for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”
Dateline July 31, 2021
Location: Rural Annapolis, Maryland
From “First-and-Only-Draft Bill” himself…
"So we'll live, and pray and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies ...
And take upon us the mystery of things
As if we were Gods' spies."
- Wm. Shakespeare, King Lear, V 3
In this issue:
Rally Up & Ante Up!
Mastery of Life
Cycle of Life
Hate the Gorilla?
Featured Guest
1. Rally Up & Ante Up!
Miss Kay and I attended two week-long back-to-back RV rallies in July (whew!). Those of us who live and travel most of the time in our RVs call ourselves full-timers or itinerant vagabonds. We particularly enjoy a special camaraderie and product understanding with other full-timers who live and travel in the same brand of motorhome as ours–Newmar. Fifty-plus coaches gathered in historic Wytheville, Virginia.
Since it can be community-lonely living on the road, these rallies are a great opportunity for fun and friendship. We also collectively contributed over $14,000 to a charity that feeds hungry children, the homeless and shut-in seniors in Wytheville County and environs, the Hope Foundation. That amount included a generous matching donation from our host campground, the Wytheville KOA.
HOPE feeds anyone who is hungry, whether they can pay or not. H.O.P.E. is their acronym for “Helping Overcome Poverty’s Existence.” Please consider offering them a donation here.
The HOPE Foundation fed us with their farm-to-table fare. In return, we collectively contributed to their coffers.
That’s our coach left of center nestled in the SW Virginia mountains at our Newmar Full-timer’s RV Rally. Owners of fifty+ Newmar motorhomes gathered for a time of camaraderie “on the road.”
The following week, almost five hundred motorhomes gathered on the West Virginia State Fairgrounds in Lewisburg for the Newmar-sponsored International Rally, their main annual event. Factory service reps worked on coaches for free or at a reduced rate. Vendors offered products and seminars. I offered a couple of my own seminars on “Writing and Selling Your Novel.” I also signed and sold a couple cartons of my own books (that’s about all I have room for in the bus).
The entire two-week flurry exhilarated and exhausted us.
Oh, and once again, we shared our bounty with the less fortunate children of West Virginia by collectively raising another $12,000 for the Children’s Home Society of West Virginia.
We toured the Fort Chiswell Animal Park near Wytheville (pronounced WITH-ville). Our new friend Puff the camel would not leave us alone! At least the bus (sans window glass) afforded us some protection (from Puff, not from a driving rain earlier in our tour).
Have you ever seen a ze-donk? Yup, that’s what happens with a zebra hooks up with a donkey. You still don’t want to ride ’em. Very wild like its zebra mother.
2. Mastery of Life
That is an illusion, of course. But now and then, moments of brilliant clarity blind the mind’s eye. Maybe they are microscopic moments; nevertheless, they remain moments to remember. These cursory moments offer me a perfect sense of tranquility–an emotional fullness that displaces everything else, an afterglow where time and place and space seem irrelevant, lost in the embrace of a glorious and profound silence. I briefly experience that sometimes when I meditate.
Kay and I practice Transcendental Meditation (TM) twice daily where we revel in such moments. Our nervous systems shed deep-rooted stress at such times. I feel a certain mastery, not of life, but of such quiet moments, of a great weight lifted from deep within. I taste a state of consciousness different from waking, dreaming or sleeping. There is nothing like it. And words fail to describe the experience of this simple but transformative practice. I thought you should know, though. So simple anyone can do it, but so profound I feel fortunate to have discovered and been formally taught TM in 1972. I practice it to this day.
3. Cycle of Life
It is said the only constant in life is change, so why not embrace it?
You already know Kay and I live and travel in a motorhome much of the time. Nowhere more than in our transient lifestyle do we witness bold banners of impermanence. What a great reminder to cherish each moment of every day!
I taught two writing seminars at the Newmar International RV rally. Both were well attended.
We’re so buried in the Maryland woods, we have no satellite TV for the next couple of weeks. But we’re so busy exploring the area, including Annapolis and Washington DC, we won’t have much time for TV anyway, not with everything else we want to accomplish.
Dinner for a thousand, please! Few locations can handle that.
Kay’s brother died in her arms this month in the Chicago area. We happened to be passing through on our way to the rallies. Kay arrived at his hospice facility in time to hold his hand for less than thirty minutes before the end. Some would say, a new beginning. It was nothing short of serendipity she was there when he passed.
Yup, I’m waxing philosophical this pre-dawn morning parked outside of Annapolis, Maryland. Our bus is buried in the woods–a reflective setting made more so by the absence of satellite TV. We’re staying put for a couple of weeks in a place we had never heard of before we reserved this spot at the KOA in Millersville, Maryland.
We venture out today to forage for provisions in stores and farmer’s markets, all of which we’ll visit for the first time. Tomorrow I attack another set of perennial repairs, this time fixing an errant drawer slide, with a little help from my friends at Lowe’s, and with Kay handing me tools.
We also hope to check out an interesting vegan restaurant our favorite search engine (DuckDuckGo) located for us. Everything is strange and new again in the 140th campground we’ve visited within the last six years (if my count is accurate). We’ll also venture into DC for a day or two as it has been decades since either of us has visited our nation’s capital.
Kay and I spent the afternoon exploring the back streets and colorful alleys of Annapolis. Next, we’ll tour the Naval Academy.
4. Hate the Gorilla?
Say what? Look, most folks will admit to appreciating the painless customer experience of “the big gorilla” of online retailers. You know–Amazon.
They have elevated their online shopping experience to an art form. Having admitted that out loud, many authors I know begrudgingly make their titles available as Kindle and/or paperback editions on “the big gorilla.” Others go wide, that is, they offer their books in as many different places as possible.
Many local bookstores adamantly refuse to buy from Amazon or their distributors, preferring to “buy local.” So what does all this mean?
I want to provide you with a “buy local” option for your books from a network of independent bookstores–small businesses–you can and should patronize. Try it! Feels great.
As an author, I am an affiliate of IndieBound, and receive a small commission each time you buy any books from their stores. Just tell them, “GK Jurrens sent me!” And if you are an author, consider signing up as an IndieBound affiliate. It is a useful membership when approaching bookstores to sponsor your signings and sales.
Look, I still use Amazon, but also feel compelled to do my part to aid local small businesses wherever we travel. One such example is the Old Fox Bookstore in Annapolis, Maryland. And what a find on IndieBound.org! Kay and I incorporated a visit into our walking tour of historic downtown Annapolis.
I was particularly drawn to OFB’s lower level (basement) where at the bottom of a tight-radius spiral staircase they feature obscure artifacts and volumes (medieval, apothecary, mysticism, magic, alchemy, history…)i, some in multiple languages. Its ambiance felt a bit like a literary dungeon! Delightfully obscure.
A new and used bookstore (Old Fox Books) disguised as a coffee shop, a tea and spice shop featuring exotic wares, and charming cobblestone streets leading down to the city dock, the Severn River and the Chesapeake Bay? What’s not to like about a visit to Annapolis, the sailor’s mecca? Oh, and we outran a severe storm. Success! Next week? The US Naval Academy and Washington.
5. Featured Guest
Sometimes we meet people who are larger than life. Sometimes, this means they possess a fullness of contagious spirit that seems to define them.
Allow me to introduce Dave Burton. He owns a company called Every Detail. He and his crew came to us. In addition to performing mobile oil changes, they wash, wax and detail… anything. This is Dave’s passion. While they cleaned our bus and toad, I struck up a conversation with Dave. I sensed a kindred spirit.
The steamy SW Virginia afternoon raised a sheen on both our foreheads. He worked, I supervised. Dave said, “Do you know humans are the only species on Earth that drinks the milk of a different species?” Yup, we vegans can sense another vegan from subtle declaratives like that!
Even though a young man, Dave has already lived in Michigan, California, Florida, Tennessee, and now Virginia. He’s worked retail in the food and travel industries, trained as a police officer, and in medical emergency response before creating and growing Every Detail into a successful small business with four employees who seem happily dedicated to their mission.
Dave is blooming where he is planted. I respect that.
Dave’s crew work on washing and waxing our toad (towed vehicle) while he personally uses an extra soft brush in deference to our new paint job.
Dave’s “office” in front of our “home.”
I thank you for your infectious enthusiasm, Dave, for your stories of how you seek delightful and healthy alternatives to dairy and meat products, and how doing so has changed your life, as they also have changed mine.
If you support enthusiastic small businessmen like Dave, stop on over to his Facebook Home Page to say “howdy.” And if you ever find yourself in the Wytheville area…
Dave, may continued success be yours as you enjoy life’s bounty as it was meant to be, my new friend.
for a mix of stories you just won’t find anywhere else…
“Here’s to the allure of the obscure!”
Dateline June 28, 2021
Location: Southeastern Minnesota
Drink it in…
"June's Picture" Let me paint June's picture—first I take some gold,
Fill the picture full of sun, all that it can hold;
Save some for the butterflies, darting all around,
And some more for buttercups here upon the ground;
Take a lot of baby-blue—this—to make the sky,
With a lot of downy white—soft clouds floating by;
Cover all the ground with green, hang it from the trees,
Sprinkle it with shiny white, neatly as you please;
So—a million daisies spring up everywhere,
Surely you can see now what is in the air!
Here's a thread of silver—that's a little brook
To hide in dainty places where only children look.
Next, comes something—guess—it grows
Among green hedges—it's the rose!
Brown for a bird to sing a song,
Brown for a road to walk along.
Then add some happy children to the fields and flowers and skies,
And so you have June's picture here before your eyes.by Annette Wynne
In this issue:
New Memories
New Book Release
Not-So-NewInstitutional Insanity
Featured Guest(A New Perspective)
Did You Know?
1. New Memories
We’ve officially tumbled into summer where a new freedom is born, at least for Miss Kay and myself, along with four robin chicks in a nest just outside the door of our motorhome—a metaphor reflecting our own emergence from the Jurrens’ Florida COVID bunker after a year-and-a-half of isolation! Now, healthier than ever, we remain parked in Southeastern Minnesota, at least for a few more hours.
However you feel about COVID vaccinations, these injections have yielded such emotional relief for Kay and me, not only for our own protection, but for doing our part on behalf of all humanity to deprive this nasty little virus and its spawn a couple more hosts within which it can no longer grow and spread and mutate.
We are of a lighter spirit more so now than in the last eighteen months! For that we are grateful.
And so new life emerges!
We celebrated Juneteenth quietly, without fanfare. After all, this first new national holiday in decades arrived so suddenly, we barely had time to truly understand its significance (click the link above if you’re interested in diving a little deeper. This new holiday possesses a fascinating heritage. So we made no elaborate plans other than educating ourselves over a dish of homemade dairy-free ice cream with a topping of personal reflection.
While our bus wasn’t parked under the now-famous heat dome out west during this last red-hot month, we did share in mid-90 temps even here in the upper Midwest. Thankfully, our two rooftop air conditioners performed flawlessly; however, I studied several articles on how to add a third. Maybe next year. The 2021 bus budget is now officially and irrevocably busted!
This was a memorable June, to be sure. Now here’s to creating more memories in July and beyond !
2. New Book Release
My latest non-fiction book entitledWhy Write? Why Publish? is now available on Amazon as of Juneteenth! In this new book I lay out my approach to an end-to-end paperlesswriting and publishing process for the aspiring writer (or for the seasoned author). Even non-writers will appreciate the “how” behind the “what,” even the “why!”
If I can make this process work efficiently for my own writing and publishing, anyone can!
So whypaperless?Because Miss Kay and I live in a beautiful old bus—and have for most of the last five years—but like most motorhomes, we lack wall and bookshelf space. So I had almost no room for endless post-it notes, timeline charts, a murder/mystery board, and even less space for a decent library of hard copy reference books. So I use this virtually paperless process that has turned out not only to be effective but efficient. And my rather extensive reference library weighs about the same as my iPad, although I do keep a few dog-eared paperback favorites on my end table.
I originally wrote this 170-page writer’s reference with generous help from some of the best authors I know or have studied so I could offer it as an instructive ebook to my seminar attendees this summer. But early reader response encouraged me to publish this in a paperback edition as well. I call this book a self-guided seminar. One early reader —an aspiring writer—said, “This just might be the best first book I’ve read on the craft of writing and publishing.” Holy moley! Alrighty, then!
For your edification, I offer you this book’s back-cover text:
“Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of independent writing, editing, formatting, publishing, marketing and selling. This book simplifies an otherwise daunting process.
“Are you an aspiring author? Or a published author looking for more control over your work? Either way, this book comprises a comprehensive self-guided seminar that starts shallow and dives deeper as we progress, but at your own pace, unlike most seminars.
“Are you struggling to spark your inspiration for the book you know is inside of you somewhere? This book’s initial chapters will jump start your creative journey.
“Do you wonder how to efficiently begin and sustain progress on this writing journey? I will ask you: why should you write, and where should you start? Then what? Find answers in this book that will streamline your own efficient and effective writing and publishing process, including a valuable survey of free or cheap software tools, cheat sheets and pointers to a treasure trove of resourcesfor authors and publishers.
“Why should you spend your precious time and creative energy on all the other stuff that comprises the business of being an author and a publisher? Or should you even bother? I’ll point you toward the condensed wisdom of dozens of my favorite industry experts who will answer the why and how. Fast.
“Get started now writing and publishing just one book, or embark on a fulfilling career. Sip or gulp. The choice is yours.”
So check out my latest title now offered in both Kindle and paperback editions: Why Write? Why Publish? Get yours now on Amazon by clickinghere. Or grab a free peek by clicking the link and then click “Look Inside” above the cover image.
Remember, you can read the Kindle edition of this book on any smart device (phone, tablet or computer) by downloading the free Kindle reader app also available by clicking on the link above!
3. Not-So-New Institutional Insanity – For Friends and Loved Ones of Authors (you know who you are!)…
Are you an author, or do you know someone who is so afflicted and you’re seeking a peek behind the purple curtain to see if the wizard is in the house? If you’re either, this article is for you.
Are you a stranger in a strange land? Do you feel like everyone thinks you are plagued by a creeping insanity? All because you represent this weird caricature—that of an author?
Do you especially perplex your friends and loved ones who perhaps unintentionally offer you that pitiful look?You know the one. Mostly because they either don’t read books at all, or more likely, the books you write don’t appeal to them?
So they naturally believe you don’t know what in your own unique brand of Hell you’re doing. All because you’re not yet banking a bazillion bucks, or because you’re not a household name. Maybe never will be. Or you’re investing a crazy big percentage of your life that takes away from other stuff, like what’s important to them?
If you’re even a quasi-serious writer who has publicly professed your allegiance to the craft, you know of what I speak.
“You write books? Oh, that’s nice. Good for you! So have I ever heard of you? Why haven’t I seen your stuff in my local library?” Or, “I’ve thought about writing a book, but just haven’t gotten around to it.”
Like it’s a trivial pursuit or an amusing parlor trick.
Or have you heard this?
“Why do you write about stuff nobody (meaning them) cares about?” or, “If you don’t make a lot of money with your little stories, what is the point,you poor thing?”
This latter clause usually isn’t spoken aloud, but you can see it in their eyes or hear it in their commiserative tone, can’t you? Bless their empathetic hearts. How could they possibly know until they’ve bled with you, sacrificed with you, died with you and your characters? And with me and mine.
Let’s face it, my fellow purveyors of prose, or worse, poetry, ours is a unique passion, not well understood by most earthlings, and that’s okay, isn’t it? We write because it is our passion, maybe even our destiny. Like I tell my seminar attendees, “Write becauseit makes you uncomfortable. You’ll write with greater authenticity.”
I’m most creative at 2AM, when I’m half asleep, incapable of plying pen and paper, or operating my iPhone voice recorder app always uselessly within reach. Part of our torturous trip, right?
Now that I’ve vocalized what many of you might be thinking or have heard, let’s get real. We write because we must. There exist worlds of wonder in us that scream to be set free. They keep us up at night. We imagine if we don’t stab them with our quills onto organic or digital parchment we shall surely burst. That can get messy.
If you’re like me, you’re feeding a need you likely can’t articulate with any precision. You are afflicted. But if you are anything like me, I know you want to do this, you must do this. And if you are very much like me, you’d have it no other way.
“Ours is a progressive disease. Many a life has been subsumed by the affliction of stabbing pen into parchment! For myself, I would suffer nothing less sublime, even IF I had a choice.”
GK Jurrens
When I started my literary journey years ago, I drove myself to finish just one book while I learned as much about the craft of writing as I could absorb while trying to balance that with everything else in my then-hectic life. I finished that book, a contemporary mystery/thriller, learned how to publish it, and did so.
Next, as I listened to other writers, I feared the self-sullying image of a “one-book wonder.” Not me, I quietly muttered! So I wrote and published another thriller—a sequel to the first. Yes, I had acquired the thirst I could not quench.
Then I wondered what it would it be like to tackle a different genre? So I invested two years in writing and publishing a science fiction trilogy, or so I thought. Not enough science, readers told me, but I had conjured plenty of solid twenty-second-century mysteries and thrills, I was told. I also created a reader magnet as an informative companion guide to this trio of gripping tales, two of which were of epic proportions (in other words, real thick books).
So now I’ve just completed my third work of non-fiction (mentioned above), adding it to a pair of earlier (non-fiction) coffee table books that failed to inspire all but a few hundred readers within the micro-niche of hard-core voyaging sailors. This, however, is my first book on the craft of writing. That makes seven new books in six busy years. All except the companion guide to my Mayhem trilogy will have been published worldwide in both ebook and paperback editions. With the two older non-fictions already in my backlist, my latest historical novel—very much a work in process—will comprise book number ten. At least I’m no OBW (One-Book-Wonder), damn it!
All this genre-hopping impacts my commercial viability, but I don’t seem to care because I believe my books represent metaphors for something that needs to be heard! And wait until you get a load of my anthology of, um, irreverent poems, essays and original images. That will be book number eleven, hopefully by year-end 2021, although this is also likely to be a real thick book!
All of this is to ask if you can relate to my smoldering dilemma, family, friends and fellow word players, an affliction that compels some of us to serve both readers and our own egos. And don’t even get me started on distractions!
Distractions suckle on the flesh of creativity. So just say no! (yeah, right…)
Ultimately, I cling to one inalienable literary truth. If I quit, I will have surrendered, and that is not an option, soldier! At least not yet. There are still mythical battles to be fought and won, characters to be punished, worlds to incinerate and victories to celebrate!
4. Featured Guest (And a New Perspective)
Meet Dorothy Ann Jones. More quickly than I could ask the question, she recounted precisedetails surrounding a storm on October 10, 1949, the year I was born!
As a writer, she makes me proud. Dorothy has documented every significant event in her life on the family farm they’ve held together for seven generations. She has witnessed events most of us can only read about and wonder.
I spent a few hours with this amazing matriarch to research topics I had only read about. I’ve mentioned my historical fiction project before, and I sought an understanding of direct visceral experience from someone who had lived through the 1930s and 1940s. You cannot Googlethat. Dorothy did not disappoint.
Her father had immigrated from Denmark to continue his profession as a blacksmith in the logging camps of Idaho and Washington state. There was still money to be made sharpening plow shares (blades with earth-turning points on the business end of a plow). Her father’s first wife grew ill, so they moved to Rochester, Minnesota where they could be close to the Mayo Clinic for her treatment.
After the tragic death of his first wife, this stalwart Dane later met and married Dorothy’s mother in 1930. They moved to the nearby small town of Eyota where Dorothy was born in the scorched summer of 1931. When she married Bill Jones in the late 1940s, they lived on the nearby farm that had been in his family since 1858.
As I was primarily researching the 1930s for my novel “Black Bllzzard” (which you may know I called “Jake’s Flame” before changing the working title), I needed to draw on Dorothy’s direct memories of her childhood as well as stories told to her by her parents. Like elsewhere in America, that period tested their mettle. Dorothy told me such a story. She said,
Between the Great War (World War One) and the Great Depression (1930s) some children spent hours daily in a horse-drawn school bus . We define the word “Great” somewhat differently these days, don’t we?
“The Depression came along. Husband Bill’s mom and dad couldn’t pay the mortgage on the home place, so they held an auction. They retrieved enough from the sale to make the mortgage payment, but they moved to the woodcutter’s shack on the farm and rented the rest until they could recover. They started over. Bill’s dad said of that time, ‘we weren’t living, we existed.'”
After Dorothy shared this with me, we both fell silent for a time. I asked Dorothy what routine tasks occupied them since working the land and attending church occupied all their time.
“Well, as kids on the farm in those days, we picked corn. Snapped it right off the stalk in the field, one ear at a time, to feed the pigs. Dad penned up stalls for the little pigs to separate them from their mothers who might accidentally lay on top of them and kill them. I also had to regularly check the heat lamps over our five hundred baby chicks. We were lucky. A lot of farms had no electricity. It was cold, and without the heat from those lamps, those chicks would huddle up so tightly together for warmth that they’d smother.”
Now this city boy had no idea, and you just don’t get such authentic stories like this from Internet searches or even from reading period novels! So I asked some more questions, and gained even more insights:
Shocks of wheat hand-tied into bundles with twine, waiting to be threshed.
“Life was quite primitive by today’s standards. My father worked in a dying profession. Less and less call for a blacksmith, but I can still smell the pungent smoke of red-hot metal. That smoke stung my eyes when I got too close, and I still remember the sound of Dad hammering a new point on a plowshare ringing in my ears. I can also remember the smell of strong coffee and cold sandwiches we’d deliver to the men in the field during threshing. The dusty wheat chafe they stirred up in the air clung to the sweat on our necks. That was so itchy!“
A threshing machine separates stems of the wheat stalk from the precious grain generating the always unfortunate bi-product of exquisite itchinessand a bone-tiredness that defy description.
She shuddered as she thrust herself back into that vivid memory. I shuddered too. She helped me remember my own distant memory when I was only five—before we “moved to town” upon losing our farm). I had forgotten.
Illuminating recollections poured out for two full hours with me furiously typing copious notes. What I found most remarkable was how intellectually intimidated I felt by this ninety-year-old amateur historian! I learned fascinating operational details of horse-drawn drags, plows, manure spreaders, threshing machines, and how hay and straw was hoisted up into a barn’s haymow with pulleys, ropes and literal horse power. This greenhorn bathed in a delightfully refreshing perspective. This was exactly the type of material I sought for my new book which I hope to finish by the end of this year.
This genre of historical fiction has spawned an unexpectedly ambitious project for me. But I’m finding this to be fulfilling as I just begin to scratch into a surface understanding of the non-stop chain of hardships these admirable titans of the period endured. They not only endured but thrived despite a lifestyle almost inconceivable to most folks alive today.
Thank you for moving my research forward, Dorothy, and for your delightful company on a sunny June afternoon on the farm!
5. Did You Know?
The Amazon rain forest produces more than 20% of the world’s oxygen supply.
The Amazon River pushes so much water into the Atlantic Ocean that more than a hundred miles at sea off the mouth of the river one can dip fresh water out of the ocean. The volume of water in the Amazon River is greater than the next eight largest rivers in the world combined, and three times the flow of all rivers in the United States.
With pen in hand,
Gene
P.S.After a prolonged period of unnatural isolation, we reveled in seeing and hugging so many friends and family this month.A cornucopia!Thank you all!
And just days before we were to leave Minnesota, we reveled in an extended family gathering that was so heart-warming, we were both close to tears. Mil gracias to Jim and Ellie White for hosting this party for nine-day-old great-grand-nephew Felix on behalf of his new parents, Will and Andrea. What a joy to see and hold this stout little fellow, but a greater joy to meet and talk and reminisce with his extended family! Yes, you now belong to him!
Jacob, you inspire me with your micro-wildlife tracker inventions! Jim, thanks for your tutilage in foraging for wild mushrooms (fabulous breakfast with your oyster ‘shrooms this morning!). Chuck, thanks for the stories of Europe and South America! Ellie, thanks for bequeathing my mom’s diary penned in May of 1930! Big sis Carol (80 going on 60), you’ve created an awesome family, and I look forward to the extraordinary journal you’ve described. Nicole, I hope you are soon reunited with the love of your life in Santiago, Chili. Becky and Gordy, so glad you and the girls could leave Alaska’s severely short summer to be there too! How long has it been?
So many other side discussions, so much love, so much food!
How many of you publish eBooks only (Kindle or iBook editions…)? That’s me. For now. But…
Now I’m thinking all things paperback publishing. No hardcovers for now, and that’s okay.
In fact, more seriously than ever, I’m considering embarking on the tree-killing phase of my independent publishing journey.
That translates into “Fear of Commitment.” Once on paper, no more easy revisions!
I flirted with starting down this path well over a year ago, and shared what I learned at that time in an article about one print-on-demand (POD) vendor, KDP, or Kindle Direct Publishing, an Amazon company. FYI, if you were familiar with CreateSpace, it has been absorbed into KDP. I posted some good info in an article you can find here.
You can see I’ve learned more since then, but rather than repeat much of that material, see that article for good questions self-publishing authors of print books should research on cryptic topics such as book format, spline width, full-bleed, text boundaries, etc. Not for the feint of heart, but essential questions all. Fortunately, Print-on-demand (POD) vendors are helpful navigating this morass.
Here’s what I’m learning today:
Scrivener remains my overwhelming author software of choice; however, I need to learn even more new terms and why they are important as I set my sites on print. For example:
What is the difference between mass-market and trade paperbacks? See Joseph Kunz’s excellent article explaining the difference. I’m aiming at mass-market for lower unit cost (and price).
What precise formatting dimensions are expected for each, and how does that influence my design (my “copy,” or text; and graphics) for a front cover, the spine (the narrow edge that shows when the book sits on the shelf), and the back cover?
I suggest studying the detailed specifications of each POD vendor before spending time creating your own format and design. Don’t waste time redesigning, like me.
For example, guidelines for KDP can be found here.
I design my own cover art using Canva which offers some nice basic designs from templates, especially after I add my own artwork, which is optional. If you hire the services of a professional cover designer for several hundred dollars or more for each project, you need not worry so much about this part of the process other than paying your artist. A few ideas for you:
Use your favorite search engine (my favorite is duckduckgo.com because they don’t micro-market to me like the big boys) to locate “book cover designers” and roll the dice! Or,
Consult with successful authors to discover their favorites. Joanna Penn has made a name for herself writing and publishing both fiction and non-fiction. Take a look at her extensive list of book cover designers here.
Scrivener continues to be my amazing all-in-one writer’s studio. All of my formatting, even for paper, can be achieved within this single program. As I discover I need them (e.g., for print), I’m finding useful features in the Compile (format/export) feature of Scrivener:
The “Print” function in Compile, for example, doesn’t mean I need to print to paper. Rather, I will format for print, and save my output in a PDF file format, or some other type of file, to pre-flight (inspect) the results,
Heretofore unimportant (to me) formatting and ID options, such as:
Margins. They now need careful consideration. New terms, such as guttering are now important. These are the margins closest to the center of the book, where the rightmost margin of the leftmost page is closest to the leftmost margin of the rightmost (facing) page. The gutter. Why? Well, the thicker (as in more pages in) the book, the wider the guttering margins must be. Huh! Who knew?
Page Count. Too many pages means too high a book price required by the printer (they charge by the page). If the book costs too much, that impacts my sales. Artificially lowering the price (a tighter profit margin) leaves fewer pennies left to drift into this author’s bank account. And my CFO claims it’s not enough to justify a year’s worth of effort. Huh. Alas, what is a poor scribe to do. Is not every word I pen precious? The truth is it ain’t worth a plug nickel if nobody buys the darn book because it costs too much!
Scrivener Compile for Print: This may require a good deal of experimentation, but this article is helping tweak my freak. And remember, experimentation with the look of the book can be achieved without killing a single tree. Select Print formatting in Compile and then export your format to a PDF file instead of to a printer. I will spend the time to get it right!
ISBNs: A comprehensive discussion of ISBNs can be found in this article. ISBN is an acronym for the all-important International Standard Book Number. This article is a must-read for all self-published authors!
While I haven’t needed an ISBN to self-publish an eBook within a single channel (think only Kindle Edition only on Amazon, for example), a unique ISBN is required for each:
Print book,
Audiobook,
Language.
ISBNs for use in any sales channel are not free. I’m saving my pennies to buy 100 ISBNs for $575 (better deal than $150 each!). Why? Well…
I’ll have 4 books published by year-end x 3 (eBook + audiobook + paperback) = 12 ISBNs I require now, and,
I’ll require 3 additional ISBNs for each new book (potentially).
Each revision requires an additional IBSN for each format
If I should choose to publish other authors’ books (unlikely), I will have some ISBNs to spare.
Plus I have several shorter projects like short story anthologies and novellas in the wings.
I’m discovering new resources on the Internet for exploring features I had yet to learn within Scrivener, and will be useful as I commit to print. Some features ease the task of writing, while others ensure a consistent look and feel across all my books once printed. Very cool stuff. Such as:
Keywords. Here’s why. I assign a keyword to each scene or chapter within which a certain character appears. Then I can search on that keyword in my 100,000-word novel to see how many scenes or chapters in which that character appears. Or I assign a different keyword to all the scenes or chapters relevant to one storyline, and a different keyword to another. That helps me understand the balance and distribution across the storylines.
Templates. Let’s say I don’t want to recreate dozens of settings for each new book. I only publish one book a year. Remembering all those settings for that long is a pain, and if dozens of options are not precisely duplicated, the latest book doesn’t look quite like the last one. This is particularly problematic for a series. Using the same template for each project simplifies matters. I discovered some wonderful articles for future projects that you might find useful in structuring your own work. My advice? Study Scrivener templates! Create your own! Or modify someone else’s for your use to keep your projects consistent! Examples:
And if you need some help importing templates into Scrivener or are looking for some non-fiction templates (some cost a few bucks), click here.
Page Formatting Options for Print:
I’m in the process of crafting my fondest page and book formatting dreams within Compile in Scrivener. And not just for Fractured Dreams, but for all my projects. With quality and consistency. But this will take some work on my part unless I want to spend money. Here are the options:
ThisPage Formatting Tricks article includes some clever ideas on how to use ScrivenerCollections to track different versions of the same project (ePub or iBooks, Print, or Kindle). I like these ideas because it keeps me from needing external tools,
Alternatives to focusing on Scrivener Compile include spending money formatting your manuscripts with other products like Adobe InDesign (free trial, then $21 monthly!) or the ease-of-use-per-dollar value, Vellum ($250, one-time charge for eBook & Print), but those are still additional significant expenditures and learning curves of other tools.
Oryou can spend even more (thousands across multiple projects) hiring one of the countless professional book formatting services to do the work for you. All are reasonable choices with different price points, but the choice isyours.
So it occurred to me that even after spending a few years using just the Scrivener features I needed, I’m still learning more this amazing tool can do for me.
Sally 6/5/9 126
Now that my manuscript (final draft) for “Fractured Dreams” is out for beta readers to pick apart (thank you, all!), I’m spending some time learning all this print stuff before I start work on the next project.
You get the idea. Thinking paperback requires different considerations than thinking eBook; however, Scrivener continues to keep this author from straying.
That pleases me because I SO dislike jumping between two or more tools.
Put this in your “for what it’s worth” department.
How many of you publish eBooks only (Kindle or iBook editions…)? That’s me. For now. But…
Now I’m thinking all things paperback publishing. No hardcovers for now, and that’s okay.
In fact, more seriously than ever, I’m considering embarking on the tree-killing phase of my independent publishing journey.
That translates into “Fear of Commitment.” Once on paper, no more easy revisions!
I flirted with starting down this path well over a year ago, and shared what I learned at that time in an article about one print-on-demand (POD) vendor, KDP, or Kindle Direct Publishing, an Amazon company. FYI, if you were familiar with CreateSpace, it has been absorbed into KDP. I posted some good info in an article you can find here.
You can see I’ve learned more since then, but rather than repeat much of that material, see that article for good questions self-publishing authors of print books should research on cryptic topics such as book format, spline width, full-bleed, text boundaries, etc. Not for the feint of heart, but essential questions all. Fortunately, Print-on-demand (POD) vendors are helpful navigating this morass.
Here’s what I’m learning today:
Scrivener remains my overwhelming author software of choice; however, I need to learn even more new terms and why they are important as I set my sites on print. For example:
What is the difference between mass-market and trade paperbacks? See Joseph Kunz’s excellent article explaining the difference. I’m aiming at mass-market for lower unit cost (and price).
What precise formatting dimensions are expected for each, and how does that influence my design (my “copy,” or text; and graphics) for a front cover, the spine (the narrow edge that shows when the book sits on the shelf), and the back cover?
I suggest studying the detailed specifications of each POD vendor before spending time creating your own format and design. Don’t waste time redesigning, like me.
For example, guidelines for KDP can be found here.
I design my own cover art using Canva which offers some nice basic designs from templates, especially after I add my own artwork, which is optional. If you hire the services of a professional cover designer for several hundred dollars or more for each project, you need not worry so much about this part of the process other than paying your artist. A few ideas for you:
Use your favorite search engine (my favorite is duckduckgo.com because they don’t micro-market to me like the big boys) to locate “book cover designers” and roll the dice! Or,
Consult with successful authors to discover their favorites. Joanna Penn has made a name for herself writing and publishing both fiction and non-fiction. Take a look at her extensive list of book cover designers here.
Scrivener continues to be my amazing all-in-one writer’s studio. All of my formatting, even for paper, can be achieved within this single program. As I discover I need them (e.g., for print), I’m finding useful features in the Compile (format/export) feature of Scrivener:
The “Print” function in Compile, for example, doesn’t mean I need to print to paper. Rather, I will format for print, and save my output in a PDF file format, or some other type of file, to pre-flight (inspect) the results,
Heretofore unimportant (to me) formatting and ID options, such as:
Margins. They now need careful consideration. New terms, such as guttering are now important. These are the margins closest to the center of the book, where the rightmost margin of the leftmost page is closest to the leftmost margin of the rightmost (facing) page. The gutter. Why? Well, the thicker (as in more pages in) the book, the wider the guttering margins must be. Huh! Who knew?
Page Count. Too many pages means too high a book price required by the printer (they charge by the page). If the book costs too much, that impacts my sales. Artificially lowering the price (a tighter profit margin) leaves fewer pennies left to drift into this author’s bank account. And my CFO claims it’s not enough to justify a year’s worth of effort. Huh. Alas, what is a poor scribe to do. Is not every word I pen precious? The truth is it ain’t worth a plug nickel if nobody buys the darn book because it costs too much!
Scrivener Compile for Print: This may require a good deal of experimentation, but this article is helping tweak my freak. And remember, experimentation with the look of the book can be achieved without killing a single tree. Select Print formatting in Compile and then export your format to a PDF file instead of to a printer. I will spend the time to get it right!
ISBNs: A comprehensive discussion of ISBNs can be found in this article. ISBN is an acronym for the all-important International Standard Book Number. This article is a must-read for all self-published authors!
While I haven’t needed an ISBN to self-publish an eBook within a single channel (think only Kindle Edition only on Amazon, for example), a unique ISBN is required for each:
Print book,
Audiobook,
Language.
ISBNs for use in any sales channel are not free. I’m saving my pennies to buy 100 ISBNs for $575 (better deal than $150 each!). Why? Well…
I’ll have 4 books published by year-end x 3 (eBook + audiobook + paperback) = 12 ISBNs I require now, and,
I’ll require 3 additional ISBNs for each new book (potentially).
Each revision requires an additional IBSN for each format
If I should choose to publish other authors’ books (unlikely), I will have some ISBNs to spare.
Plus I have several shorter projects like short story anthologies and novellas in the wings.
I’m discovering new resources on the Internet for exploring features I had yet to learn within Scrivener, and will be useful as I commit to print. Some features ease the task of writing, while others ensure a consistent look and feel across all my books once printed. Very cool stuff. Such as:
Keywords. Here’s why. I assign a keyword to each scene or chapter within which a certain character appears. Then I can search on that keyword in my 100,000-word novel to see how many scenes or chapters in which that character appears. Or I assign a different keyword to all the scenes or chapters relevant to one storyline, and a different keyword to another. That helps me understand the balance and distribution across the storylines.
Templates. Let’s say I don’t want to recreate dozens of settings for each new book. I only publish one book a year. Remembering all those settings for that long is a pain, and if dozens of options are not precisely duplicated, the latest book doesn’t look quite like the last one. This is particularly problematic for a series. Using the same template for each project simplifies matters. I discovered some wonderful articles for future projects that you might find useful in structuring your own work. My advice? Study Scrivener templates! Create your own! Or modify someone else’s for your use to keep your projects consistent! Examples:
And if you need some help importing templates into Scrivener or are looking for some non-fiction templates (some cost a few bucks), click here.
Page Formatting Options for Print:
I’m in the process of crafting my fondest page and book formatting dreams within Compile in Scrivener. And not just for Fractured Dreams, but for all my projects. With quality and consistency. But this will take some work on my part unless I want to spend money. Here are the options:
ThisPage Formatting Tricks article includes some clever ideas on how to use ScrivenerCollections to track different versions of the same project (ePub or iBooks, Print, or Kindle). I like these ideas because it keeps me from needing external tools,
Alternatives to focusing on Scrivener Compile include spending money formatting your manuscripts with other products like Adobe InDesign (free trial, then $21 monthly!) or the ease-of-use-per-dollar value, Vellum ($250, one-time charge for eBook & Print), but those are still additional significant expenditures and learning curves of other tools.
Oryou can spend even more (thousands across multiple projects) hiring one of the countless professional book formatting services to do the work for you. All are reasonable choices with different price points, but the choice isyours.
So it occurred to me that even after spending a few years using just the Scrivener features I needed, I’m still learning more this amazing tool can do for me.
Sally 6/5/9 126
Now that my manuscript (final draft) for “Fractured Dreams” is out for beta readers to pick apart (thank you, all!), I’m spending some time learning all this print stuff before I start work on the next project.
You get the idea. Thinking paperback requires different considerations than thinking eBook; however, Scrivener continues to keep this author from straying.
That pleases me because I SO dislike jumping between two or more tools.
Put this in your “for what it’s worth” department.
