Category: Resources for Writing and Self Publishing


5 Ways To Show Support For Your Favorite Author – for Free!

Filed Under: Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on 5 Ways To Show Support For Your Favorite Author – for Free!
July 21, 2013
5 Ways to bring out the sun for your favorite author... for free!

5 Ways to bring out the sun for your favorite author… for free!

I like to support my favorite authors, and I’m on a tight budget like everyone else, so I needed FREE ways to support them – after having bought and enjoyed their book. Then I realized that sharing these free supportive activities would be a good idea, since I am an author too!

  1. Write a nice review on Amazon.com: It’s easy and very powerful for the author. You have to create an amazon account for yourself the first time, but after that – you can just go straight to leaving a review. These reader reviews right at the point of purchase site are the most powerful of all. Before I buy a book, I read as many as I have time for. It’s particularly helpful to say what you specifically liked about it – show your perspective. 
  2. Tell all your friends about the great book you just read: Word of mouth has been the key for a lot of authors in this new publishing landscape – so tell everyone if you liked it!  Unless it was something like 50 Shades of Gray. We all understand why you might want to keep that on the QT.
  3. Follow their social media: If you are into that, follow them on Twitter, like their Facebook page, sign up for their monthly newsletter. This is also a great way to be the first to hear when a new book is coming out, a special offer is going on, or the author is coming to your town for a signing or talk. 
  4. Mention the book on your own Facebook timeline: This is along the same lines as telling all your friends – but doing it through Facebook. Post about the book, including the title and author, and say that you enjoyed it. I particularly like it when my Facebook friends do this for books they enjoyed because I’m always looking for the next great read. 
  5. Suggest it for your book club reading list: Okay, this one is free because I say “suggest” it for your book club list… but if the suggestion is accepted, then everyone in the book club will either buy, borrow, or share a copy of the book – and while the “buying” part isn’t free, it is VERY supportive of your favorite author.

I have a long list of favorite authors, and there’s a wide range of activity among them. Some are very prolific and I’m in-like-flynn for buying every new book they produce (CJ Cherryh!). Some are very active online and some are not. But whenever I can support them, especially for free, I’m up for it!

 

 

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Registering Copyright Of A Self Published Book – The Follow Through

Filed Under: Blogs @ How to Self Publish, How To Series... Step By Step, Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on Registering Copyright Of A Self Published Book – The Follow Through
June 18, 2013
Finishing up with your copyright obligation is just like a walk on the beach. A walk on an Oregon beach, which requires a warm jacket and an umbrella.

Finishing up with your copyright obligation is just like a walk on the beach. A walk on an Oregon beach, which requires a warm jacket and an umbrella.

While it is not legally required to register your copyright with the US Government, it is highly recommended. I register my copyrights once I have completed my manuscript – before I self publish.

This allows me to upload an electronic copy of my manuscript – which by then, I have formatted as a book – and costs me $35 (in 2013).

Once I self publish my book, I have to follow through with the copyright registration process by mailing two good copies of the book to the copyright office.

“Mandatory Deposit in Brief

• All works under copyright protection that are published in the United States are subject to the mandatory deposit provision of the copyright law.

• This law requires that two copies of the best edition of every copyrightable work published in the United States be sent to the Copyright Office within three months of publication.”

This requirement is beautifully described in Circular 7d, Mandatory Deposit of Copies or Phonorecords for the Library of Congress.

I copied the quoted text from www.copyright.gov and I’m not sure of the copyright of that copyright info… so I’m trying hard to be clear about where I got that… but I’m the one who made “within three months of publication” bold, because I think that’s quite an important point.

These two copies become the property of the US Government and will not be returned. You also have to pack them nicely so that they don’t get blown up by Homeland Security on their way to the Library of Congress.

There is no additional fee for this step, other than the postage.

Not only does this step complete your copyright registration process, and protect your work for a couple hundred years (or less), it also ensures that YOUR book is one of the dozens – well, bizillions – of books on the shelf in a way-cool library. Or stacked in a basement somewhere; who knows.

Library of Congress
Copyright Office
Attn: 407 Deposits
101 Independence Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20559

 

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A New Aviation Biography Is Now Available On Amazon.com…. and back within 24 hours if ever out of stock

Filed Under: Blogs @ "Colonel C. J. Tippett", Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on A New Aviation Biography Is Now Available On Amazon.com…. and back within 24 hours if ever out of stock
June 6, 2013
Unlimited numbers of copies of When No One Else Would Fly, by Corinne Tippett are available on Amazon.com... and if it says out of stock, just check back the next day.

Unlimited numbers of copies of When No One Else Would Fly, by Corinne Tippett are available on Amazon.com… and if it says out of stock, just check back the next day.

There’s a new aviation pioneering biography in town, and it’s really good. Worth ordering on Amazon.com!

And when you order, you can get the book in about three days!  Which is quite incredible considering everything going on in the background.

It is a symphony of electronic publishing, distribution, and delivery that has changed hugely in just the last three years – since I published my first good book, titled  Just A Couple Of Chickens.

One reason the book has recently been going in and out of stock – although never out of stock for more than 48 hours – is because I am mucking about with the cover.

One reason I am mucking about with the cover is that this Print On Demand super-fast-mega-cool print system has a small amount of fluctuation in the cover placement on the book. It’s less than a quarter of an inch, but that can mean a line gets out of place, or a forehead gets stretched.

It all started with my correction to the back matter on the book. I wanted to say that Tip piloted more than ninety-eight different aircraft models, (instead of types of aircraft) and when I made that change, things started to color outside the lines in very minor ways.

The overall print quality, however, is way way way better than it was three years ago. My latest stack of author copies had NO flaws…and three years ago, it was 2 in 10.

My book does not sit in a warehouse, or garage, waiting for orders. It exists as an electronic file within Amazon’s extensive distribution network and when you order a copy, it prints at the nearest facility near you, and ships out fast.

There is no waste. No stacks of remaindered books going into the landfill or shredder. No trucking heavy books over miles of interstate. No packing material wrapping pallets of books in cardboard, binding, plastic, and more cardboard.

It looks to me like some of the early bugs in the Print On Demand system have been solved, and more. Big changes, big improvements – just in time for a Tip’s big story.

If you go online to get When No One Else Would Fly and it ‘s out of stock, check back the next day.

 

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Changing Passwords Frequently Is An Opportunity for Positive Thinking

Filed Under: Blogs @ How to Self Publish, Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on Changing Passwords Frequently Is An Opportunity for Positive Thinking
April 30, 2013
Positive thinking blooms when I use passwords as daily affirmations.

Positive thinking blooms when I use passwords as daily affirmations.

As a Do It Your Self Publisher, I have to log in to about twenty bizillion sites multiple times a day in order to self publish a book – including my own computer, my work computer, my voice mail, my work voice mail, my own phone, my work phone, … etc. The recent increase in internet hacking has led to an increase in password changing in my life – and now multiple logins on sites that used to require only one.

I’m trying not to see it as a pain in the rump, and instead as an opportunity for the practice of positive thinking since I recently changed over to creating passwords as daily affirmations.

And since the new passwords requirements are more stringent – for instance, not allowing me to change my password to something really really similar to my last password…. (schna!) I am scratching for words to express my positivity.

(And yes, I know that lame passwords are the real world equivalent of tying my car key on a really long string to the outside handle of my car door… but jeez. A bizillion random passwords are harder to remember than the location of my one car key!)

So I made a l helpful uber list of positive word synonyms so that I can work them into my new passwords and I decided to share them here on my blog, so that everyone can join me in trying to think up positive mini-mantras that do not contain my dog’s name, the word “password”, or something obscene – which while fun and affirming, was not very positive.

  • Love, adore, ally, amour, appreciate, cherish, delight, devote, enchanted, enjoy, fondly, friend, hanker, idolize, infatuated, like, regard, relish, repsect, worship, yearn, desire, prefer, want, wish, will, do, did, will do,
  • peace, accord, order, pacification, reconiliation, treaty, truce, unanimous, improve, advance, amend, better, boost, cultivate, elevate, mend, fix, elevate, rally, raise, shape up, upgrade, update, rise, revise
  • accomplish, achieve, acquire, attain, carryout, complete, deliver, do, effect, enact, finish, negotiate, perfect, perform, procure, produce…

Now that I think of it, I could also use my daily passwords to:

  • teach myself how to spell words that I always misspell,
  • or capitalizations I always miss,
  • or my new word of the month that I’m trying to learn.

Yet another way to turn a tedious chore into a positive moment!  And also, my second book is almost ready for release. Search Amazon.com for Corinne Tippett or join my book release list to catch the wave.

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Read The Kindle Contract Carefully Before Publishing Your eBook On Amazon – it answers many questions

Filed Under: Blogs @ How to Self Publish, Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on Read The Kindle Contract Carefully Before Publishing Your eBook On Amazon – it answers many questions
March 12, 2013
The Horned Lizard of Self Publishing, who is proud of her new tat, strongly recommends you read the Terms Of Service when you are self publishing a book.

The Horned Lizard of Self Publishing, who is proud of her new tat, strongly recommends you read the Terms Of Service when you are self publishing a book.

Any discussion regarding how to self publish a book has to encompass the world of ebooks. And King of the World of ebooks is the Amazon Kindle.

Kindle has it’s own format, so as I turn my books into ebooks, I have to include Kindle in my plan.

As with all of the business aspects of self publishing a book, there’s a Terms of Service agreement somewhere in the mix – and a button called “I Agree” to press.

I read these terms of service every time… perhaps accounting for some of my red wine consumption by the end of the day. I was planning to discuss the more interesting bits of one of these agreements until I saw the clause expressly preventing me from making any public disclosures of any bits of the agreement.
Well, that’s a bummer!

Because many of the questions I had regarding how my eBook would work with Amazon’s Kindle Program are answered in there. So instead of publicly disclosing things regarding the agreement, I will ask questions and make free association comments, like poetry, that are random. And I’ll offer a common sense piece of self publishing advice: read the contracts carefully as you use any service to self publish a book.

Apropros of Nothing, I Say:

  • Why are the eBooks I buy through the Amazon Kindle Program, especially the nonfiction how to eBooks, not packed chockfull of advertisements and promotions?  I really appreciate the fact that they are not, but I’m somewhat surprised that they are ad-free.
  • Who controls all that marketing and promotional stuff that happens on the Amazon site? Am I going to have to manage that? Because I can barely manage finding my car keys every day, and all that stuff looks complicated.
  • The Kindle Lending Program is a super great deal for me as a customer, because I have enrolled in Amazon Prime. Mostly to watch all the videos and TV, like with NetFlix, but also to get the free two day shipping and access to the once a month lending library. But whassup with that Lending Library where it concerns MY eBook?
  • If I could have three wishes from a genie, I would immediately wish for unlimited wishes… and then I would wish for access to the customer data and raw sales data for my book sales on Amazon.
  • I wonder if it takes a couple of months for sales data to post to an Amazon Kindle Account?
  • If it turns out that someone does not have the copyright to something they sell as an eBook, there are all kinds of dire things that can happen. Just sayin’.

Having read lots of terms of service agreements, I might say – if I were saying anything – which I am not… that one of them I recently read was pretty clearly written, and worth reading. And I appreciate that, because some of them, like anything related to Bank of America, for instance, are truly awful.

Happy Reading!

 

 

 

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How To Turn Your Blog Into A Book… my review of Anthologize (a wordpress plugin)

Filed Under: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions, Blogs @ How to Self Publish, How to use a Website for Self Publishing, Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on How To Turn Your Blog Into A Book… my review of Anthologize (a wordpress plugin)
March 3, 2013
The anthologize plugin for wordpress allows me to pull my blog posts into a project and export them in a format I can use in MS Word... bingo!

The anthologize plugin for wordpress allows me to pull my blog posts into a project and export them in a format I can use in MS Word… bingo!

A blog is an important topic is any discussion of how to self publish a book. In Do It Your Self publishing, it is a primary place to build an audience for your topic, and so being able to pull the posts and turn your blog into a book is important.

I recently worked with the anthologize plugin for WordPress… and it has given me a lot of what I am looking for –

but…. I still have to do a bit of work.

But… it gets me a Word file!

I’ve been looking for a method that produces a nice looking book without a lot of formatting time on my part. And I’ve found services that can do that, but don’t give me a format I can then work with in MS Word or InDesign – which would allow me to use my blog posts to write a whole new book (without laborious copying and pasting or retyping.)

  • In past posts, I investigated blurb.com, which gave me limited results.
  • I gave Blog2Print.com a whirl, and it was better, but still somewhat limited,
  • And I took a run through FastPencil.com, and was pretty delighted … but….

None of them let me work with my material in MS Word.  Until now….  (drumroll)

Anthologize is a plugin for WordPress. In an ironic twist – it is not available for blogs hosted at WordPress.com, which is the free place where people can have WordPress blogs, much like Blogger.com or Typepad.com. This is ironic because most of the other services will work ONLY on those sites, and we who self-host are out of luck. Until now….

When I install the anthologize plugin on my WordPress site, I immediately have access to all of the posts on that site and can pull them into a “project” and export them in pdf, rtf, ePub, html, or Anthologize TEI format.

RTF is the format that catches my attention, because I can open that export directly into Word, and therefore use my blog posts in any way I choose. High Five!

If I want to pull posts from another blog, I import content based on the URL feed. This is great, because I can catch the feed of any of my other blogs and use anthologize to create a project using them. But I have to know the feed address, and I had some difficulty pulling feeds from non-wordpress sites, so I’m not entirely sure about that feature. (This issue appears on the Known Issues list, so someone is working on it – someday?)

At this time, I can’t upload an xml file – I can only pull in a feed. And not every blogging method allows me to create a download xml file of my posts, but most of them have some form of feed.

I have to load the posts one by one into the parts of my project. If there is an “all in chronological order” button, I haven’t found it. For very long-standing blogs, this can be tedious, but since it is the first method I’ve found to give me a Word file, I’m willing to put in my time.  (this issue is also on the Known Issues list)

Anthologize is an extremely useful tool, and easy to use. The plugin was created using funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The way it was created is pretty interesting – it was a workshop thing, accomplished in one week. And it breaks open the world of possibilities of using blog posts to create other things – like a self published book.

While I plan to keep searching for tools that enable me to easily turn my blog into a book, I am very happy with Anthologize, and highly recommend it, even with the bugs.

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How To Turn Your Blog Into A Book…. my review of Blog2Print.com

Filed Under: Blogs @ How to Self Publish, How to use a Website for Self Publishing, Resources for Writing and Self Publishing by Corinne — Comments Off on How To Turn Your Blog Into A Book…. my review of Blog2Print.com
January 15, 2013
The Free Rooster for Just A Couple Of Chickens

This is the actual cover from the pdf book generated by Blog2Print. There were plenty of cover color options, but no font options. Yellow matches the book that the blog supports. “The Free Rooster” supports “Just A Couple of Chickens” and is trying to become a book on it’s own. A Blook!

Many of us, especially authors supporting a self published book, are putting a lot of great content into our blogs, as I am doing with my “how to self publish a book” series, and it would be fabulously great to find an easy and affordable way to turn a blog into a book.

That’s called “blook” in this new language of bloggery.

So I am testing each of the blog to book methods I can find, and my standards are pretty high. I’m finding that I may have to choose between my desires:

  • I want a nice looking book, but I don’t want to have to spend hours formatting it, because I could do that manually, the same way I usually make books.
  • I want the photos to look good, and that’s going to be a challenge because while 72 dpi looks great on screen, it doesn’t look great in print.
  • The book probably needs to be in color, because of all the effort I’ve put into the photos, and color print books are expensive to produce… but, ebooks!  It could be an ebook.
  • And I want to be able to access the book file. For cut and paste, for other uses of my materials. I want to create a file that I can take anywhere, print anywhere.
  • Plus a final and new wish… for it to be affordable, especially if I intend to sell it.
I’ve already reviewed Blurb.com’s blog to book service, and found it nifty but expensive and laborious – at least for how my blog slurped into it.
So onward to Blog2print

This service will work for blogger.com, wordpress.com or typepad.com. It won’t work for self hosted blogs, or any other platforms. Hmmm, (foreshadowing headsup… in this continuing series of blog posts about How To Turn Your Blog Into A Book, I have found some services that will pull from an RSS feed, so don’t despair yet if you are self hosted, but make sure you publish and know the address of your feed…)

Since my chosen blog for this project  is on Blogger.com, I’m in-like-flynn!

There is no charge to get started… once again, I would only pay once I order the book or download the pdf.

  • It offers to take all my blog posts
  • with pictures,
  • from oldest to newest,
  • and also offers to grab comments.

Since I don’t have any comments that I want to keep, I did not check this option and so haven’t tested it. But including comments is an important feature to many bloggers, and it would be worth testing that feature before getting too excited about this service.

I can choose a cover color, plus front and back picture, title and spine title, but I can’t select the font or size, so it looks a little …well… hokey?  But there I go again with my standards. I am learning that if I want it mostly automated and very affordable, then I can’t have it look exactly like I want.  For that, I will have to put some effort in – wah.

Blog2Print assembled the book quickly and made a nice table of contents, I have 88 posts, most with pictures. The pictures in this Blog2Print book are small, and I can’t change the size. I also can’t change the page breaks. I can select posts to not be included, and I can add some pages after the service has pulled the posts… but I don’t have any editorial control really. However, it has arranged things neatly and in order.

The pricing is easy to see.  As a softcover, I could have the 136 pages, with front and back cover, in color for $55.55, and hardcover for $65.55, both of which are far outside my means and intentions for this project. I could have it in B&W for $22.55. But it isn’t clear what size those books would be. There is a pdf download option for $7.95, and I am going to take it!

The checkout is easy, and I can (must) preview the pdf book before I order it. It came via email, and downloaded quickly. The book size is 8.5 x 11 and so if I want to try and print it at some print-on-demand service, I’ll have to fiddle with the book size. A pdf is not an e-book, but I can send it to my e-readers and view it there, like any other pdf doccument.

It’s pretty good – even if I didn’t get everything I’m looking for. I got an inexpensive pdf download of my entire blog, with pictures (and possibly with comments) with very little effort.  The system worked well, no surprises and no disappointments. Blog2Print goes into my list of possible tools, but I am going to keep looking for something I can edit and better control.

 

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