It was a quiet week

From busy, busy, busy to quiet... that's how things are in this crazy business, I suppose :o)

Actually, it was a bit of a lazy week (and yesterday I took the family out for the day).

I got Chapter 1 back from my tester - after looking at the comments, I had a brainstorming session with my son. I love brainstorming... their is so much value in this type of exercise.

As result of our brainstorming, I came to the decision to re-structure my book slightly (a neat benefit of self-publishing, I think). There will now be a little re-work to be done, but it will end up being a better book.

Also, as result of our brainstorming, the self publishing checklist I had is also going to be a  better document. The self-publishing checklist is going to be used as a promotional tool, and I believe it's now going to be more beneficial, and will offer the reader more value.

Although I haven't made a firm decision yet, I think my deadline for Book #1 will be February 2013.

Last week I worked on a side project... it's a small project I started in January (been working on it now and then), and it should be available in November. All will be revealed when it's available.

What I saw online...

Kindle is not the only player on the block. Kobo Writing Life now offers authors the opportunity to self publish on the Kobo device.

http://www.kobobooks.com/kobowritinglife

That's a wrap for this issue of my self publishing diary.

I wish you terrific and tremendous success!

Colin

Busy week

It was a busy, busy, busy week. Amazing how time flies when you're having fun :o)

I've been busy with the book design project, had a few e-cover designs, and worked on my book.

I'm anxiously awaiting the feedback from my tester on Chapter 1.  Made corrections (and additions) to Chapters 2 & 3 - should get the drafts wrapped up next week (depending on when corrections come back from clients).

Where I'm at with book #1:

• Chapter 1 draft done and with my tester.
• Chapters 2 & 3 ready to take to author's draft (then to tester).
• Chapter 4 ready to be checked by me.
• Chapter 5 author's draft to be written.

And then there's a lot of planning to be done iro promotion.

Here's an idea I came up with. I thought of sharing interesting tidbits I come across in my travels through cyberspace (yes, I also do a lot of reading, in between work). These will be things about self publishing, independent publishing, book design, cover design, etc.

What I saw online...

If you're sitting on the fence, still thinking about whether you should self publish or not, this article may be useful...

25 Reasons to Self-Publish, Part I

What's your opinion?

Here is something that's been debated for a long time (feels like forever), and even today there's no conclusive proof: justified or ragged right text.

Actually, some years ago research was done and it was found that text that's ragged right helps with memory retention (sadly, I can't remember where the research was done).

What made me think of this?

Last week I saw someone (again) say that Word was not suitable for designing a book. The main reason? The hyphenation feature in Word is terrible when justifying text. To be honest, I can't disagree with that.

My questions to you: Do you consciously notice the difference between justified and raged right text? Do you feel Word is a bad choice to design your book (or ebook)?

I would love to hear what your thoughts are.

I wish you terrific and tremendous success!

Colin

Very Good Week

I’m very happy with the progress I made this week (and posting here on time, to boot).

Received a new book design project, and it’s going well.

After racking my brain over Chapter 1, I decided to scrap it and rewrote the whole chapter. Now it goes to my tester.

I finished the drafts of Chapter 3 and 4. Although these are rough drafts, the type of content means there will be little to do to get it to the first draft.

I read Dana Lynn Smith’s Virtual Book Tour Magic. In this month I’m going to start putting my promotion plan together for Book #1. There’s a lot to do, and it must fit in between the writing.

I eventually managed to update my testimonials page: http://pub-my-book.com/book-design-testimonials.html

And then a bit of cool news… my friend Larry Brooks posted about a new movie about a writer… can’t wait to see it: http://www.thewordsmovie.com/

Nothing further was done on Book #2.

Made Good Progress

I missed last Sunday's post... no excuse... I was distracted with other things.

At least I made good progress with my writing, both my book and my site. And I also did a lot of reading.

Just to try and make things a little clearer, I thought I'd refer to my book by number... so the book I've been talking about up to now is Book #1 (this will be until I reveal the title, anyway).

Book #1.  I worked on Chapter 3, and my target is to get it finished by the end of this week. I managed to finalize Chapter 2, and will be sending to my "testers" to be checked for completeness. After I just have 2 chapters to finalize.

I also managed to make notes of things to add to Chapter 1, and want to try and wrap that up next week.

I updated my FAQ page... www.pub-my-book.com/publishing-faqs.html - if you have any questions that aren't answered there, please let me know below, and I'll get the answers added to my FAQ page.

I started working on the outline of Book #2... I tend to find it boring to work on only one book in the early stages. I seem to do the writing on one book, and the outlining on another - keeps the old grey matter alive. But, I do get to a point where I focus on just one, and get it wrapped up. This is probably something I picked up in the many years of technical writing, where it's very unusual to work on only one manual/document at a time.

Oh, and I started having a look at Scrivener, the writing software. Looks good so far. www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php. 

That's a wrap for this week.

I wish you the best of success.
Colin