Saving Our Planet: Baby Steps Count

After watching a Farmacy broadcast by Dr. Mark Hyman on YouTube, where he speaks of a rancher who gained like twenty-nine inches of topsoil through regenerative farming practices, I breathed a sigh of relief.

We might be able to save our planet.

Granted, we hear of food waste all the time. But we need to recast that phrase into a planet-saving light. Sure. I don't eat all the food I buy. However, I'm doing three things to address that problem.

• First, I'm really trying to limit my buying to what I will actually eat that week that cannot be frozen for later. I'm a Deep South gal who loves her food, who enjoys cooking, and so the grocery store is a huge lure for me. BTW, frozen kale in my Zuppa Toscana is nowhere near as great as using the fresh kale in my soup. Duly noted.
• Second, I'm adding green drinks to my menu, using up not-so-pretty food but still safely edible. So, if you had planned for a great big salad, got distracted for a couple days, instead plan on drinking your veggies.
• Third, I'm adding that otherwise spoiled food to a backyard compost pile, not to my garbage bag.

Small steps. Big differences.

See my friend Nicci's related post at https://niccicarrera.com/2020/01/22/five-tips-for-waste-reduction/ wherein she has this great motto (which I am now adopting as well):

My motto is a quote that was shared in one of my social media streams:

We don’t need a few people doing waste reduction perfectly; we need a million people doing waste reduction imperfectly.

Amen.

And a great big shout-out to Greta for all her hard work involved in getting the word out in the global arena.

God bless us all.

Welcome to My World, Where Every Day Is a Saturday

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

https://deniseannbarker.com

http://denisebarkerauthor.blogspot.com/

Penniless Publishing: How to Indie Publish for Free (or Almost Free)

I was leaving one of my author group meetings earlier this month when one of the guys mentioned that all my books were e-books. I told him how I was the queen of the budgeted Indie-pubbed authors. He thought I should share my tips with our group. He got me thinking. Maybe I should share my tips with y'all here. Even though I'm on a very restricted budget, I do the best I can with what I've got at the time. You can too.

Anyway these all seem fairly obvious to me, but who knows? Maybe they're not. Let's begin.

1. E-Book Versions Only. I publish e-books now, with every intention later, once I'm a "rich and famous" author (which means, to me, able to pay all my monthly bills with my monthly royalty check), that I'll offer CreateSpace paperbacks (and have one for my home library too) and even Audible versions of my books as well.
2. Covers. Out of my eighteen current online offerings, I've created twelve of my own covers from scratch, using various routes, with intentions later to have professional artwork done on some of them. My Good Ole Boys cover was done by a professional artist, whose great talents I enlisted via a good ole boy agreement between me and him, as he was my son's friend. I paid a pittance for his art. I hope to repay him somehow in the future for the true worth of his skills. The three-book and four-book collection offerings sporting 3-D covers were also designed by my son's artist friend. The cover for my stand-alone short story Down South was a royalty-free and payment-free option I found online as long as I gave the artist an online mention. Which I've done for all the artists I've used (including my son's kindergarten artwork replicated for my Checklist series, using differing colors for each book). For my short story collections #1 and #2, I used another royalty-free and payment-free photo. For my quotations series, I arranged the photograph myself. For my Catch Me novella, I drew a freehanded whimsical cover for that romance story. For my upcoming fiction series, I plan to freehand another cover, one that'll be used as the main background art for all the book covers in that series. For my latest upload, Stress Less: 365 Tips, I used bright colors for the text and one repeated keyboard symbol to style that cover. At the time of each book's publication, I selected my cover art, then added in the appropriate title, my name as the author (or as editor for the quote collections) and a tag line as needed, all via the free GIMP software. It comes with a lengthy downloadable instruction manual, but you may find it easier (and faster) to check out YouTube's various videos on certain GIMP functions instead.
3. Storytelling. Obviously, as the sole author (no ghost writers involved), I've written the books (both fiction and nonfiction), which is the biggest time investment. Some involved research too. Plus Microsoft Word's spell-checker helps to catch most of the grammar issues and misspellings. But you still need the human touch of two kinds of editors.
4. Two Kinds of Editing. Thankfully I'm both a developmental editor (the big-picture plot doctor aka the DEing) and a copy editor (the grammar and spelling police aka the CEing), so I currently do my own DEing and CEing of my work, along with some help by my two primary CPs. When I doctor my own books, it does work best if I let the book lay dormant for at least one week before I first do a DE, finding and fixing plot holes, etc., then I can follow that with a CE in a couple days.
5. Formatting. I'm not a professional formatter, but my layman's formatting efforts serve me well when I preview via KDP. I may not (yet) be able to do drop caps, but I can present a clean and easily readable book. I give credit mostly to the use of Microsoft Word's Styles for chapter heads and subheads, and using autoindent functions under Paragraph for text. For those not familiar with Word, you'll find numerous videos on the subject by searching YouTube. Also I have a recent detailed formatting post here on this blog.
6. Brainstorming. In the past, I brainstormed by myself, hoping for revelations to get me unstuck as I unloaded the dishwasher or worked in the yard. Now I have a few authors who help me brainstorm. Plus I like to think of my four (to date) quotation volumes as thousands of writing prompts, each volume containing over one thousand. So when I get mired in my plot, I visit one of my own e-books for inspiration (plus I have a manila folder with pictures and sayings and whatnot to spur me on too).
7. Marketing. This is where I bow out. I only blog or enjoy pinning to Pinterest or the occasional tweet now and then. Otherwise I believe in basically four mantras: (a) that the opening of each book sells that book, while the ending of each book sells the next book by that author, (b) that the best marketing tip is to write your next book, (c) that series are a great boon to authors, and (d) that your intended readership finds you once word of mouth gets around, usually after the third to fifth book in your particular series. I hope so as I'm working on my Book 1 of my first fiction series. That may make a big difference in my royalty checks. If so, I'll let you know.

And that's it. I've spent close to zero dollars on my eighteen e-book releases (not counting my time involved). So it can be done even when the author is penniless. But the beauty of Indie publishing is that, when we Indie authors have more money, we can upgrade our covers, our text formatting, our various book options (hardcover, paperback, audio, e-book). If we really have some extra money to throw at our marketing, we can hire a publicist and a social media secretary.

So I hope I've proved that this writing gig can be done with little to no money to start out. Don't let a lack of funds stop you from writing if that is your big dream, your goal. Go for it!

And a happy and safe Thanksgiving to all you US residents!

"If your vocation isn’t a vacation, then quit, leap, change careers."

Denise Barker, Author, Blogger, Copy Editor
Books that Build Character(s)

amazon.com/author/denisebarker

Henri 4, a Halloween Tale

First, I intended to write another NaNo tip yesterday but remembered about one this morning. Does that count?

Second, since today is Halloween (at least here in the States) and I love the Henri videos, here's the latest, entitled Henri 4, L'Haunting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_fUsssnHPw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I love Henri. Enjoy!

Denise Barker, author, blogger + copy editor

Henri 2, Paw de Deux - YouTube

I'm still disturbing the peace in my neighborhood, laughing so loud because of this YouTube cat video I've watched three times in the fifteen minutes since I became aware of it.

Here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q34z5dCmC4M&feature=relmfu.

I applaud the creator for the resounding humor.

Enjoy!

Notes from the Universe Movie

Notes from the Universe Movie

WOW! I've watched this twice and I still tear up! This is going to be my newest inspiration first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I've also put this on my wall on Facebook. I never want to lose touch with this video. And I would love to be able to produce YouTube videos such as this that move others such as I have been moved. Whether related to my books or to just sharing. That is my wish. I have been blessed to watch this, to have it make its way to me. Now I share it with you.

UPDATE 08.02.2011:  The above link is currently not working, resulting in an error code instead of this inspirational YouTube movie.  So I have added the URL in my favs found on the right sidebar.

This Author’s Partial To-Do List re Indie Publishing

This blog spot is as much for me as it is to share with you.  The following is a compilation of ideas I’ve garnered from my reading.  I read A LOT.  And I can see one line out of a whole newsletter that spurs me to activity or to capturing an idea on paper.  Being Indie-published, I am the sole person in my publishing company.  Therefore, I have lots to do.  It helps to write stuff down.  Here goes.

If you are like me and have uploaded e-books for the Kindle and Nook, have you considered recording an audio version of your book “as read by author”?  I understand all you need is a computer-compatible microphone and you can create an MP3 (maybe some software is involved).  Like I said, this is on my To-Do List.  I don’t have the experience yet.  But I need to add that knowledge to my base.

This idea works for me currently as all I have e-pubbed to date are nonfiction How-To books, so I can read it well enough to entertain my readers while they are driving to work or cleaning their kitchens.  However, when I get to the novel productions, I am not the one to create the different voices required to distinguish all my characters.  Someone more gifted in that area would need to read my taped novels.

How about a vlog?  Create your own video and upload it to YouTube?  Great marketing tool.

When I go to print books, I want freebies.  I like theme-based pencils, erasers, bookmarks and such.  Start thinking of what promos you would like to help market your creative works.

Even now, with my e-books, once I start uploading my novels, I intend to have bookmarks at the back end that the reader can print out on plain card stock (or heavy white paper) and cut apart with a paper cutter.  This is all a work-in-progress, but my current thinking is to have my book cover on each and maybe one of four or five great one-liners from my story per bookmark, since I should be able to put five per 8-1/2x11-inch page. 

I love the idea of giving more, so this works well, even for e-book versions.  I already have my Lagniappe page at the end of each current e-book, which “success formula” is printed on the reverse side of my business cards as well. 

I was reading a bio about a local author who will be speaking at an event soon and checked him out on Amazon and was surprised to see his blog compilations for sale for a monthly fee.  I use Blogger.com for this site and it seems to offer the same option for providing a book of your blogs.  Worth checking into.

 Best wishes in ALL your endeavors.