Dan Ward

Consultant and Author

The Lulu Version Format

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mr sillyI loved the Mr. Men / Little Miss books by Roger Hargreaves when my kids were small. The stories were just the perfect blend of simplicity, absurdity, and insight. They were just long enough. The illustrations were engaging, funny, and wonderfully colored.

Plus I really liked the format and the way the books felt in my hands. Open to any page and you’ll find text on one side, with a full-page picture on the other. Naturally I decided that would be the perfect layout for my Simplicity Cycle book.

When I self-published it at Lulu.com, I was able to pick a square print size (just like Mr. Men!), and set out to write a book that walked the reader through the Simplicity Cycle diagram one step, one picture, at a time. In that version, open to any page and you’ll find an image on one side, with explanatory text on the facing side.

In fact, that layout is what I initially proposed to my editor at HarperCollins when I signed the contract. She wisely & correctly suggested a more traditional approach, which really did work better in the long run, but part of me still really likes the concept.

NEXT: Free Books!

The Simplicity Cycle @ Lulu

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Simplicity Cover circleIn 2005, as a Christmas present to my two daughters, I wrote a short fiction/fantasy/adventure novel and self-published it at Lulu.com. The experience of self-publishing was so easy and fun that I wrote 5 more short novels as presents for the next five Christmases. Note that I didn’t say the writing part was easy. Just the publishing.

In the back of my mind, I thought maybe I could write a book for grownups someday too. The funny thing is despite my suspicion that there was more to be said on the topic of the Simplicity Cycle, writing a whole book about it wasn’t my idea. It was Dan Pink who suggested it.

Here’s how that happened. In response to his 2006 book A Whole New Mind , I sent him a link to the Simplicity Cycle Manifesto, version 1.0 (see last week’s post). He was kind enough to write back and he said something that caught me off guard: “One writer to another, you may want to reserve simplicitycycle.com, just in case you decide to write a book someday.”

Huh. I had hoDan Pinknestly not thought about that yet.

I should admit I didn’t actually reserve the domain until 2015 (I have no excuse whatsoever except that I can be stupidly cheap sometimes), but I almost immediately got to work on a longer treatment of the concept. I copied the format from the Mr. Men / Little Miss books, which my kids loved. It took a while, but I eventually came up with a book-like product.  more about that and the format in future posts.

In March of 2015, much to my excitement, I was able to thank Mr. Pink in person when we met at SXSW.