About Kat | Mysite

Kat Cossentine

Writing my first story

I'm a big lover of cats and basically a child at heart.

I was spending time with family, including my 10 month old nephew, when I came up with my first rhyming book for toddlers.

Fluffy McFluff is inspired by my cat Cherry, who I've had for over ten years. I rescued her from Battersea Old Windsor and she came with a nervous spirit and a very fluffy coat.

We had recently visited the vets with Cherry when the story line for Fluffy came to me. During that visit Cherry shed quite a lot of fur to the point that I started sweeping it up from the table whilst the vet was out of the room.

"it's almost a defense mechanism" said my husband

And that is where the story came from!

The self-publishing journey

After a lot of encouragement from family I was determined to do something with my little creation.

I've been designing greetings cards since producing all the stationary for my wedding. I am lucky to have also developed some (limited) graphics skills through my day job. So I set about getting to grips with illustrations using (don't judge) MS Publisher. I now aspire to buy Adobe Illustrator one day (watch some Youtube videos, they're mesmerizing).

Having found a reputable printer who would produce short runs I then had to learn all about self publishing. I still don't know much. Fair to say I'm making this up as I go along. I joined forums and investigated indie publishing collectives and amazon. But on the scale of things my small 'hobby' project didn't warrant the investments required. So I opted to go it alone completely and took the leap to purchase my ISBN. Then freaked out - I was committed to making this work!

I hit a few hurdles along the way. Mainly technical ones. If you purchase a copy of Fluffy you may notice that the printed colours are not quite as vibrant as they appear on screen. This is because commercial printers use a colour model called CYMK and it's more complicated to attain the fluorescing colours that I'm probably far too fond of. So big disappointment followed by some reassurance by a professional graphic designer friend. And in time I came to terms with it and was back on track.

Thanks to family and friends who have encouraged, advised and supported. My chosen printers, Helloprint, have also been amazingly helpful - what a professional, helpful and well organised company.

All that was left was to decide how I was going to market and sell my book. Luckily also an area I have a bit of experience with and an interest in. But a lot of work on top of a full time day job. I'm still feeling my way around various platforms, wondering what I've got myself into. All good experience though.

I hope you and your little ones enjoy the book. The next one is already written and should be a lot quicker in the making now that I'm becoming a dab hand at all this!