What's in a name?

Part of the assignment when Bethany was writing The Lotus Princess was to include items that were authentically Chinese. So, she researched the names so that they would match the personality of the characters.  According to this site on Chinese name meanings:
Mei Lien means Beautiful Lotus (Mei means Beautiful, and Lien also means Daughter of the Sun)
He Ping means Peace
Ju Long means Powerful, Gigantic Dragon
Huang Fu means Rich Future

The Cover Story: You judge a book by its cover

We actually started working on the cover right at the beginning of the process.  While working with the editor on the text, we were also working with the Publishing Assistant, Kylee, on the author bio and description of the story.  We struggled with the decision of whether to include an author picture or not, but eventually decided not to for privacy reasons.  The original bio was a little longer, but in the end we cut one sentence so that the balance between the description and the bio would be better.

The description started short: "When Princess Mei Lien sees the injustice of her father's rule, she has to do something about it.  Kindness wins the day over magic, strength and cleverness."

Next, it was too long: "When Princess Mei Lien sees the injustice of her father’s rule, she has to do something about it. But her father, happy with the status quo, uses his magic to turn her into a lotus flower! Will the kind He Ping be able to save her and help her turn the conditions in the village around, or will she fall into the hands of the powerful (but not very considerate) Ju Long, or the crafty (but not very compassionate) Huang Fu?"

Finally, we settled on this: "When Princess Mei Lien sees the conditions of their town, she knows she must do something. Frustrated, her father turns her into a lotus flower to prevent her from protesting his rule. Will kind Prince He Ping find her so they can rescue the kingdom together?"

Before the back cover text was finalized, we also had the opportunity to choose from a few options for the front cover. Our favourites were the first and fourth.

This one looks like the title page.

This is the one we chose, but can you spot the difference?

Rebecca suggested using a "Chinese looking" font, and it worked well with this cover option.

The cover is what sells the book, since most people don't read through it before buying.  We think it turned out great!

The Lotus Princess is in the Newspaper!

The Langley Advance printed a great article about The Lotus Princess!  Read the article online: Langley girl's princess story launched.  Thanks to Ronda Payne for the interview and write up.

Putting it all together

The next stage in the publishing process is the layout.  At this point the pictures and text are put onto the pages, with background borders and page numbering.  The title page, bibliographical information, dedication and paging are set.  Let's take a look at how it developed:

 It was so exciting to see copyright, ISBN number and library information on the bibliographic information page.  It was finally on its way to being a "real" book!  On this page you can see the normal background which forms the border for many of the pages.  On some pages, it is another colour or a pattern which matches to the illustration for that page.

 Bethany and Rebecca couldn't agree on the title page, so the illustrators gave us several versions with purple or green backgrounds and with or without sleeves.  Rebecca's favourite was purple with sleeves, but Bethany's was green with no sleeves.

As you know if you've seen the book, we went with green with no sleeves.  The layout artists added the beautifully formatted title and author name. They also created a "The End" page for the end, as Bethany had in her original, in order to make the number of pages come out even.

Something hidden!

We asked the illustrators to hide something in the story to represent Bethany's background: Swiss on her dad's side and Dutch on her mom's.  Can you find the objects?

The Wedding

The last page of illustrations.  Even during the process, we had the chance to comment and ask for tweaks to the illustrations.  See what happened with the wedding picture.

Bethany's original

Early version of illustration

The final version turned out great!

Magical flowers

More illustrations!  Bethany's magical flowers, and lotus flower -- followed by the final version.

Ju Long's flowers

Ju Long and flowers

Huang Fu's flowers

Huang Fu and flowers

Bethany's cover page, showing the lotus flower beside the magical other flowers.