publishing

Self-Publishing a Book with Blurb

Virginia Allain4 Comments

Blurb.com – A Way for Authors to Self-Publish

What is Blurb? It’s a wonderful discovery for an aspiring author or someone who just wants a few books for a special occasion or to share with their family. When a writer chooses to self-publish their content, there are a number of Print-On-Demand sites like Lulu.com or Create Space, but let’s focus on Blurb.com here. I’ve used it a number of times with varied books and found it quite versatile.

Made using Blurb.com
Gail Lee Martin shows off her books with family memories. I used Blurb to publish both of these books for Mom and Dad.

The wonderful thing about Print-On-Demand (also called POD) is the author doesn’t have to buy hundreds of dollars worth of books to get the book published by a traditional printer or face rejection over and over from a traditional publisher. The way that POD works at Blurb is the author uploads the book content to the Blurb website. At that point, the only obligation is to buy one copy of the book. Anyone else wanting the book can order it directly from Blurb’s online bookstore. The author sets the price and keeps any income above the printing cost set by Blurb.

How To Do It

  1. Sign up with Blurb. It’s free and you put the usual information (username and password).
  2. Click on DOWNLOAD THE BOOKWRIGHT SOFTWARE at the Blurb site. This downloads Blurb’s software to your own computer. You work offline at your own pace. Use the Blurb BookWright Guide to learn more about it.
  3. Start a new book using the software. Choose a title, paste in the text and get the pictures from your own computer files.
  4. Rearrange the text and photos until you are satisfied with the book.
  5. Edit, edit, edit… run the spell check and review the text and photos one more time. It’s best to actually print out the pages and review it that way. Somehow one sees the errors more clearly in a printed copy.
  6. Once you have it perfect, upload the book to Blurb.
  7. Now you have 15 days to order the book or they will remove it from their site. Don’t worry, it’s still saved on your own computer.
  8. Start promoting the book. Potential buyers go to Blurb’s online bookstore to preview a part of the book and to order copies.

You can preview the various books I’ve published using Blurb. My sample books are featured in my online bookstore. Click on a book cover to read more about it and to PREVIEW a portion of the book.

Taking Applications for a Social Secretary

Virginia Allain2 Comments

I’m really in need of a social secretary. How lovely it would be to delegate all the petty tasks to someone so I would have my time free for what I consider important things, like amusing myself. Unfortunately, the days of social secretaries did not survive past the Edwardian era. There are virtual assistants nowadays, but it’s not the same as having someone standing by to take care of daily trivia.

 

Just last week, I could say, “Jenny, call around to the neighbors to see who does their house cleaning. Since the housecleaner called in sick, we need a substitute right away.” Instead, I scrubbed and bleached the shower and took care of a minimal number of household cleaning tasks so we wouldn’t be too dreadful before Linda returned next week.

Today, I could shove the dental reminder and the list of events for the RV club at her and say, “please put these into the Google calendar with automatic reminders.” She could then take care of running to the post office to mail some packages for me, and while she’s out, she could pick up my allergy medicine at the pharmacy.

When she returned from that errand, I’d have her pull together all my receipts needed for tax deductions relating to my writing. Then she could reformat my short, nonfiction ebook to submit for Kindle Direct Publishing.

While doing that, she would need to remind me that I had a one p.m. line-dancing class to attend. Before leaving at the end of the day, she should remind me of the genealogy program, Finding Your Roots, coming on PBS at eight p.m. tonight.

If there’s time after formatting my ebook, she could study the instructions for using the portable IRIScan and demonstrate it for me. Then I could scan some family photos and clippings this evening. Better yet, I could set her to work digitizing the boxes of pictures which would take her several weeks.

Enough fantasizing. I’d better get busy on these tasks, and I’ll have to remind myself not to miss my exercise class.

Working Away Writing an eBook

Virginia Allain5 Comments

Bad things happening at Bubblews has inspired me to get busy on other projects. I’ve started a second ebook. The first one still languishes unfinished.

Feeling all gung-ho, I’ve transferred the content from 5 of my Hubpages’ articles over to a Microsoft Word document. The last few days, I’ve been formatting and organizing it.

I have someone lined up to give me format editing advice on the layout, font size, sections of the book. Later that same person will copy edit it for grammar and spelling and readability.

I need to get a cover done for it. Maybe I’ll use a Fiverr artist for that or I might contact someone who’s made banners for my Squidoo niche pages.

In the past, I’ve downloaded a number of ebooks on publishing with CreateSpace and Kindle Direct. I need to read those.

I dread that part of submitting the book, but have several friends who’ve been through the process. I can call them if I get stuck.

Wish me luck!

Sharing Childhood Memories Online

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When Mom was the web master for the Our Echo site, I posted a number of my childhood memories to that site. It pleased me to win one of the monthly writing contests there with my story Remembering My Grandparents’ Farm.

Browse around my list of stories there and you’ll find more from my childhood.

Over the past five years, I’ve posted some topics to Squidoo, so you can read about my Memories of the Five and Dime Store.

More recently I’ve posted memories to the Bubblews site. It’s a combination social site/writing site and many use it as an online journal. Here’s a list of the short posts about my childhood:
►I Was a Gypsy Once
►Remember Grandma’s Kitchen
►Second Hand Christmas Tree
►Shirley Temple Wannabe
►My Baby Picture
►Teen Fashion Fantasies
►A Long Ago Christmas
►Home Churned Butter

If you want to put your own memories online, I have a page explaining about writing for Our Echo. You can also self-publish your memories using the Blurb website. Here’s my tutorial on that. It makes a wonderful gift for your children or grandchildren.

Need something to jog your memory and start you writing? Use photos to trigger memories.

Cindy, Karen, Ginger, Susan Martin in 1950s

I Resolve to Write

Virginia Allain3 Comments

I’ve been reading back through my blog and felt good about my progress in a variety of activities and projects over 2009. Of course, there’s so much more I want to accomplish. I guess this is what life is all about, having goals and dreams and working towards those. Without these, life would be pretty dull.

I didn’t write down any specific New Year’s resolutions this year. It would have been the usual eat less, exercise more, etc.  Now that we’re a few days into 2010, I think I’ll take “writing more” as my motto for the year. To be specific, I want to:

  • write enough eHow articles to earn $400 a month on that site
  • create/write enough Squidoo lenses to earn $100 a month on that site
  • write enough essays on Helium to achieve a four star rating there (requires a minimum of 100 articles, which rank on average in the top quarter)
  • write some Helium marketplace essays where I can earn more money there
  • write weekly writing triggers to post on my blog for my writing group
  • finish editing the paperback edition of my dad’s book and get it published on Blurb
  • encourage my mom in writing her memories of her adult life for a third book (tentative title: Gail, All Grown Up)
  • resume the weekly family memory writing group this summer
  • teach a class in Creating a Family Biography Book (scheduled for June in Kittery, Maine). Here’s the class description “Virginia Allain, a retired librarian, self-published her mother’s memories of growing up in the 1930s (My Flint Hills Childhood) and a collection of family memories about her father (Clyde Owen Martin). This freelance writer and avid photographer can show you how to gather, organize, write and self-publish your own family stories using the latest print-on-demand method. The session includes how to trigger your memories and those of family members and to capture them on paper. She will demonstrate use of Blurb.com’s BookSmart software to create a family biography and make it available in paperback and/or hardback. To get an idea of the finished product, you can preview her books at www.blurb.com/user/vallain1.”

I guess that’s enough to keep me busy in 2010. Wish me luck in carrying all this through.

Oops, I almost forgot. I also want to write in my journal every day.

What Works on an Author Webpage

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I’m fascinated by the statistics generated from my mom’s author page (www.gailmartin.wordpress.com). Here’s how it falls out:

Read an Excerpt from Gail’s Book 130
Gail’s Advice for Writing Family Memorie 73
Gail Martin’s First Book 39
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 25
Places & Topics in My Flint Hills Ch 21
Media Attention for Gail’s Book 17
BUY THE BOOK 17
Upcoming Books by Gail 13
More About Gail Martin 13
Contact the Author 11
Comments from Readers 11
Press Release for the Book 3

Obviously the READ AN EXCERPT is a big hit. The excerpt that I put was a very short essay from the book about Mom’s pet badger. Everyone loves an animal story, so I figured it was a good one to get them to click further on the BUY THE BOOK link.