This morning, during my quiet time, I was reminded of an important principle that helped me stay more focused during my writing time today. I had been reading my Bible and came across this verse:

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.”
Proverbs 18:21

I hope to meditate on this verse more in the coming days to gain a deeper understanding of its meaning, but suffice it to say that words are very powerful. A quick cross-reference led me to these verses:

“A good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things: and an evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”
Matthew 12:35-37

I want my writing to be good. Therefore, I must have a treasure of goodness in my heart. According to Paul in Romans 3, “there is none that doeth good, no, not one.” But God is good and one of the fruits of the Spirit is goodness. So then, if I am filled with His Spirit, I will bring forth good things – like good ideas and good writing. And if what I bring forth is good, by God’s standards, then I will have nothing to be ashamed of when I stand before Him to give account someday. But I must never forget that good writing doesn’t begin when I sit down at my laptop and start typing. It begins in my heart.

Several people have mentioned Lulu.com to me as a publishing option, so I’ve been checking into it in more detail today. This FAQ page was especially helpful to me in understanding how the process works. In a nutshell, Lulu makes it “free” to publish your book through them and then they assume all the costs of printing, binding and shipping it. In some ways, they are kind of like a print broker in that they partner with several Print-On-Demand (POD) vendors, so you are paying them to handle all the printing details for you. For an additional $99.95 you can purchase either their Published By You or Published By Lulu packages. Then they also take care of purchasing an ISBN and EAN Barcode and making your book available through their distribution channels, which feed into several major on-line booksellers.

Lulu gives a book pricing example that helped me better understand the setup. Basically, out of the cover price that you set for the book, Lulu subtracts the production costs ($.02/page for printing and a fixed cost of $4.53 for the cover (paperback), binding and setup) and a 20% commission off of the remaining profit margin.

In my opinion, one of the big downsides to this is the high cost the author has to pay for their own copies of the book. According to the Lulu Cost Calculator, if I wanted to purchase 25 copies of my book (at 250 pages per book), it would cost me $238.25 (or $9.53 per book). I think this is typical in the publishing world, but if I’m self-publishing, it would be nice to produce and purchase my own books for less. It could be that the trade-off in the other services they provide (distribution, shipping, marketing, etc.) are worth it, though. I guess I’ll find out as I continue my research.

So far, the most frequently asked question I am getting is what the topic and title of my book is. So, here is the official answer…

For right now I’ve decided not to share that information. I will formally announce both pieces of information at some point, but decided to wait until I am a little further in the process before doing so. I really have no idea what the standard procedure is for writing a book – whether people announce those things right off the bat or wait until they are ready to publish. Anyone know?

Friday slowly transitioned into Saturday morning before I finished my writing for the day, but I was determined not to get behind during the first week of my official journey! I’ve been trouble-shooting some issues on other projects today, so my writing slipped a little lower on the list. Usually it slips completely off the list, but now that I’ve made my writing project so public I feel a little more incentive to make it a priority. Plus, numerous times every week as I converse with people, something will come up and I just wish I could say, “You know, I’ve written a book that I think you might enjoy reading…” But alas, I have no book to give. Not yet anyway. And just wishing I had it to give or talking about it does absolutely nothing to speed up the process. Only the nitty-gritty work of sitting down and actually writing will get the job done. It’s a discipline to be sure. One that I’m still working to develop. But also one that I believe will be well worth it in the end!

In response to an e-mail I sent out announcing my forthcoming book and this blog, I received lots of encouraging and helpful responses. One especially helpful piece of advice came from Mike Cox, father of my good friend, Myklin, who has self-published the course, What Every Girl Should Know. He suggested that I join the Christian Self-Publishing Yahoo Group. I joined right away and am eager to begin looking through their archives and participating in the discussion.

On top of that, after introducing myself to the group, I received a very insightful e-mail from Marc Carrier, another member of the group. He and his wife have authored and self-published several books and sell them through their website, Values Driven Family. Marc included some links in his e-mail that eventually led me to this Author Resources page that is chock-full of informative articles and helpful tools. In particular, I found this article on Creating a Children’s Book from Concept to Illustrations. I have a friend who has just started working on a children’s book series that I am thrilled about, so I sent the link on to him.

Oh, and be sure to request the Free Self-Publishing Guide from Author House as well. If their website is any indication, the guide will be a treasure trove of helpful ideas!

It’s been a slow day of writing – only a couple of pages done. Some days the thoughts flow freely, but other days it is harder to decide what to include. I’ve decided that I would rather err on the side of writing extra now and using the delete button later on than leaving things out now and having to add lots of details for clarity when I’m re-reading and editing. We’ll see if that proves to be an effective method or not!

I just counted and there are 87 more official days of writing left this year – if I stick to my plan of writing something every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If I write at least two pages on each of those days, the result will be 174 pages total. Added to the approximately 70 pages I already have written, that would be 244 pages total; more than I am anticipating the finished book will be, but it sure makes an end-of-the-year writing completion goal seem doable!

Lulu.com has some helpful tips on their marketing page about what a press release is, what a newswire is, and how to write good ones. They also include several links to recommended free and fee-based newswire services. It looks like they have lots of additional resources in the sidebar that are worth exploring as well.

Today I started going through the Free Publishing Kit I received a couple of weeks ago from Morris Publishing. They are a printing company that specializes in short-run book publishing. The kit includes a Publishing Guide, a book order form and a sample book.
The Publishing Guide gives a 6-Step “Getting Started” overview and then goes into further detail about each of the steps. These are the 6 steps:
1. Choose a Binding Style
2. Prepare Interior Pages
3. Prepare the Cover
4. File for Book Identification Information
5. Send Your Order
6. Review Proofs

So far it has proved very informative and I’m doing lots of underlining as I work my way through the 84-page guide.

I am compiling a list of people who have self-published, so if you have self-published a book and would like to be included in the links list that I’m putting together, just leave me a comment or send me an e-mail. Include your name, the title of the book you self-published and a link to your website or a website where the book may be purchased. Thanks!

Here’s a handy little banner that you can place on your blog or website to help me spread the word about this new blog! Just copy the html code below and insert it into the html code of your blog or website. Thanks!

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