Landscape Photography Book Published!

My most recent book, Creative Composition for Landscape Photography, has now been published by Amazon.com.  It's available in both paperback and Kindle editions.  This work was a lot more difficult than my previous books because of the large number of photographs--170--included.  This posed particular layout challenges in both the paperback and Kindle editions.  You can find the book here.

The cover for the paperback edition

Because of my love of photography, I found this book particularly fun to produce.  If you have a chance to look at it, I hope you'll like it and I look forward to receiving your comments.

My Book on Handplanes in the Woodshop Released!

My newest book, Choosing and Using Handplanes, has just been released.  Intended for the beginning and newer handplane user, its 90 pages include nearly 100 color illustrations.  In this book, woodworkers will learn:

• The types of handplanes, names and functions
• The first planes you should get
• How to set up and adjust your planes
• How to sharpen your plane blades
• The kinds of sharpening stones
• The different bevels you’ll want on your blades
• How to hold your work for planing
• The body positions that work best
• How to determine the direction to plane boards
• How to plane cupped, bowed, and twisted boards
• How to plane end grain
• How to buy and restore old planes
• How to store and care for your planes
• Sources of new and used handplanes
• How to solve handplane problems

Choosing and Using Handplanes is now available from Amazon and CreateSpace.

For woodworkers who are hankering to learn how to use handplanes, I think they'll find this a useful guide.

I used CreateSpace to publish it, which automatically also posts it to Amazon.com.  It's a very easy way to publish.  It only requires a properly formatted pdf file.  I chose a glossy cover (which I photographed and designed myself) and color interior on white stock.  The photos and drawings (nearly all of which I made myself) reproduced quite nicely; the color was faithful to the originals.  I'm very happy with the result.  Now my attention is focused on marketing it to the thousands of woodworkers around the world!

Norm

At Last I'm Published

My murder mystery, The Hero of Gucci Gulch, passed all of CreateSpace's hoops as well as my own critical review (for the umpteenth time) and I approved it for release yesterday.  So now it's published!

Copies can be purchased immediately at the CreateSpace eStore.  It takes CreateSpace another week to release it on the Amazon.com web site, where it will be more readily available to the buying public.  A Kindle edition is also in the works, but that involves a fair bit of reworking of the text to make it readable in the scalable Kindle format.  However, because Kindle reaches a different audience--and a large one at that--I will make the necessary changes and get it posted there as soon as possible.

You can read the synopsis and my bio statement at the CreateSpace site.

On Ice

Today I'm in a holding pattern.  I've submitted The Hero of Gucci Gulch, my murder mystery novel, to CreateSpace for review and it passed all their tests.  Then I ordered a review copy, paying extra to have it delivered quickly.  It is due to come today.

But will it come?  Yesterday we caught the tail end of a major snowstorm that afflicted much of the east coast.  We did not get the predicted 10" of snow--at least, not so I can tell with it blowing around in the high winds.  But we did get maybe 5".  Why is this important?  Because it will disrupt package deliveries. 

The book is coming via UPS.  I live atop a fairly steep hill and have an unplowed, gravel driveway.  UPS will not come up my driveway when it has snowed any amount and certainly not through the drifts that have accumulated in the driveway.  Instead, they will fling my packages at the foot of my mailbox.  That is, if they come at all.

And if my book does arrive today, as expected, then the issue is whether it will pass muster.  The small  photo of the cover I viewed on-line suggested that the book title may be shifted somewhat to the left of the page.  If so, I'll want to repair the cover and send the book back through the review and reprinting process, something I would be very unhappy to do because of the delays it will entail.

But until the book arrives, I don't really know what I'm faced with.  I want to release it for publication so I can start marketing it and--I hope--generating royalties.  But I also want it to look right.  So, until the physical copy arrives, I'm literally on ice.

Publishing Through CreateSpace

Amazon.com's self-publishing arm, called CreateSpace, turns out to be a suprisingly easy and affordable way to publish a book.  At least, that's been my experience so far.  CreateSpace gives you two options: do your own text and cover layout or hire their experts to do it for you.  If you are able to carefully format your text in Microsoft Word, you can do it yourself.  That's the option I chose, which is the free option.  Amazon then makes its money from sales of your book on-line.

The same is true for your book's cover.  You can choose one of their standard cover templates and add your title information; you can pay their experts to design a cover for you; or you can develop your own in a photo editing program such as Photoshop using the layout template CreateSpace provides.  Since I am somewhat Photoshop-adept, I chose the latter option.

The hardest part of the process, frankly, is getting your text formatted.  I chose a 6X9" book format, which is the one recommended by CreateSpace for best distribution and sales.   To accommodate it, I changed the page size of my document in Word.  This necessitated reviewing all of the page breaks and eliminating the resulting widows and orphans.  This was eased, I later discovered, by turning on the widows and orphans feature in Word, something that would have saved me considerable time--not to mention several read-throughs--had I done it earlier.  Numbering the pages also turned out to be something of a challenge; numbers kept popping up on blank pages and in other places where they were unwanted.  I had to insert special breaks in the text, sometimes seemingly at random, until all the page numbers ended up where intended.

Once I had my text formatted the way CreateSpace needs to get it, I converted it to a pdf file--the preferred method for uploading to CreateSpace, though apparently they will also take Word files.  I filled out the background information needed--title, author, choice of ISBN option and where I want my royalties deposited--then uploaded my text for review.  In a matter of minutes, the text is returned in a form you can scan on-line for errors.  The review, in fact, will tell you whether or not your text passed CreateSpace's tests.  Mine did, with one minor error.

While your text is being reviewed and approved, it's on to the cover.  This is uploaded as a pdf file also.  It must meet CreateSpace's specifications for layout and spine thickness (which depends on the number of words and the choice of paper color).  This too is reviewed by CreateSpace.

That's where The Hero of Gucci Gulch stands now--waiting for final review.  Once I get approval--a matter of a day or less, in my brief experience--then I'll order a single print copy for final inspection of the book as produced.  If all is then OK, I'll release it for publication. 

This process has proven to be very quick.  I've spent three days getting the text laid out in final form and through the review process at CreateSpace twice.  Now I'm down to waiting to order and receive the first hard copy.  I'll let you know how that goes.

Publishing My Novel

Over the last several years, I've been polishing a mystery novel--The Hero of Gucci Gulch--that I started now several years back.  Or, in reality, it has mostly been lying about untouched because I did not know how to go about getting it published.  But recently, my friend and cousin Jim Crawford, under the pen name of Mokuri, published a short volume of poems by Li Po via Amazon's CreateSpace. This gave me the idea that I would be far better off using this free service to get my book out to the world than fretting over the difficulty and costs of publishing it by other means.

CreateSpace is a print-on-demand service that sells books when purchased via Amazon.com and by offers them to other booksellers and libraries in the U.S. and Europe.  Books can also be made available in Kindle editions.  Although you can pay CreateSpace to set up your book for you, it is quite possible to submit a final edited text and cover design of your own making.  The cost of doing it yourself is nothing.

Books can be printed in any size, include color illustrations and artwork if desired, and run to any length--short or long.

Royalties can be paid out automatically to your bank account or sent via check.  A user dashboard allows you to check in and watch your royalties as they accumulate.

There are many other epublishing services out there, but most that I've found charge fees for even basic services--sometimes astonishly high fees!  While my book has not yet been published, it is in the queue for review and may be available in a few days.

I'll announce it here when it appears.