Terra The Turtle has tripled in size!
Announcing two more Terra the Turtle books - a rhyming version and a Russian English Bilingual Version.
The Tea with Terra
Instead of our usual long summer trip, my family and I dedicated last summer to working on a children's book. Our house was always full of Russian and English books, many of which I annotated with notes when I was learning how to read English. I loved reading and keeping these books, but I couldn't relate to any of them, as none featured refugees. My family envisioned a better reading experience for refugee children. Terra The Turtle: A Journey Through The Waves has been proudly displayed in our house for nearly a year.
Writing children's books that I could relate to has been a spark I've felt since my isolated childhood. Many times, I have doodled ideas or written little stories. I always believed my family was in a unique position to work on such a project because we are quite artsy. Also, my dad is great at layout and publishing, and stories are always better when written by people who are emotionally attached to them.
We never pursued this idea initially, as publishing a book seemed overwhelming for three working adults and one child busy with school and theater productions. However, when my dad got laid off from his job of 20 years during the summer, when everyone had a bit more free time, we saw an opportunity. Equipped with my dad's design software and fueled by my need to take action so I wouldn’t lose my spirit, we seized the moment.
Terra The Turtle: A Journey Through The Waves involved not only substantial work but also numerous decisions and disagreements. We debated on everything, from the turtle's name to the choice of animal to feature. Politically, we were not enthusiastic about self-publishing on Amazon, but we disliked the idea of depending on a third party even more. We put in the extra work to publish an e-book version on Amazon, Etsy and Shopify.
Terra only felt real when the book was delivered to our house. Holding the book, we knew it was very special that we got to work on this project. Terra The Turtle: A Journey Through The Waves is educational, colorful, and joyful.
Since last summer, we have:
Made numerous minor edits to the book
Begun working on the next versions of the book, always with the intention of creating bilingual books (which is why the first version had very easy-to-translate text)
Created talktoterra.com, a website for young people to provide a safe space for expressing their feelings when they're feeling sad or lonely, and to offer a fun game for distraction.
and most pleasurably, we gave out Terra books in little libraries all over New York City!
Terra has tripled in size!
I am writing to introduce 2 more Terra The Turtle books - a rhyming version and a Russian English Bilingual Version.
Now there are 3!
I started with a rhyming version of the story during the summer, but found it challenging to translate.
Knowing we wanted to publish bilingual books, we chose to start with a shorter, simpler language version. Bilingual books are invaluable for helping kids learn to read and understand multiple languages, and they are rarer than other children's books. Bilingual books also help families connect.
We aim to publish in a few other languages but started with Russian since we are most fluent in it. Which language should we publish next?
We worked very hard on the translation so it took a lot of time. Terra The Turtle / Черепаха Терра - Путешествие по волнам is 55 pages!
Our plan involves distributing bilingual books to communities that we personally know are in need of them.
Regarding the Rhyming Version, I probably should have published it sooner. Despite my fondness for poetry from childhood and my regular writing of poems, I've always been too shy to publish my own. Of course, I prefer it to the original. It's a bit longer, more whimsical, and conveys emotions more effectively. I become emotional each time I read it.
Read them yourselves! Rhyming version and Bilingual version.
What have we learned from self-publishing books?
It's okay to launch a Minimum Viable Product of anything, including a children's book.
We have momentum and some free time as a family, and we use it to make the books. The books don't have spelling, grammar, or layout mistakes, but they aren't perfect yet. We published them anyway. Now is the moment. We can help people now. We can't predict or control tomorrow.
As a product leader, I push for speed every day. A product doesn't need to be perfect to create value or to help people feel the right things. Ship something and get some feedback. Iterate and then ship again. This, I believe, is the fastest and most interesting route to progress.
Releasing something is always scary. It means you care. If you release things more often, it means you care more often.
We received mostly positive feedback on v1 of the book, and making fixes and republishing was not too difficult.
It helps to stay focused on your audience. My audience isn't children's book publishers. My audience is young kids. Young kids just need something to capture their attention. They are just happy to see bright colors and animals. The children who saw the book all loved it, and that's what is most important.
Book was lucky to receive very positive reviews on Amazon. We are so grateful as this impacts our ranking.
We currently have 17 written reviews, which is a solid start, but we aspire to collect more.
Note - you can't pay for reviews or anything like that, and everyone has had to purchase the book.
The reviews are incredibly positive! I often read them and they bring a smile to my face.
Consider this review from a grandmother who purchased it for her granddaughter and even turned it into an art project! If I knew who she was, I'd love to express my gratitude personally. I want to give her a hug!
The decision to include more than just a story was the right one.
Credit goes to my mother, Alla, for encouraging us to incorporate fun facts about animals. My sister, Rachel, also deserves credit for coming up with the idea to draw a map and creating it on her iPad. Since we all enjoy drawing, we included activity drawing pages as well.
Adults love facts, which makes the book appealing to all ages. They also enjoy sharing these facts with children.
The kids are drawing in the book, and it's absolutely adorable!
I don't want these books to just collect dust or be kept in pristine condition on a bookshelf. I want them to be filled with drawings and show clear signs of use!
Book category is very important.
Choosing the right three categories can significantly improve the discoverability of your book.
Sales within a category are considered when determining rankings.
The original Terra The Turtle book is ranked #40 on Amazon's children's moving books category! It's in the Top 50!
We recently published the Rhyming Version and it's already at #110 in the children's category. We're aiming to improve this ranking as more sales come in.
We're ranked 1,783 in Nursery Rhymes, a category where we might not perform as well.
As for the Bilingual version, we're #259 in Russian language books. I believe this ranking could improve with more sales!
Marketing works, even if it is our least favorite part.
Every time we do an Instagram post, we get a sale that week.
Even if our followers aren’t a lot , which can feel discouraging, people are finding our book!
We posted least in October, January and February and look at sales…
Follow us for fun stories of underwater creatures and our updates https://www.instagram.com/talktoterra/ !
If you put a book in a free library, it’ll immediately be taken!
As soon as we place our books in a little free library, they're gone by the following day. This is wonderful!
People are on talktoterra.com !
Steps taken to increase website visibility:
Added a link to the website on the back of the book.
Printed QR codes of the book and website, and placed them in various locations.
Social media posts
This is a full time job.
Achieving great success with this book would require numerous advertisements, SEO strategies, and consistent social media posts...
Most books don't make any money, so earning a large amount from this isn't our primary goal as a family. However, we are proud of our sales! The good amount of sales we have allows us to purchase more books to donate to those in need.
Projects that aren’t profit driven, are driven by passion & purpose.
I feel so energized and passionate writing about Terra and working on Terra. The books bring me great energy, especially the rhyming version.
If I could, I would work on colorful, joyful children's books all day! I have so many ideas, and my mind is always racing with more.
Seeing our books in other people's homes is an indescribable feeling. This, along with photos of people holding my books, is more rewarding than tracking any sales numbers.
As discussed in the last post, a larger monthly order number can give me a momentary rush.
A photo of a child reading the book gives me a much longer and sustainable feeling of happiness and peace.
Here are a few photos, to share that joy:
Please, please send me more photos!
Purpose fuels our ongoing efforts.
Even after a long workday, I find myself writing this because of that purpose. I deeply care about our mission, and this passion keeps me engaged.
I can't stop until I help enough people.
When I talk about this, people often tell me that they wish they felt some purpose in life. Because of this, I'm writing on this subject in honor of my 30th birthday.
Purpose can be very contagious.
Purpose is what keeps my sister making plans to read to children in Staten Island, even though she has a very busy school and theater year.
Purpose compels my parents to help for hours, even when they juggle numerous responsibilities and could be earning money elsewhere, which they genuinely need.
Purpose keeps our community purchasing books and distributing them to small libraries around them.
If your days feel lacking in purpose, I invite you to join our mission and help me distribute the books. Joyfulness guaranteed!
Now that the weather is nicer and our books are published, I can't wait to distribute our three books around New York City! I’ll post concrete dates sometime soon.
Thank you, everyone, for being a part of this journey. I hope my writing about our process has been interesting to you. Thank you for caring about my passion and purpose to help other refugee/immigrant children, and for sharing it with others.
It's been more than 20 years since I had to leave Russia and start anew in a place where I didn't want to be. Back then, I wasn't brave or hopeful. I cried and cried, writing poetry about sad cats and showing everyone my dramatic drawings of crying cats. Over 20 years later, I helped publish children's books for Russian-English speaking children about a scared turtle.
Like Turtle Terra, at this moment in time, I am feeling just fine. It's amazing how much life can improve when you're surrounded by the right animals!