later their face changes, their clothes are different, or suddenly they look like an entirely different kid. 😂 🔤 𝟯. 𝗧𝗘𝗫𝗧 𝗚𝗘𝗧𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗟𝗢𝗦𝗧 Another HUGE issue I see is text getting lost in the illustrations. 👀 I’ve seen so many DIY children’s books where the artwork is beautiful, but the text is sitting on top of a busy part of the image and becomes difficult to read. Or someone generates the text directly into the AI image, which creates another problem because now you can’t easily edit it when AI misspells something or creates those weird AI letters. 😵‍💫 Your text should remain editable and work 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 the illustration — not be permanently baked into it. 📱 𝟰. 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗢 𝗘𝗣𝗨𝗕 And then there’s the ebook. 😬 Sure, you can create a children’s book in Canva and get a PDF that works for print. But what happens when you want to publish the Kindle version? Children’s picture books often need a 𝗳𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗱-𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗘𝗣𝗨𝗕 so the illustrations and text stay exactly where they’re supposed to be. Suddenly, you’ve added another technical formatting project to your plate.

🎉 @Jim Flach Just officially published his FIRST children’s book! A huge congratulations to Jim on the launch of Lila and the Sleeping Seed! 🌱📚 👉 ORDER YOUR COPY HERE This sweet children’s story follows Lila as she plants a green bean seed for her dad and learns that even when she can’t see anything happening above the soil, there’s a whole lot going on underneath it. It’s a gentle story about gardening, nature, patience, and learning to give things what they need to grow. Perfect for young readers ages 4–8 who love exploring the outdoors and asking lots of questions. And I absolutely ❤️ seeing another member of our community go from an idea to a published book! Go check out Jim’s new book and show him some support!

By now, some of you have been hearing the chatter that I have been working on a children's book solution. I took the files that I created and I uploaded it to Amazon KDP. I ordered a proof copy, and I'm so proud of it! I'm going to officially hit that publish button soon, and I think I'm going to order some author copies to give away to my son's preschool and to the other little kids in his classroom.

By popular request! @Dr. John Elcik suggested we have a day of the week dedicated to sharing our Pinterest pins and keeping each other motivated. And I thought… why have a boring Wednesday when we could have 𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗗𝗔𝗬?! 😂📌 The timing is actually perfect because Pinterest is one of those things I 𝘬𝘯𝘦𝘸 I should be more consistent with, but I would always get stuck overthinking: What kind of pin should I make? What should it say? What should I promote? What should I post next? My 𝗔𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗞𝗶𝘁 has genuinely been helping me with this. I now have pins created AND scheduled ahead of time because my Book Marketing Kit gives me the ideas and prompts based on my actual books. Now instead of staring at a blank screen trying to figure out what to create, I can grab a prompt, copy + paste it, create the graphic, and get that pin scheduled. 📌 So we're making 𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗗𝗔𝗬 a thing! 👇 𝗗𝗿𝗼𝗽 𝗮 𝗳𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗽𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀! Share what you've been working on, check out some of the other authors' pins, and show each other some love. Let’s get some 𝗣𝗜𝗡𝗴𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 going! 😂📌 And if you haven't made a pin lately… consider this your sign to make ONE today. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just get it pinned!