Went to a great talk the other day. But first–
Last Clichés:
Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth—Accept a gift in good faith. Dates from St. Jerome’s biblical commentary (c. A.D. 420) on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. It’s based on fact that a horse’s age is revealed by its teeth. Looking inside a horse’s mouth therefore will tell you if someone is passing off an old nag for a spry colt. The same expression is found in French, Italian, Portuguese, and other languages.
Captive Audience – An audience that cannot escape a particular presentation—a play, speech, sermon, etc. I.E. “the preacher always makes his sermon twice as long on big holidays—he knows he’s got a captive audience.” Originated in the U.S. about 1900.
Did you find them?
Heard JoAnn Bassett the other day. Her talk on Self-Publishing: Professional Results on a Shoestring Budget hit the spot. (See: www.joannbassett.com).
She spoke about Print Publishing and ran out of time and didn’t get a chance to speak about E-book Publishing.
The nuts and bolts of her print publishing talk:
- Determine your goal and budget
- Fine-tune your manuscript
- Have it proofread by at least two people (besides yourself)
- Make corrections
- Add the “necessary” pages: i.e., a information page at beginning or end to establish your ownership and prevent lawsuits. It includes the copyright and ISBN number of your book
- Write the book “blurb”
- Set up the interior pages for on-demand printing (Adobe Acrobat) Do on your own by using CreateSpace templates or have someone do for you.
- Create a cover: graphics, text, and photo: You can either create your own cover or hire someone to create the cover for you. Make sure you get FREE graphics or photos that say “royalty-free” images. Text for your cover includes: Title, Sub-title (if any), author’s name, a very short synopsis of the book (the book “blurb”), author photo, a short author bio, barcode, isbn and spine.
- Do the on-line set-up on CreateSpace.com: Getting your book into print using CreateSpace is easy and free. There’s a step by step process and even have templates for you.
- Set a per unit price
- Order a preview copy and review and reread for errors and/or omissions
- Order copies to have on hand for book signings or reviews
Using CreateSpace.com to self-publish your book is not chasing rainbows. It has how-to do information for all the above. It’s free and they walk you through all the steps.
I used it for my two books: Night Terror and Vanity Killed. I will use them for my next book, but I may have my cover designer from Vanity Killed do not only the cover design again, but she also formats the interior for an inexpensive fee. Would be well-worth it.
Keep Writing,
Julie
