March 20

Options For Self-Publishing

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In the past, this would be the point where you would print out a copy of your manuscript on high quality paper or, in later years, save it to a rich text document and begin shopping it around to publishers. Each one would take their own sweet time getting to it and each one would want exclusivity and would get uppity if you submitted to other publishers during their review and evaluation period. Continue reading

Category: Publishing
March 12

Using Photos and Images in Your Manuscript

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Often, you may wish to use photos or graphics to illustrate your book. For a print book, your photos will need to be a minimum resolution of 300dpi or the illustration will be pixilated and fuzzy in print. You will need to use a quality photo-editing program to increase the resolution depth if the photo is less than 300dpi. This is not about the physical size of the photo, but is instead how close together the pixels are that create the image. This is likely one of the most challenging parts of self-publishing for the novice. I highly recommend seeking a crash course from someone you know who is adept at photo editing if you do not feel confident working on the images yourself. Continue reading

Category: Publishing, Writing
March 1

Beta Readers and Editors

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Stephen King advises writers to write with the door open and edit with the door closed. The first draft and rewrite are yours alone. After that, you need to get a second opinion. Choose your beta readers and editors carefully. You can pay hundreds of dollars to have someone edit your book for you or you can take a chance that you have a clue what you are doing. Continue reading

Category: Editing
February 28

Just Do It!

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It seems as though everyone I talk to has at least one book inside them, waiting to be born. Sadly, most will die without ever seeing the light of day. Why? At this point in our development as a society it is for nothing more than lack of time and/or motivation. Continue reading

Category: Editing, Writing
February 5

What Materials Will You Need?

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The beauty of self-publishing is that beyond your standard software, there is almost no overhead to publishing. At any point of the process, there are people who are perfectly willing to take your money to do what you can do yourself with a lot of patience and persistence. It takes time and there is a learning curve, but with a rudimentary knowledge of word and graphic processing, you can do it all yourself. Here are the basic programs and tools you will need: Continue reading

Category: Publishing, Writing
January 28

My Publishing Journey

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Are you one of those thousands of people with a book in some stage of development, whether it is in your head as nothing more than an idea or stuffed away in a desk drawer or computer file somewhere? Do you tell yourself that “someday” you will write a book? Do you have any idea how easy it is to make TODAY that “someday?” Continue reading

Category: Inspiration