Kidneys, Kettlebells, Car Repair, Migraines, Fishing, Diapers, and Stay at Home Dad Stuff

Tag: e-book

Finally finishing what should have been done before

Well folks, today I finally finished something that should have been finished many moons ago.  I finally finished my author page on Amazon.

Image representing Amazon as depicted in Crunc...

I have had a book on Amazon since 2011 and a grand total of 1 sale.  Of course, there could be no sales with no promotion.  I have neglected my career for too long.

Something has changed lately.  I am making myself.  I have been timid and hiding for far too long.  Now, I have 2 books on Amazon.  They are both listed at .99 but free to borrow on Amazon Prime.  Of course, you can get a free copy of “The Blogging Mindset” by joining my email list over there in the right sidebar.  I can count on one hand how many emails I have sent the past year, so there will not be a ton of mail from me.

English: Downtown Oklahoma City from the south...

English: Downtown Oklahoma City from the southeast. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Anyway, I have actually published on Amazon.  This is big for me.  I am stealing publishing and marketing ideas from The Consortium, an Oklahoma City based publishing house run in part by my (hold on, name drops here) friends Aaron Pogue, Courtney Cantrell, and Becca Campbell.  (links are to their respective blogs)

Now, another part of my empire is AnvilForge Press.   I will have to work hard on this over the next few months.  A new site, better copywriting, better promotion.  It’s all in the works.  Now I only have to write some more books to line the virtual shelves with.

Again, this cycle of writing and working has come, and you all can benefit from it.  I have had interest in finishing “The Man in the Hazy Suit” and I think I will republish it on here in it’s first form for some Fiction Saturday fun.  Then I am going to rewrite the thing and AnvilForge Press will publish it.

I also have other books in the works that I can only hope will rival Harry Potter and spring me to stardom.  In the meantime, I blog.  Today you should be reading a Stay at Home Dad post, but I had to get this out.  Next week, there will be theme days.  Maybe I will even write some new Poetry for Tuesday.

Hide and Watch.  And just in case you need to buy something from Amazon, please click through my link over there in the sidebar and help me keep this boat floating.  It doesn’t cost you anything extra.

Thanks for reading.

-Justin

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My review of How To Build An e-Book!

Hello folks!  Today I am going to review a fabulous book that I had the opportunity to pre-read for clarity. (ie I got a free copy to read through and evaluate.  assume all links are affiliate links.).  That book is called  How To Build An E-Book.  It was written by Aaron Pogue over at Unstressed Syllables.com.

This book was launched a couple of weeks ago and I didn’t put up this post then because I thought there would be so much promotion that mine would get lost in the stream.  So I am here today to review this fine book and bring some new life to it.  Aaron’s sales page is here:Click here to visit Aaron Pogue.

Hello Aaron.  Ok here is a list of things that I noticed while reading your book.  They are in no particular order so take them as you will.

First, this book is very well written.  It is easy to read and in a very conversational style that flows very quickly.  It really goes in depth on how to convert blog posts to a useful ebook.  Aaron is a technical writer (as well as novelist) by trade and his attention to detail is fantastic.  The book is easy to understand and it really lays out the right way to put your ebook together.

I mainly write fiction but the information Aaron presents can be modified to even make a fiction ebook look good.  I actually used some of the techniques to tweak my first fiction ebook: Death With A Vengeance.  It is also instrumental in the planning of my non-fiction ebook about my daughters kidney disease and dialysis.  The chapter on Outlining brought back horrible memories of both high school and college English classes but gave me a great reminder on how to do it.  I haven’t needed to outline anything in years but for this book I am writing it was essential.

Aaron also gets into some simple points of Microsoft Word (or other word processors) and talk about styles for chapter headings and how to bookmark and link in between pages in the ebook.  There were several points that I didn’t know about and now use quite often.  I have been using Word since the old Wordperfect went belly up and there were several things that I still didn’t know.

This ebook has a really good flow to it.  The headers and footers are very clear so you always know where you are.  It is littered with practical examples of how to put the concepts into practice, from pictures to links, to info boxes that show what is exclusive content to your ebook and what has been published on your blog.

He even includes a checklist that you can use to follow the concepts exactly as they appear in the book.  Most of these things I had thought about but I didn’t know how to put them together in a coherent and cohesive manner.  This checklist solved that problem.

At the end, he also discusses how to publish your ebook and get it out to the masses.  From formats to publish in to using distributors like e-junkie it is all here. Click here to visit Aaron’s Sales Page!

All in all, this is a great book for learning to make an ebook.  You can tell that Aaron really loves his work and is good at it.  He has easy descriptions of the hard stuff like outlining (I hate outlining but it must be done!) and publishing.

If you want to publish your own e-book from your blog posts, go get this book.  It is well worth the $49.97 that he is charging.  He also has the book split into three modules that run $19.99 each if you would rather go that way.

Bottom line: Want to write a successful ebook from your vast collection of blog posts?  Get Aaron’s ebook today and get started!