Episode 36: Talking Children’s Books with Lindsay Keller
Lindsay Keller and Marilyn Domer
Lindsay Keller is the daughter in the mother-daughter duo behind The Bell Mare Book Company. Together with her mother Marilyn Domer, Lindsay has created several children’s books surrounding the cowboy way of life. With authenticity born from their own ranching lives, Lindsay and Marilyn have created two delightful books and a coloring book enjoyed by children and their parents alike. We loved hearing about their company vision and the process to make their books.
Can you tell us about your equine background?
Lindsay: I’m a third-generation cowgirl—both sets of my grandparents were involved in ranching, rodeo, veterinary medicine and many other aspects of Western life. My parents are both involved in roping and the Western way of life. My mother, who also illustrates our books, runs barrels. My husband Scott and I live in Oklahoma, we have horses and a small herd of cow-calf pairs. We enjoy team roping, and I barrel race as well. We are hoping to pass our love of the Western way of life onto our three children: our son Trig, who is five; and we have identical twin daughters, Blair and Ella, who are two.
What is your background in writing?
Lindsay: That's also kind of a family tradition. My dad was the vice president of communications for the Kansas livestock association. So I kind of got into the business from watching him in his career. I went to Kansas State University and got a bachelor's degree in agricultural communications and journalism with an equine science minor.
I started freelancing primarily for AQHA in college around 2006 and have just continued freelancing throughout my career. I spent a few years working for a public relations and marketing firm in Kansas City, doing a lot of marketing for a equine veterinary medicine company. And then since I had my kids, I have really transitioned over to being a mom, but we started this children's book adventure in 2016.
What inspired you to create these books?
Lindsay: I started with a much smaller dream than it has become. It was just after I had Trig, and I wanted to fill his bookshelves with books about cowboys, the Western way of life ranching, et cetera. And there are some great books out there written by people that do have “dirt under their fingernails,” if you will. But there's a whole lot more of them written by somebody that I imagine is in a publishing house in New York City and has never, sat astride a horse.
So I decided, well, I can write, I'll write him something and my mom can draw and paint. So I'll see if she'll illustrate it and we'll get this little copy made at Kinko's and he'll have a book that we made for him. After I saw the artwork that my mom put together, I thought we should make this a little bigger deal than I originally intended.
So it just took off from there. We went through the legal process of becoming an LLC and getting all of those hoops accomplished and then found a local print shop that could print a high quality product for us. And, the rest is history.
What is the collaborative process like with your mom? Which comes first—the illustrations or the writing?
Lindsay: My mom and I both hope that, now a few years down the road from where we started, we both feel like these books can be a tangible legacy for us to leave behind. One of our main goals is hopefully someday, my grandkids will be reading these books to their kids and they're telling them about Mom and I and how we worked together to create these. So when you keep that in mind, it puts a lot of pressure on making a high quality product. So it's not a fast process for us.
Now, keep in mind, Mom is semi-retired. I have three kids at home, so neither one of us are sitting at a desk from 8 to 5, by any means, but we spend probably the better part of a year, just deciding on whether the story ideas we've come up with are book worthy.
And then we'll spend, several months from there, with me writing, editing, reading it to my kids, getting their reactions, editing, more, reading it to someone else's kids, editing more… you know with children's books, There's a very fine line between helping a good story and getting too many words on a page where that next picture doesn't come fast enough. And so there's a lot of polish and tightened time.
Once I get the story written and where I'm 90% happy with it, I'll send it off to Mom. She'll decide what picture she wants to go with which words, how she wants the page breaks to go. And then we'll review that together after we're good with that, she will sketch them. She sketches everything by hand, with the exception of a few touch ups here and there, or color matches from our printer.
Basically nothing is done digitally. Every single illustration is a painting, a piece of art, which we think sets us apart from some of the other books available that are illustrated digitally. So after she gets the sketches drawn and we're happy with those, then the next stage is painting. And once she starts painting, if she messes up, she has to start over. So then she'll paint every single page. And then we take it to our printer. We use a local print shop in Topeka, Kansas, which is where my mom lives and where I grew up. And they'll put words with pictures and scan it into the file. From there, back to the editing process. We send it out to copy editors, as well as a few moms to let them read it to their kids.
At that point we're not looking for major changes, but we just want to make sure if there's nothing major that we missed. So then, after we get all those edits back, make those changes, then there's that final copy, edit and proof and lay out. And they print us an actual mockup. We bend my dad's arm to give it a fresh set of eyes and review it and make sure there's no typos that we've missed. And then it goes to print and it takes about two weeks to print them.
Is your mom a water colorist or an painter?
Lindsay: She uses acrylics. She tried watercolors, but it didn't work for what we were trying to do.
Can you share your experiences with publishing? Did you self-publish?
Lindsay: There's a lot of different options out there. I know even you're interested in selling on Amazon, you can publish through Amazon. We like keeping it small. I guess you could say we're both really control freaks. So since this is something we're putting our name on, we want to make sure it's something that we're proud of, that no one said, “Oh, I think you should probably say it this way.” And we weren't happy about it. So we self publish. We use that local print shop. We are a small business. We like doing business with small business and anyone who buys our books is dealing with a small business. So they're not, they're not buying off Amazon and then their book gets lost. And then someone thinks poorly of us or we're dealing directly with them or through our wholesale accounts, Western stores, Western boutiques, things like that.
How do you market your books?
Lindsay: Primarily through social media, and, public relations opportunities such as this podcast, but a big focus of ours right now is really growing our wholesale business. We have come to learn that even though lots of people buy clothes online without trying anything on, books are a little bit different. People do want to try before they buy, they want to pick up the book. They want to feel the pages. They want to see the quality that they're buying, look at the pictures, et cetera. So we're really working to get our book on more shelves in Western boutiques and Western stores. Really, anywhere that people in the ag industry are practicing.
Can you talk about any challenges you have tackled in producing your books? Did anything surprise you along the way?
Lindsay: Oh gosh, we've learned so much. There's been plenty of surprises. Mom and I, we wrote this thing. We printed it on paper, the glue stick to the copy, it was bound with duct tape. That’s where we started, with our first book, Short Go makes the NFR. With our second book, our printer was like, “Oh, thank you, Jesus. They brought me something professional.” We've learned a lot. I think the biggest takeaway that I would, I would give advice on would be, there's two ways you can do this. You can get your books printed overseas or through Amazon, or even through a publishing house and you can get it done. You can have a lot lower input and costs if that's what you're after. But again, that's, that's not what we're after.
So our books are not cheap to print, but again, we appreciate doing business with small business. If there's an issue, I have the general manager of our print shop’s cell phone number. I pick up the phone and I call him and we get it fixed. Or Mom drives two miles down the road and walks in the front door and they figure it out. So that would be something that I would recommend considering before you do go through an Amazon publishing process or something of that nature, is just realize that you will lose control of your baby, if you do choose to send it to a bigger printer, bigger publishing company.
If someone was interested in writing/publishing a children’s book, what advice can you give?
Lindsay: I think one thing that's really helped Mom and I stay focused and strategic is our overarching goal for this, beyond just the legacy that I mentioned before, is both of us feel like we wouldn't be where we are today if it weren't for every single horse that crossed our path throughout our lives. So no matter what, no matter whether we decide to go into anything with The Bell Mare Book Company business is involved in, it has to fit with one thing. And that is either bringing new kids into the horse industry, by giving them an authentic introduction into what this life is like, or maintaining kids who are already in the horse industry, maybe they were born into a horse family, but they just need a little spark of imagination to make them shut off the TV, turn off the cartoons, go outside and play with their horse.
So no matter what we do, where our business goes, we make sure that it fits in under that one main overarching goal. So before you just say, “Oh, I have this great idea. I'm going to go write a children's book,” come up with an overall strategic plan of what you want to accomplish and make sure it fits into that. Because, realistically, this sounds a little bit, um, intimidating, but your book could change someone's life. So make sure that it's an idea worthy of changing someone's life. Because once you put it out there, you don't know what kind of effect it will have. And that was hard on our, our shoulders. We want to make sure that every single book that comes from theBel Mare Book company is inspiring, encouraging people to bring more cowboys and cowgirls into the world because we feel like the world needs more cowboys and cowgirls.
What’s next for you in the literary world?
Lindsay: We just launched our second book. Short Go’s Big Ranch Adventure. Both of our books are based on real life experiences that I had as a child that my mom watched me experience as a mom, and we just launched our second book. Short Go’s Big Ranch Adventure in October. So now we're in the rethinking phase, we have several ideas floating around. We're just trying to decide which one is book-worthy at this point.
As you mentioned, we have a coloring book it's called Ranchin' and Rodeoin' Coloring Book. And if you've seen a scene on a ranch or in a rodeo arena, it's probably in this book. It's a coloring book for all those kids that wish they had, a picture of a mutton bustin’ to color, but you’re never going to find that.
We weren't sure if it would fly. And it did it, it sold better than either of the books last year, actually. So we are also in the works of creating another coloring book, that will launch in probably Q3 or Q4 of this year. And it's going to be targeted more towards the beginning colorer. So it'll be more educational in nature, simpler pictures for little artists that are just learning to color and draw and paint.
And I'll tell you what's in the works for now. There will be another book coming, but it probably will not be this year. It would be pretty ambitious of us to launch two books in two years.
Both of us are big fans of coloring books these days! That’s why we’ve decided to partner with Lindsay to give away one of her coloring books. Fill out THIS form and enter the drawing! We will be drawing on May 15, 2021.
You won't be the first adult. I think I would say there's probably maybe 25% of our sales have been for adults coloring the books.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
One thing that we haven't touched on is, I was fortunate because Mom has been a closet artist, her whole life. So I had a built-in illustrator, but you don't have to. If you have a great book idea and you don't have to share business with your illustrator, you can hire an illustrator, have them do your illustrations. So don't feel like you have to be a business partner with your illustrator. You don't have to, it just worked out that way for us. And we're super, super thankful it did because it's been this great bonding experience for us.
How can our Freelance Remuda listeners buy your book?
Well, hopefully they are on the shelves at your local tack shop already, but if they are not, we have them on our website, which www.thebellmarebookco.com. And then we're also on Facebook and Instagram.