My Highland Dance Notebooks have Arrived!

Almost a week ago, I received the final email from Amazon, announcing that all five levels of My Highland Dance Notebook were finally available. Very exciting!

My Highland Dance Notebook is a project I conceptualized about six to seven years ago, when my daughter was actively dancing. Once she was old enough to attend classes on her own, I was finding that she needed a tool to keep track of her teacher's instructions. At that time, I made up a simple template and had it printed at the local copy store. I imagined being able to have it professionally printed, and distributing it through the Highland dance vendors I often saw at competitions and festivals.

As it was just one of many projects and ideas I tend to come up with, I did a bit of research into how one gets a book printed for distribution (without it being published...I've done some research on that and once submitted a query to a publisher. It feels like a very difficult "world" to break into) and didn't get very far, and the idea was pushed to one of the many back burners I apparently have in my brain.

I've been challenged recently (3 guesses why!) to try and find some extra income so I was scrolling through a Facebook post of ideas from other moms. Years ago, I helped my kids publish some short and sweet e-books on Amazon Kindle as a school project. I learned from that Facebook post that you can publish more than e-books. With Kindle Direct Publishing, you can publish books that customers can order, and they are printed on demand.

I was so excited! I immediately remembered my project idea and decided that even though my imagined version of this book would be spiral bound and have tabs to separate the sections, I could be happy without those.  It took me a little longer than I thought it would to get all five levels complete and submitted but after a few re-submissions for errors and such, they are finally all set to go. (I hope! A friend sent me a typo on the back cover of two of the books just last night--oops!)

So before I go, I'll just briefly describe the books, and then my plan is to focus in on each individual book over the next few weeks.  In each book, you'll find 52 sets of pages that have what I call the "note" section on one page, and a practice chart on the other. The notes and the charts have all the dances for each level already printed in place. That section closes with certificate pages that have a badge logo, congratulating the dancer on mastering each dance. The next section has 6 sets of facing pages with competitions checklists, and logs to keep track of competitions competed in and the results of those. Finally, the notebooks have a journal section, meant for the dancer to write down some thoughts and memories about their year in that level.  

Please see the links in the sidebar if you'd like more details about My Highland Dance Notebooks!