A problem common to both publishing and self publishing

Whatever method you use, you need a good product. In the Kitten's case it was apparent that in the end, I couldn't sell people Powerpoint presentations. When you look at the original stories you'll see that they contain very few different images and they are of a low quality. You've got to have something with high production values or you're attempting to cheat the customer.

I had two major problems
1) I had to increase the quality of the drawings
2) I had to increase the quantity and variety of the drawings

Paint and powerpoint had to go!!

The major issue with paint is that the graphics it outputs are bitmaps (made out of lots of dots) this means that when you alter or increase the size of the drawings they go pixelated and grainy.

The major issue with powerpoint is you just can't supply powerpoint slides to any type of printer at all.

the solution for me came with one particular software package - Adobe Illustrator. It uses vector graphics - when you draw an image, it's not made up of dots, it's made up of co-ordinates with lines between them (this may be an oversimplification) The main thing is that the images maintain their quality whatever you do to them - a foot high kitten looks the same as a one inch high kitten.

Illustrator is pricey though - so until you get published you'll have to do what I do. I used a 30 day trial version from the front of a magazine - I think you can download a trial from the adobe site as well. Then I found a designer who I knew at work and used his computer. I learned the very basic skills I needed as quickly as possible and then knocked out the pages quickly by doing all the drawings on one page and then copy and pasting them multiple times. It doesn't matter too much after a while if you don't have access to illustrator, because it outputs files as PDFs - which you can view on any computer and print without paying any money.

Printers of all kinds accept PDFs.

Transfering the images from paint to illustrator was a bit beyond me - I have no training. So i bought a pen and tablet, cellotaped a picture of the kitten to it and traced it. Not really van gogh I know, but it did the job.

If you're drawing free hand, make your images as large as you possibly can - it's easy to reduce images, but not to expand them. You're going to need to scan those images before print at some stage.

i've done a link to adobe and to dabs where I bought the tablet.

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/
http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=3NH8&SearchType=1&CategorySelectedId=11016&SearchTerms=tablet&PageMode=3&SearchKey=All&SearchMode=All&NavigationKey=11016