Continuation of the From Flood to Fountain Note Takers Edition

A couple of days ago, I tried to explain to someone how editing and layout work for a book, and it's different for ebooks vs print books. I apparently can't explain it well enough LOL. I will say that I have gotten quite the education, there are so many things that if done correctly, no one notices, but if done incorrectly, the mistakes stick out like ketchup on a white shirt.

So I have been indulging my inner perfectionist while working on the print versions of the Water in the Bible book. I'm so glad I have the inside of the book, the text, the story is complete, I tweak it every now and again, but try to leave that part alone. 

I do however work on the layout, making sure things like new chapters always show up at the top of the left hand page. Did you know that? New chapters and most new sections traditionally show up on the left hand page. And sections like bullet points shouldn't break between two pages, especially if it's going to go to the following page, if it's a LONG bullet point, that sometimes can't be helped, but for the most part, lists, bullet points and the such should stay together on one page. Also you don't want a bold heading over a section to be at the bottom of a page so that the section it's referring to is on the next page. It's better to have some extra blank space at the bottom of a page rather than split something that would work better being altogether.

There are other things as well, things like mirrored pages, how large the blank edges (top, bottom, left and right) should be. Page numbers, and don't get me started on how to create a proper and accurate table of contents! There is a trick to that if you are using Word or any other good word processing program, but for sure each time you make any changes to the book, you need to redo the TOC. 

As I said, it's a bit of work, not to mention the spelling, grammar, sentence, paragraph, chapter and book length. A friend suggested I might put in some graphics or pictures, and I had to decline that suggestion, it would take at least another couple of weeks worth of work just to get the images then another week or more to get the book re-formatted for that. I think I'll stick with words at this time. Though my picture is in the book on the last page, and in the upcoming print books, it's also on the back page. That's as far as I want to go with pictures for now.

Now on the print books, one is a standard 6x9, I should be getting the proof copy in the mail on Monday (I'm so excited!), after I am satisfied with the way it looks, I can make the book go live for sale on Amazon. With Amazon, for the author's proof copy, they put a big stripe across the book that says "Not for Resale",  it indicates that it's not a retail book, can't be sold or even gifted (according to them). That's fine, I get that they want to protect their bottom line, the sales need to go through Amazon. 

I just finished editing the 8.5x11 copy, this one has the exact same content inside of the book, and it contains a 3.5 inch outside margin for note taking, journaling, drawing, coloring or stickers, whatever the reader wants to do to make it their own. I'm calling it the Note Takers Edition, I was also generous with the white space at the end of chapters for the same reason. 

I just ordered a proof copy of that, I assume it will arrive sometime next week. One option with the paperback versions is they offer matte and glossy finishes for the cover. I ordered one of each with the proof books so I can better decide which I like best. Anyplace that I could ask online about this (to other authors), I see that it's a mixed bag, some love one, some love the other, so the only way for me to know for sure is to get one of each and decide then.

I just looked on my orders for Amazon and it says both will be arriving by Monday, I sure hope that is accurate, I'd love to hold both of them in my hands at the same time on Monday. I think I see one thing I need to possibly adjust, on the larger book, the front cover picture doesn't fill out the entire page, there is a black band around the image, depending on how it looks when I get it, I may leave it like that, or I may go ahead and re-do the image to make it fully fill out the cover. 

If you would like to check out the ebook version which is available on Amazon right now, go here and you will find it, I appreciate your support. You can purchase the ebook outright or if you have Kindle Unlimited (you basically borrow the book from Amazon) you can read the book for free, I get paid by the pages read, so again, I will say I appreciate your support.

https://amzn.to/4qSAgFl

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

It's (a)Live!

Alrighty now, after much teeth gnashing (not really but it sounds good for effect), I finally discovered what was wrong with my thumbnail. When I was creating my thumbnail, I read that it could be in one of two formats, one being TIFF and the other being JPG (JPEG). I wanted the highest quality so I went with TIFF, that's what I uploaded to Amazon (the same place where I uploaded the book). It showed up just find in that space, the space that only I could see. Little by little, the bits and pieces of my work began to show on Amazon, the book itself, the description, the read sample part showed up, I had a little hiccup on the author page part but finally got that smoothed out. The only thing that refused to show was the thumbnail for the book. I even re-uploaded the TIFF version and waited another couple of days, still it wasn't showing the thumbnail. So as a last ditch effort, I decided to upload a JPG version of the thumbnail and a few short hours later, everything became perfect, the thumbnail was showing and I'm super happy with how it looks. In the time this has been live, I've made 2 (organic) sales of the book and one person did the Kindle Unlimited thing. 

Let me explain the Kindle Unlimited, it's a monthly subscription on Amazon where you can "borrow" ebooks, kind of like a library, you can have a certain number of books at any one time, I can't remember the exact number, I'm thinking it's 10, but it might be more. Those books, you don't have to pay for (other than the monthly subscription you pay to Amazon) and can keep as long as you keep your subscription active. It's good for deciding if you want to spend the money on purchasing a book, or just read through it and return it so you can get other books.

The way this works, the author gets paid based on how many pages are read, hopefully the book is interesting enough that the readers will read the whole thing, but if it's not, that is OK too, we get paid for what you do read. 

Of course if you purchase the book outright, the author makes a commission on that sale, whether it's an ebook or a physical book. 

So some exciting news, I was digging around to see where my book ranks, and for a new book, it's ranking pretty high in the category New Release Religious Reference. it's ranking #5 out of 100 as of the time I checked. Of course that number can change rapidly, but I will say I'm pretty thrilled at the fact that without any sort of promotion or advertising, it hit #5, it's possible it ranked even higher but I didn't see it if it did. For the rest of the ranking, as of the time of this writing, it is:

#423,392 in Kindle store altogether

#23,921 in Christian eBooks and Bibles

#616 i Religion Encyclopedias 

#124 in Religious Reference

#5 in new Religious Reference

I waited until the thumbnail for the book became visible before even thinking about promoting it. I did post about it here and did the YouTube video, other than that, I haven't mentioned it anywhere else. That is about to change, I'm very excited to let my peeps know about this. Please feel free to check it out, if you have Kindle Unlimited, I'd greatly appreciate it if you would "borrow" the eBook and read it, that is absolutely free to you for as long as it's available for Kindle Unlimited. If you really want to support me, buying the book outright is also nice, but either way will work, I get paid for it, I really think this is a good book, I put a lot of work into putting this together. It was definitely a labor of love! Check it out and let me know what you think, I'd love some feedback. 

I appreciate each and every one of you.

https://amzn.to/4bMgqHU

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

From Flood to Fountain book is live!

It's finally live! My first published book. I've been working and waiting on Amazon to get the details correct, for some reason my author page wouldn't come up, the part where I edit it, I kept getting an error message, I reached out to Amazon's help and they did get it fixed. I was able to add a picture and a bio, but it takes time for these things to populate in the Amazon universe, so for now, as of the time I am writing this, my author page is a bit bland, I'm assuming it will become more exciting and personalized soon. 

Another thing that I'm waiting on is the thumbnail of the book to show, as of right now, it shows that there isn't a thumbnail, again I'm hoping that gets remedied soon, I understand it takes hours to a few days for that to fully populate. I did reupload the cover as I had read that might fix it if in fact it was having an issue. 

Meanwhile, I couldn't wait to announce this, I really wanted to wait until the thumbnail was visible and my author page was more filled out, but as I stated previously, I'm not good at waiting. LOL

I had a bit of fun with an app that created a 2 person podcast about the book, it's around 13 minutes long, give it a listen if you wish. https://youtu.be/ETlrrBpvpgg

The link to the book is in the description of the video. Or you can do a search for my name on Amazon

Wretha Smith

It will pull up my book, something I find a great deal of joy about, that I can do a search for my name on Amazon and it will actually pull up my book, it tickles me!

Oh, and even if you don't purchase the book, I would greatly appreciate it if you would follow me on Amazon, that way you can see when I publish more books.

https://amzn.to/4bMgqHU

(I just checked and my author page shows my picture now and my bio), now if they could just get the thumbnail on my book visible...)

The book went live yesterday, I was hoping to get the thumbnails visible before promoting this book, but even before I could work on that part, I actually made a sale, all organic, no promotion on my part, I know it wasn't anyone I know because according to my analytics, it was purchased by someone in Australia. I also had one person do the Kindle Unlimited thing and has read part way into the book. The Kindle Unlimited makes the ebook free for those who subscribe to Kindle Unlimited. The authors are paid based on pages read, I'm not asking for anyone to read any farther than they want to, I'm just stating what is common knowledge and publicly known through Amazon.

So this officially makes me a published author, woot! Even though I have been engaged in writing for many MANY years, this is the first time I've entered into this arena, it feels pretty good and I will continue adding to my books. 

I do intend to create a paperback copy of this, a physical book as I know there are people who prefer those, I will do a standard 6x9 and an 8.5x11 workbook size that will include wide margins for notes. I can't wait to hold a copy of each in my hands.

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!

I'm not good at waiting... but I'm trying.

72 hours, that's how long it said I have to wait... did I mention I'm not good at waiting? But wait I must. What is it I'm waiting on I hear you ask? My book, yes I finally did it, and as soon as Amazon approves my book, I'll officially be a published author! 

I can't remember exactly when I started writing this, I tend to be terrible with dates and times, but this has been in the works for at least 6 months, much longer if I really think about it. The book cover I worked up, I had 2 iterations of it, one was light and the other was dark, I asked my Facebook friends to help choose between the two, and that happened at the end of September, so the book must have been well in the works for me to to have created the cover. For the record, most everyone chose the darker more contrasty image.

Story Time:

I think back on my life growing up. I discovered books and the library at a young age, I believe I was in the 4th or 5th grade, in English class we had a weekly task, creative writing, we all had a spiral notebook and our task was to write a short story. The story could be anything, at the end of the week we had to read our story aloud to the class. Even though I was a painfully shy child, I secretly looked forward to reading my story. I think my stories were pretty good for a kid of my age, I had a very deep imagination and was quite capable of spinning tales. I remember that most of the other students didn't like that part of the class, whether it was the writing part or the reading aloud, I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

I kept my love of reading and writing through my teenage years up into my adult years. Though I did slow down on my reading and writing because I had to live my life, working, trying to earn enough to pay the rent. I turned to audiobooks to satisfy my reading habit. I was able to start writing again once we moved to our off grid home, this very blog to be exact. I started writing to my friends and family we were leaving behind to go live our lives. This honed my writing skills back to where they were previously. 

So fast forward to now, I'm getting my literary vibe on by continuing to write in my various online outlets, more than I want to write about at this moment, I want to get back to the subject at hand. I have been working on this book for a while, and finally FINALLY got it completed, I am the queen of UFOs, UnFinished Objects, I have more than I like to admit. My kryptonite seems to be actually FINISHING something, I understand it's an issue with ADD, never was actually diagnosed, but it runs in my family and I suspect I'm afflicted too. And it's OK, I can live with it, I just need to get work on being disciplined and finish these projects. 

So, as of yesterday, I finished this book to the point where I could get it uploaded to Amazon. I will admit that I had it ready hours before I was able to push that final button. I kept going back over the manuscript and finding things I wanted to tweak, a word here, a phrase there, I did find a typo in the website links I added at the last minute. The deal is, I was continuing to work and rework it, my inner perfectionist was being fed quite well, but that isn't going to get the job completed. Any other authors have this issue???

My neighbor and friend had texted me to ask about going on a walk, I took that as my sign, I wanted to be able to tell her that I had pushed the button to publish this. So I gritted my teeth and pushed the button. Nothing earthshaking happened, no angel choir sang, I got a screen that said the book is being reviewed and it could take up to 72 hours. 

Now it's going into the second day, yes I am refreshing the screen to see when it says something other than "under review", I'm not sure if that means I'm going to have to take another step to make it go live or if it will automatically go live. 

Now I need to work on getting this book formatted for a physical paperback, I am going to do a 6x9 standard paperback, and an 8.5x11 workbook size, that will have all the same text but it will have a 3 inch blank margin on the outer side for note taking purposes. I really want to go ahead and publish the paperbacks now, but I'm told it's better to let the ebook version breathe for a bit before putting out the physical versions. So I'll do that. 

I'll definitely post an excited post when this ebook goes live on Amazon, I hope you, my followers, friends and family will have an interest in this book. Oh, I guess I should say what it's about :)

I'm sure as you can probably tell, this is a book all about water in the Bible. When the first spark hit me, I was sitting in church and there was a reference to something about water, I wish I could remember the exact verse, but that started a quick search on how many Bible scriptures refer to water, I was surprised to see the beginnings, how many actual verses were there. Honestly I even found scriptures that I was not familiar with, and I found some that were actually in multiple places and different situations but I didn't realize they were separate instances, I had put them together into one. 

The process of separating each instance, finding the historical background, finding the other scriptures that refer to that scripture. I certainly got an education doing this, I do not claim to be a Bible scholar in any way, but I've grown up "in the church", officially accepted Christ as my savoir at 12 years of age, though I maintained a relationship with Jesus from as far back as I can remember. Reading the Bible was embedded in me from a young age. That still doesn't make me an expert, just an interested person, someone who has loved the mysteries of the Bible, loved finding connections that are woven throughout the Bible. I believe the Bible, even if there are parts that don't seem to make sense.

So, now I wait, refreshing the screen that says this book is still being reviewed. 

All written text from this blog are copyrighted and owned by Wretha unless otherwise stated. All rights reserved, You may download or copy for your own personal enjoyment, but please do not distribute without written permission. You may post a portion of this (or any) message from this blog on another site as long as you include a link back to this site and the original message.

Wretha,

Thanks for visiting!