Writers On The Move: poetry

Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Self Publishing Your Poetry – A Brief Primer

Self-publishing is an option open to everyone and it’s becoming easier and more powerful with different software and online options becoming available all the time. Why would you want to self-publish? Here are a few reasons:

There are no entry barriers. You don’t need a list of publications or any kind of awards to be considered, and your work can be on any topic.

You retain complete control over the look, quality, and promotion of your work.

You retain a far greater profit for your book. Most traditional publishers offer 10%, which isn’t a lot!

You learn a lot and it can be quite fun if you enjoy playing around with your computer and trying out new things.

But self-publishing isn’t all roses.You’ve got to do everything yourself and it’s hard work and often involves its own learning curve. You’ll have to learn about formatting, about graphics, about designing a cover, about ‘bleeds’, about document conversions,about distribution channels, about Amazon and other online stores and the list goes on and on. If all you want to do is write, then self-publishing is probably not for you (and believe me, it will take time that you would otherwise have been spent writing).

In addition, traditional publishing provides an important curation and editing function which you aren't advised to skip if you're going to self-publish. Instead, you'll need to curate yourself. That's not easy but it can be done. You can hire a well-respected editor, and manuscript assessor to ensure that your work is up to scratch, or you can work with a mentor - something that is particularly useful for poets in need of objective and valuable input. How do you self-publish? The easiest way is to just add a cover and copyright information to your book and save as a .pdf file. Lo’ and behold you’ve now got an ebook which you can sell from a website or blog. When you do this, 100% of your sales are profits, but you may not get many sales!

Or you can send your digital book to one of the big copy houses like Snap printing, Qwikcopy, or take a file into your local Espresso Printer and have them print out what you need when you need it. The print copy is very nice indeed for the Espresso machine, with quality comparable to any high street book. You can hand print and staple your work too, although it won’t be very professional looking. You can also go with one of the print on demand companies, who will produce a professional looking product for nothing or very little, but take a cut of each sale and may also charge you for expanded distribution. Many of them will also provide you with a barcode and ISBN and make the book available for sale at a range of online shops. You probably won’t make much through direct sales, but the book will be attractive, and often you can buy copies inexpensively and hand sell, which is probably the best way to sell poetry. Some of the more well known ones include:

CreateSpace: this is Amazon’s own publishing house and to my mind, it’s one of the best. It will take you a while to learn their particular formatting requirements, but everything is .pdf based, fairly straightforward, and they’ll give you all the templates you need. The cover maker is excellent and will give you a very nice lookng cover, with custom images. The one key advantage this one has over the others is that your book will be sold on Amazon once it’s complete for no extra (most of the other self-publishers offer Amazon only with a paid distribution package). Also their prices are pretty reasonably, especially if you want your own copies to hand sell.

Lulu: Self publishing / print on demand publisher. Lulu is very popular. You can sell your book directly from their website and they offer a pretty wide range of options including spiral bound, landscape, hardcover with dustjacket etc.

Cafe Press: Self publishing / print on demand publisher.

Smashwords: ebook only, but they do have allow you to distribute your book free and do all of the format conversions for you with their "meatgrinder". They also have some excellent promotional tools and get exceptional traffic. Note that, for poetry, conversions are not perfect and need to be fully checked on every device or you may end up selling something that is substandard (This happened to me. However, Smashwords is very responsive and will often help sort out any problems quickly.).

There are plenty of others out there and new opportunities/distributors appearing all the time. For a self-publisher, the intense competition has been a very positive thing. However, and this is very important, bear in mind that none of them will edit your work (some offer editing packages, but I highly recommend hiring a professional) or go through the rigorous and often difficult process of telling you what works best and what doesn't - something that is important with a poetry collection, and of course, none of these places will promote your work for you. All of that will need to be done by you, with help and support from clued up professionals, something that is mostly par for the course in traditional publishing. That said, you'll retain control over the finished product - with formatting, images, and the overall package completely in your hands. If any errors or problems should creep in, you can usually fix them easily - something that's not the case with traditional publishing. Also the speed to market can often be significantly faster. In any case, regardless of who you use, make sure you follow their instructions to the letter, and your book will end up looking as great as the poetry within it deserves.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of traditionally published books Repulsion Thrust, Quark Soup, Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, and the self-published books The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson,Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red,Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com

Keeping a Journal

I'd like to say I still have every journal from a lifetime of writing. After all, I poured so many thoughts into those pages, secrets I couldn't even share with myself.

My childhood diaries, however, have gone the way of my baby teeth. Just as well. Some things are better left forgotten.

More recent journals are scattered about my home: stacked on the floor, stuffed into the back of shelves, and hidden in boxes in the closet. I wouldn't be surprised if some are propping up second-hand furniture.

Does this mean I'm indifferent to the contents of those half-remembered tomes? I prefer to see them as buried treasure. How much more poignant the words will seem when unearthed years from now. And perhaps their value will have grown during the passing years.

Consider the following description written during a morning freewrite at an oceanfront cottage:

"The way the foam dances ahead of the wave, it looks like nimble fingers on piano keys."

The line stayed in my head for years and eventually evolved into the following poem:

water washed over

cold crescent shore loosely keyed

pebbled concerto

The basic concept had endured but been expanded to include more concrete imagery. If I hadn't captured the description in the moment, however, the poem never would have come about.

Journaling is a valid aspect of any writer's life. Recording your observations on a daily basis provides practice and discipline. Try it for a week--just one page per day--and see if you're not convinced.

You just might realize that there's more to "keeping" a journal than choosing its storage location.

Betty Dobson is an award-winning writer of short fiction, essays and poetry. She also writes newspaper and magazine articles but is still waiting for those awards to materialize. In the meantime, she continues to run InkSpotter Publishing, which has three new books available and several more in the works for 2012.

Fear of Formatting

I have a novel forthcoming from MuseItUp publishing, a science fiction novel for tweens/young adults, and as part of the novel, I created a poet and wrote thirty-one of his poems. Eight of the poems appear in the novel, and I wanted to publish the whole collection to go along with the book. I dragged my feet - first about obtaining permission to use the poems that appear in the book, and second, when I had permission, about putting the book together.

Fear of formatting held me back, but at last, with the deadline approaching, I jumped in.

I created the cover on the above using my image and a CreateSpace template.

Covers: This was my first sticking point. But fear not, designing one's own book cover is easy with CreateSpace, as they have cover templates and images you can use. Or you can use your own photo, or go to one of the many websites that offer photographs and buy one. I went to Bigshotphoto to purchase the image for the cover of "Sand in the Desert." It cost me $2.99 for the small size.

For the cover of SandInTheDesert, see Karen Cioffi's post: http://margaretfieland.com/blog1/2012/05/26/design-your-own-ebook-cover/

For the formatting, alas, there was no cure but to jump in. CreateSpace does have templates you can download and use for the various size finished documents. They have predefined layouts, page styles, and the like, and you fill in the blanks (or sometimes, generic text) with your own.

I downloaded and used one. And now, many hours later, I have just ordered my second proof copy - the first had problems with both formatting and content -- and I know a lot more about formats.

I use OpenOffice rather than Ms Word, so the menus will be slightly different, but here are some of the things I learned to watch out for:

Page setup options as to the distance from the top and bottom and from the sides.
Whether the format is MIRRORED or not.

Header and Footer: Do you have them? Do they have the same contents left and right?

What format follows this one? I got hung up on this because the LEFT page format had LEFT as the next format instead of the RIGHT page format. The RIGHT page format had the same problem - RIGHT was the next format instead of LEFT. This screwed up my page numbers.

Paragraph: Line spacing and distance between paragraphs.

Fonts: This one is pretty straightforward in your document, but CreateSpace wants the fonts embedded in the document. OpenOffice doesn't appear to have an option to put them in a .doc file, so I had to select "export to PDF" and check the option to include the fonts in the PDF.

Size of your finished book: The page formats include the page size, which will, of course, affect how much space you have for text. The CreateSpace templates will give you a guide as to how much space to leave for the margins - the INNER is the critical one, as you will need to leave enough room for the binding.

Proof Reading: There's no substitute for proof reading. Proof read for formatting, and again for content. I read through for the formatting, then again for the order of my poems, and once again for the poems' content.

My personal criteria for passing something out of a proof phase is that I read it through twice without finding any errors. Sad experience has shown me that I can overlook an error once through, but the chance I will overlook the same error on another reading is small. Yes, this is tedious. Yes, it's saved my ass more than once.

Here are some references:

For OpenOffice:

http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/office_guides/openoffice_3_writer_user_guide/openoffice_writer_Book_chapter_sequence.html

http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/ooo-help/r2.1/en-US/WIN/writer/guide/header_pagestyles

Here are some for MS Word:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Microsoft-Word-1058/2009/6/Mirror-margins-headers.htm

http://www.ehow.com/how_4488436_lay-out-book-manuscript-microsoft.html

I just ordered my second proof copy. The first had both formatting and content issues, ones I didn't spot using the digital proof copy. I'll be examining this copy carefully, both for formatting and for content. For each, if I can go through it twice without finding any errors, then I'll declare it good to go.

Ruminations on Fathers

There's a poem for every occasion, and the occasion at hand is Father's Day. Though the 3rd Sunday in June is the most common day for Father's Day, it's not the only one. In Australia, for example, Father's Day is the first Sunday in September. In Russia, it's February. My own Father lives in the US, and so I get to celebrate the June date, usually (almost always) by sending books for gifts. My dad likes to read sci-fi, so this year he got Mieville's Railsea and Murakami's 1Q84. Last year I wrote him a poem, as I often do, though the following one is a poem I wrote for another father figure in my life, my grandfather, who ran a boat yard for many years during my childhood. The now defunct boatyard is also pictured on the cover - the image that inspired the poem, taken by my uncle during a nostalgic visit back. The poem provides the title for (and is featured in) the poetry book Imagining the Future: Ruminations on Fathers and Other Masculine Apparitions which I co-wrote with Carolyn Howard-Johnson.

Fathers provide such a fertile source of inspiration (mother's too!) - so if you're looking for a reason to write a bit of poetry, perhaps some ruminations on dad might work. I've been writing poetry since I was a young girl, and I'm hoping that at least a few of those early poems are kept somewhere in a box of mementos, as indeed I keep my own children's poetry and handmade gifts. Happy Father's Day to all you wonderful fathers out there.

Boat Yard

Walking the fuzzy line
between deference and defiance
a cold wind opens the door
you slide
into frictive fictive
present.

Holding onto your absent body
too tightly
I find something
tangible
a heart once broken
beats
beneath my own chest.

The snarl of your lip
against kindness in your eyes
how odd to find you
now
still supportive
so many years after you disappeared.

Snow covers everything
not enough for fairytale glitter
just desolate dust
darkening teal on the horizon
and water
always water
together we swim
through a remembered past
imagining the future.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of a number of books including Black Cow, Repulsion Thrust, Sleep Before Evening, and, in conjunction with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, the Celebration Series of poetry book of which Imagining the Future is a part. Find out more at www.magdalenaball.com

Mother's Day Poetry (and freebie)

It's almost Mother's Day (or Mothering Sunday if you're in the UK). Here in Australia, Mother's Day is Sunday the 13th of May. Since I'm both mother and daughter, I've managed to convince my poetry partner (also a mother and daughter) Carolyn Howard-Johnson to let me giveaway our motherly poetry book She Wore Emerald Then. From now through to May 14th (US time) you can grab a copy of She Wore Emerald Then from Smashwords for the budget-smashing price of $0.00. Just use Coupon code KT98C at checkout. You can even use the code to 'gift' the book to someone. Following is a poem from the collection that I wrote for my first child. If you prefer a hard copy, you can get a copy at Amazon. Happy Mother's Day to all you fantabulous mothers out there.

Whorl

From this point
everything begins.
He comes out crying
no need for a smack
eyes wide
fighting the light and shocks
slippery, red and incredibly solid.
From this point it all begins.
The whorl
where superfine hair grows
like one of those spiral galaxies
Andromeda or Triangulum
full of stars
and the promise of real life
different from anything we have known
but starting at the same point.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novels Black Cow and Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com

Report from the Mass Poetry Festival

Recently I attended the Mass Poetry Festival. Back when the event was in the planning stages, I got an email about a reading of poetry from their books by Massachusetts authors who had published a book of poetry in 2011. I hesitated -- "Lifelines" was written by six of us, and I was "sure" they're reject me -- but sent in my information anyway. They said yes, illustrating yet again my father's maxim, "nothing ventured, nothing gained." I hope I remember this: not to assume I will be rejected simply because something is a reach or is out of my comfort zone.

I was part of the Sequential Poetry Reading for poets with new books of poetry that appeared in 2011. The reading started at Noon on Saturday and lasted until 2:40. We were told that we each would have eight minutes to read, but we had a couple of no-shows, so we each had ten minutes.

The reading went well. The audience included us poets and about an equal number of what I expect were friends or family. It was a real treat to be be able to listen to the poets reading from their own work. A good many (most) of them simply read from a copy of their book. I might have done the same except for Michele's excellent advice to print out what I wanted to read in LARGE, DARK type, and to practice. I did both, and I was very glad I did. Michele also suggested alternating dark and light poems. I doubt that, left to my own devices, I'd have thought of this either.

There were a long list of workshops taking place all three days of the festival, and we were encouraged to sign up in advance. I did sign up for several things, but as it turned out, simply walking into the workshop was generally good enough. I suspect the pre-sign-up thing was to figure out expected attendance at the workshop in order to facilitate room assignments, number of handouts, and the like. Next year, I will attempt to sign up for what interests me, but I won't be a slave to the schedule.

The workshops themselves were tremendous fun. I arrived Saturday morning, signed in, got a copy of the workshops and a map, and by that time it was a bit too late for me to get to much in the way of workshops, so I ended up going to a couple of the art activity things that had been set up with kids in mind. I *love* art activities -- my mother was an artist who specialized in portraits. I was hugely energized by the art projects, and ended up spending several hours Saturday evening after I returned home playing with MS paint.

I didn't get much sleep Saturday night -- MS paint is hugely addicting, and I was pretty pumped up from the festival -- so I considered skipping Sunday. In the end, I decided that I would just main line coffee and go for it. Good decision. The first workshop I attended was given by someone I know. He's a kick-ass teacher, and I had signed up for the workshop. Not only was the workshop very good, but the attendees, as is often the case with Tom's workshops, were equally interesting. Several of us exchanged email addresses, and I hope we will keep in touch.

There was also a lit mag and small press event, and I bought several journals and a book of poetry, collected flyers from some of the lit magazines. I'm reluctant to order off the internet for magazines I've never had a chance to look over in person, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to pick up some of the ones I was interested in. The poetry book is a book with poetry in French on one side and a translation by Marilyn Hacker on the other. I find reading modern poetry in French a challenge, so I welcome the opportunity to, first, cover up Marilyn's translation and simply read the poems in French, and eventually, to read her translation as well. I didn't stay for the Saturday night headliners -- they started at 7:30 -- but the Sunday headliners started at 2:15, so I did go to that. The readers were Frank Bidart, Martha Collins, and Stephen Dunn.

Stephen Dunn is one of my favorite poets. I knew two of the poems he read. What engages me as a reader and writer of poetry is conciseness and precision in language, the sound of the words themselves, their cadence. Freshness of imagery. A sense of humor. A poem that forces me to take another look at the familiar, evocation of emotion. Here is one of the poems he read -- one of the two I recognized:

What Goes On
by Stephen Dunn



After the affair and the moving out, after the destructive revivifying passion, we watched her life quiet into a new one, her lover more and more on its periphery. She spent many nights alone, happy for the narcosis of the television. When she got cancer she kept it to herself until she couldn't keep it from anyone. The chemo debilitated and saved her, and one day her husband asked her to come back — his wife, who after all had only fallen in love as anyone might who hadn't been in love in a while — and he held her, so different now, so thin, her hair just partially grown back. He held her like a new woman and what she felt felt almost as good as love had, and each of them called it love because precision didn't matter anymore. And we who'd been part of it, often rejoicing with one and consoling the other, we who had seen her truly alive and then merely alive, what could we do but revise our phone book, our hearts, offer a little toast to what goes on.

You can find Margaret Fieland on the web at
http://www.margaretfieland.com/
or
http://poetic-muselings.net/

The Real Profit in Poetry

Common wisdom holds that there's no money in writing. And let's be honest, what little there might be for most of us—assuming we're not Stephen King or the celebrity of the day—rarely if ever finds its way into the hands of poets.

Consider the image of the starving poet, huddled in his lonely garret, warming his fingers over a stubby candle so he can scratch out a few more inspired lines by that same meager light. With each word, he leaves another bit of his soul on the page.

Romantic, isn’t it?

Only if you’re inspired by your own suffering. I prefer to take my cues from outside influences.

The natural world is rich in inspiring imagery, from the humble resting place of a slowly melting snowflake to the panoramic reach of the Rocky Mountains. No detail is too small to warrant your attention. And nothing is too large to be captured with a few carefully chosen words.

Strangers are another fine source of ideas. The less you know about them the better. Simply graft your imagination onto their physical attributes, and you’re well on your way to creating something unique.

With its brevity of form, poetry excels at capturing a moment in exquisite detail. And somehow, magically, poetry sees past even the ugliest façade to the beauty within.

While poetry probably won’t pay the bills, it will most certainly enrich your life.

Great Sky: One more Valentine freebie

Valentine's Day is impending. Are you ignoring it this year? Rebelling against yet another commercially driven effort to part you from your hard earned money? If you're visiting this blog you're probably a writer, so why not use your writing talents to say something meaningful to someone you care about? Write a poem for Valentine's Day. Why not? You could pen something quirky and funny, or deep and powerful - poetry can often 'say' things that prose strains at. If you need inspiration, or want to provide a lovely, no-cost gift to someone you care about, there's still time. From now until the 17th of Feb, drop by Smashwords and use coupon code EL42C for a completely free copy of the love poetry book Cherished Pulse, by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and me. Below is a poem from the book, set in a lovely little village in Buckhamshire in the UK, nor far where I used to live in Oxford. Now it's your turn.

Great Sky

At Brill on the Hill (with the windmill)
the sky ominous
a purple bruise threatened to knock
us off the bikes
Nixy’s little mill tenuous
perched alone,
six hundred feet above sea level
no trees to buffer the wind
more than three centuries
of lovebirds
non conformists
showing off calve strength
as they worked their way towards
a pint at the The Pheasant Inn.

We were more tenuous.

Healthy children
our eyes wide with the cold
wild landscape
hungry for our future
the warm taste of flesh.

Your red and white leathers
seemed bolder
than the great sky
bigger than the bleak landscape
and grassed over clay pits
when you took my hand
for the first time
pulled me down
out of the wind.

No going back.

The windmill kept turning
the Pheasant
churning
hearty ploughmen’s
while we rode off
into adulthood.

Red and white bravado may be gone
with the purple clouds
and cracked leathers
of our childhood
but hunger remains.

Don’t let age blind you.
Under my crepe paper skin
lies a beating heart
blood moving bravely
through veins and arteries
Pull me down
out of the wind
like you used to.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the novel Black Cow, Sleep Before Evening, the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. She also runs a radio show, The Compulsive Reader Talks. Find out more about Magdalena and grab your free copy of her Quark Soup at http://www.magdalenaball.com

Using video to promote poetry

Once upon a time poetry was seen as an elitist occupation. The more obscure and inaccessible the better. Well to be honest I'm not sure it was ever like that, but certainly that perception is still bandied about among those (perhaps in some publishing quarters and certainly among those with little exposure) who would have poets marginalised as the unprofitable, effete cousin of prose. Multimedia puts paid to that, bringing in the very visual, modern reader as participant. For poets, the process of writing is all about meaning and connection, and so whatever works to create that moment of awakening; the shiver of recognition in a reader (or viewer), is good. Using multimedia is a perfect way to promote poetry as I feel very lucky as a poet to find myself in a world where there are so many different ways to transform each poem to awaken something different in a reader. These little videos can be made quite easily by culling freely licensed public domain images that seem to pick up the meaning in each stanza, and with some voice work, good music, and a neat video program or webcam, there's really no limit to what you can do.

There are a few free software packages that can help you achieve different effects and for poets with a visual flair, it's quite fun (if a little time consuming) to play around with tools like Prezi, Movie Maker, 64studio, and Animoto which I used to make the following video, from a poem taken from the collection Deeper Into the Pond by Carolyn Howard-Johnson and me. The music came from Moby and their amazing gratis artists resource site. You have to request it and tell them what you're doing but they're really generous and in the end you get something totally unique that functions as a completely new piece of art. It's something I feel that most poets should consider to take their work out to a broader audience, and also, and maybe mainly, because it's a lot of fun to do. Text of the poem follows the video.

Only a Dress

Down beneath the dirty cobwebs
wet and torn
neglect and weathering
damaging the social fabric
your pretty silk dress
discarded
into landfill.

Yes there are racks full
in the shiny mall of your dreams
or is that nightmares
corridors and white teeth
loom against your loss.

It was only a dress
sheer floral organza floating
above real satin
forties style
neatly fitted against your narrow hips
flowing with possibilities
now shrunk into mere threads
shot through with stains
disintegrating
amidst other detritus
carrying, like silver sequins
a weight of desire
shrugged off.

You could just buy
another
re-align yourself
on the hampster wheel
run run run
back
the route you’ve travelled
detached, near complete
or you could sit, breath in the fresh salty air
and let the dress go.

About the author: Magdalena Ball is the author of Sleep Before Evening, Repulsion Thrust, Quark Soup, and a number of collaborations and anthologies. Find out more about Magdalena and grab a free copy of her book The Literary Lunch at www.magdalenaball.com.

Writers on the Move’s Authors’ Books for the Holiday Season

Ring-a-Ding. Ring-a-Ding.

Yup, the holiday season is just about upon us and many, who think ahead and have already started their shopping, are now looking for great holiday gifts for the adults and children in their lives.

Since Writers on the Move has very talented authors who offer everything from poetry to children’s books to mysteries to anthologies to historical fiction to non-fiction how-to books available as amazing gifts for just about anyone and any age, we’ve put together a list of MUST HAVE BOOKS to give you some ideas.

So, please scroll down to the bottom of the list and be sure to click on the links to find out more about each book.

Off we go.

Writers on the Move’s Authors’ Books for Holiday Season Gifts

Walking Through Walls
Children’s middle-grade/young adult fantasy adventure
Amazon Link
Book Info Link: http://walkingthroughwalls-kcioffi.blogspot.com

Day’s End Lullaby
Children’s bedtime picture book with sheet music to lullaby included
Amazon Link
Book Info Link: http://daysendlullaby.blogspot.com

Karen Cioffi
http://karencioffi.com
http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com

############################################

Dancing With The Pen
A collection of today's best youth writing -- this groundbreaking anthology features stories, poems and essays by more than 65 kids and teenagers from all around the world. For each copy sold, a new book will be donated to a disadvantaged child through Write On! For Literacy. http://www.writeonbooks.org

3 a.m.
Award-winning collection of short stories has been featured on the PBS book talk show "Between the Lines" and has been acclaimed by both teenagers and adults.
Amazon Link

Dallas Woodburn, award winning author
http://dallaswoodburn.blogspot.com

#############################

State of Wilderness
Book 1 of 50 in the JGDS, 50-state, mystery, trivia series
Amazon

Ma America, The Travelin' Maven (Elysabeth Eldering)
http://jgdsseries.blogspot.com

#################################

The Cancer Prayer Book
Self-Help: A wonderful and meaningful gift for a loved one or friend going through the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. It has chapters on Diagnosis and Waiting, Family, Self Image, Healing, Seeking Wisdom, Keeping the Faith, and more.
http://dreamwordspublishing.com
ISBN: 978-1-4507-2599-6

Terri Forehand RN, author
http://thecancerprayerbook.blogspot.com
http://terri-forehand.blogspot.com

#################################

Leap…Laugh…Plop
Kick…Catch…Buzzzz
Guess…Giggle…Wiggle
Children's picture books: These wonderful books keep children laughing and learning with each turn of the page.

Martha Swirzinski, M.A.
http://www.MovementPlus.com

#######################################

Blooming Red: Christmas Poetry for the Rational
By Carolyn Howard-Johnson and Magdalena Ball
Cover watercolor by Vicki Thomas
http://www.budurl.com/BloomingRed
"This volume is full of delight." ~ Margaret Fieland, author
Discounted in quantities of 25 or more (for use as holiday greeting cards):
http://howtodoitfrugally.com/more_on_blooming_red.htm/

Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Instructor for nearly a decade at the renowned UCLA Extension Writers' Program
The Frugal Book Promoter ( http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo ) :
Web site: http://www.howtodoitfrugally.com

#########################################

Repulsion Thrust
Poetry: "Wonderful. The work covers a lot of ground while keeping a poetic sensibility, which is hard to do. We need more singularity-aware art." Ray Kurzweil
Buy it at Amazon

Sleep Before Evening
Literary fiction: Marianne is teetering at the edge of reason. “Buy this book. And relish every moment of it.”
Buy it at Amazon

Magdalena Ball
http://www.compulsivereader.com/html
http://www.magdalenaball.com

#####################################

The Golden Pathway

The struggle against slavery with no regard to one's safety - age 8-12
http://www.guardianangelpublishing.com/pathway.htm

######################################

The Women of Camp Sobingo
Historical fiction, WWII era

The Unexplored Heart
Victorian era, Historical romance/adventure

Forces of Nature
Suspense, Natural Disaster

Once a Brat, Always a Brat
Memoir with contributions from other Military Brats

Marilyn Celeste Morris, Author
Buy Link: http://www.vanillaheartbooksandauthors.com/Marilyn_Morris.html
http://mcmauthor.wordpress.com/

######################################

Trouble on Earth Day
Children's picture book by Kathy Stemke
Purchase at http://shshshletthebabysleep.blogspot.com

More info on this author and Free monthly newsletter sign up: http://educationtipster.blogspot.com

######################################

Cowgirl Dreams
Western historical fiction: Nettie Brady bucks 1920s convention with dreams of becoming a rodeo star. Based on the author’s grandmother, a real Montana cowgirl
http://www.trebleheartbooks.com/SDHeidithomas.html
B&N Nook Edition

Follow the Dream
Sequel to Cowgirl Dreams: Life during the Great Depression brings unrelenting hardships and challenges to Nettie’s family and lifelong rodeo dreams.
http://www.trebleheartbooks.com/SDHeidithomas.html
Kindle edition

Heidi M. Thomas
http://heidiwriter.wordpress.com
http://www.heidimthomas.com/books.html

####

We're sure you'll find something from the books above that will be the perfect gift for this holiday season!

PLEASE SHARE THIS ARTICLE, and SIGN-UP FOR A WRITER'S WORLD NEWSLETTER.
You’ll get two e-books on writing and/or marketing if you do!

And to be sure you don’t miss any posts here, simply subscribe to my blog (RSS feed).

~~~~~~~~~~~
Until next time,

Karen Cioffi
Author, Ghostwriter, Editor, Inbound Marketing Instructor

Up to my Eyeballs with Eyeball.

By Kevin McNamee

Fall is here and Halloween is on its way. So now is a perfect time for me to talk about a poetry collection I’m involved with titled, An Eyeball in My Garden: And Other Spine-Tingling Poems . I have been very busy promoting this collection recently, since it is a seasonal book.

This poetry collection was put together by me and thirteen other terrifyingly talented poets. It contains everything from the humorous, to the creepy, to the absolutely sinister, this collection is designed to tickle your funny bone and then perhaps, gnaw right through it.

So before the trick or treaters arrive, you may want to introduce yourself to some ghoulish delights like the monster in Winking Wot Warning, or to try a dish off the Mummy’s Menu, or to really find out Where Nightmares Dwell, if you dare. You’ll be glad you did.

Please visit An Eyeball In My Garden website for Halloween craft ideas, fun and spooky interviews, and cats wrapped in tin foil.

What Others are Saying

Horn Book (Spring 2011): "This compilation of new poems covers scary as well as silly Halloween territory. For every truly chilling ghost train, there's a witch's shopping list or a monster that turns out to be the speaker's own reflection. Easily flowing meter in most of the pieces makes for smooth read-alouds. Black-and-white ink illustrations are appropriately spooky."

Publishers Weekly August 9, 2010- Gr 4-7— Readers should be prepared to shiver and shake through these 44 poems about ghosts, gargoyles, and more. Olander adorns each page with ominous ink images of spiders, monsters, and other terrors, while the verses temper horror (Craig W. Steele’s “Where Nightmares Dwell”: “I know too well/ What creatures lurk/ Where nightmares live and grow.../ The shadows found me years ago!”) with humor (Stella Michel’s “Mummy’s Menu” includes “Blackened pudding filled with flies,/ Crispy scarab beetle pies”). Whether it’s Halloween or not, this creepy collection will please readers with a taste for the supernatural.

This book is available from Marshall Cavendish, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or ask your local book store.

Be sure to check out my poems, Our Neighborhood and The Gargoyle.

Kevin McNamee is a writer and poet living in Yonkers, N.Y. He is the author of several children’s books and is a contributing author to this poetry collection.

To find out more about Kevin, please visit his website at http://www.kevinmcnamee.com/ or his blog at http://www.kevinmcnameechildrensauthor.blogspot.com/.

Self Publishing Your Poetry – A Brief Primer (and a few pitfalls)

There are no entry barriers. You don’t need a list of publications or any kind of awards to be considered, and your work can be on any topic. You retain complete control over the look, quality, and promotion of your work.

You retain a far greater profit for your book.

You learn a lot and it can be quite fun if you enjoy playing around with your computer and trying out new things. Although the learning curve is steep (more about that soon), your learning belongs to you - you can apply it immediately and improve what's already out there.

But self-publishing isn’t all roses. You’ve got to do everything yourself and it’s hard work. You’ll have to learn about formatting, about graphics, about designing a cover, about ‘bleeds’, about document conversions, about distribution channels, about Amazon and other online stores and the list goes on and on. If all you want to do is write, then self-publishing is probably not for you (and believe me, it will take time that you would otherwise have been spent writing).

The biggest pitfall in self-publishing is that you don't automatically get a professional editor like you do with traditional publishing. Because this is an area that should never be skimped on, if you do decide to save money by not bringing in a professional, you may end up producing a sub-standard quality book. A book full of mistakes is not only unprofessional, it can render a book almost unreadable, and will tarnish your name as a writer in general. There is already a bias against self-published books and this is the key reason. So if you do decide to self-publish, obtaining a high-quality editor has got to be the first priority and that may require some outlay upfront. If you really can't afford a professional then you must bring in someone else - someone picky and meticulous. This isn't an option.

How do you self-publish? The easiest way is to just add a cover and copyright information to your book and save as a .pdf file. Lo’ and behold you’ve now got an ebook which you can sell from a website or blog. When you do this, 100% of your sales are profits, but you may not get many sales!

Or you can send your digital book to one of the big copy houses like Snap printing or Qwikcopy and have them print out what you need when you need it. You can hand print and staple your work too, although it won’t be very professional looking.

You can also go with one of the print on demand companies, who will produce a professional looking product for nothing, but take a cut of each sale. Many of them will also provide you with a barcode and ISBN. You probably won’t make much, but the book will be attractive, and often you can buy copies inexpensively and hand sell, which is probably the best way to sell poetry. Some of the more well known print companies include:

Deeper Into the Pond: A Celebration of Femininity (Volume 1)

CreateSpace : this is Amazon’s own publishing house and to my mind, it’s one of the best. It will take you a while to learn their particular formatting requirements, but everything is .pdf based, fairly straightforward, and they’ll give you all the templates you need. The one key advantage this one has over the others is that your book will be sold on Amazon once it’s complete. Also their prices are pretty reasonably, and I suspect will set a trend that others will quickly follow.

Lulu: Self publishing / print on demand publisher. Very popular. You can sell your book directly from their website.

Cafe Press - Self publishing / print on demand publisher. Also popular.

There are plenty of others out there and new opportunities opening all the time, but bear in mind that none of them will edit your work, and few of them will help you design and develop a professional cover, not to mention helping ensure that your poetry is pulled together in a manner best suited to it.

You probably won't get rich selling poetry no matter what you do, which is part of the reason why it's hard to find a traditional publisher, especially if your work is unusual, experimental, or controversial. But self-publishing your work is not difficult and it can be a fun way to begin learning about and developing your author platform - getting your name and your words out to the public.

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of the poetry books Repulsion Thrust and Quark Soup, the novel Sleep Before Evening, a nonfiction book The Art of Assessment, and, in collaboration with Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Deeper Into the Pond, Blooming Red, Cherished Pulse, She Wore Emerald Then, and Imagining the Future. Find out more about Magdalena at http://www.magdalenaball.com

Writers On The Move