The Anthology is Live!

Congratulations All. THE FLOOR ABOVE is now available from Amazon athttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B09M5B123Y for the print bookhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MCCY73K for the ebook

November Minutes

About 16 members attended November’s meeting and joined in the creation of our latest anthology, uploading to Amazon and creating the book cover. All done on a shoestring.

Contest Results

But first Steve announced the results of our November contest:

• 1.      First – “Antikythera Mechanism” by David Fryer
• 2.      Second – “A Matter of Perspective” by Judy Beaston
• 3.      Third – “Expecting” by Sheila Deeth 

OTHER ENTRIES:

Steve Cooper, our host, composed two (non-voting) entries:·       

•  –Adjusting Expectations Part 1·        –
• -The Plum Tree — A Parable

And other entries (find them all at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/november-2021-contest-page/nov-2021-entries-voting-page/  were:·        

• Expectations  BY Darrel Boyd·        
• How Things Change  BY Jessie Collins·        
• It’ll Do Ranch  BY Michael Fryer·        
• Overachiever, me?  BY Karin Krafft·        
• Passage of Time  BY Peter Letts·        
• Rose  BY Von Pelot·        
• The Rain, The Runner (poem)  BY Joe Mendez·        
• When Dreams Come True (poem)  BY Sheila Deeth

Upcoming Contests

Upcoming contests are:·        

• December           Family Gatherings            Von·        
• January                New Year’s Resolution    Von·        
• February              Elegant Universe              Steve (and if you haven’t looked at his explanation of the prompt, you really should do so: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-contests/

Entries should be sent by the end of the first Sunday of the month, to contest@portlandwritersmill.org, 1200 wordcount max, any genre, Word docs preferred.

AMAZON UPLOAD

This year’s anthology has 12 sections, one for each month since the last release, and we shared our thoughts on how that rather eclectic set of headings worked out later in the meeting.  You can find details of how to do an amazon upload (and how we did it) under Help on our website.

How We Made This anthology – Review

We ended our meeting by asking for feedback and suggestions from the teams who created this book:

Submissions analysts and Content organizers:

• a.      The brief descriptions from the submissions analysts really helped the content organizers in ordering the entries and sections to give a reasonably smooth flow of content, and helped them choose strong opening and closing entries. (However, that does NOT mean entries in the middle aren’t equally strong!)
• b.      It would have helped if the content organizers had easy access to the entries themselves as well.                                                   
  •  i.     This could be achieved by having an online folder where everything was stored.                                                  
  •  ii.     This would have made other tasks simpler too, avoiding the sending, receiving, and recording of so many separate emails                                                 
  •  iii.     It might even have spared Sheila from getting Google warnings that her gmail is about to explode.
• c.      Ordering the sections was difficult, and there was a suggestion that choosing a single topic might have helped. But                                                    
  • i.     This is our biggest anthology yet, and people seemed to enjoy the fact that they could submit any of their contest entries to it.                                                   
  • ii.     We’re an eclectic group, and having an eclectic anthology makes sense.                                                  
  • iii.     If someone wants a more serious, single-topic volume, they could do that separately, but it’s a lot of work.

Titlers and cover creators:

• a.      The title was chosen based more on our Zooming situation than on entries, as was the cover image, so it’s unclear to what extent having information about the entries helped, though it could have done.

Pre-editors, Editors, and Copy-editors:

• a.      I forgot we’d need copy-editors. A huge thank you to Robin, Judy, and Jean who stepped up to do the job.
• b.      There was a pre-pre step where Sheila put the entries into files and set up (nearly) all the formats—it was a time-consuming task and should probably be offered to volunteers in future. Judy did a fantastic job setting up additional formats for one of the poems.
• c.      Pre-editors have the time-consuming and boring task cleaning up the files ready for the editors. See https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/help-2/tips-and-tricks-with-word/ to find some of the details. On the website, click on “help” then “tips and tricks with word” in the dropdown menu. And don’t forget to look at all the other help pages.
• d.      Editors had to                                                    
  • i.     communicate with authors                                                   
  • ii.     decide about making changes                                                 
  •  iii.     deal with copy-editing issues                                                  
  • iv.     deal with style issues                                                   
  • v.     deal with pieces being removed.      
• e. Copy-editors looked for typos and other things that had been missed in the pre-editing and editing stage, in particular periods instead of ellipses, wrong-facing quotation marks, etc.                                                    
  • i.     The copy-editors read the whole book, from start to finish. It might have been useful if we’d asked them, or another team, to list what type of images might work for each entry.

Illustrators:

When the book was formatted to the right size, right fonts, etc. more images were needed to fill in blank spaces.

• a.      Zita set up a shared folder for images to be added during formatting. Some people had problems using it, but it’s a really good way of collecting illustrations.
• b.      Zita found Pixabay was a good resource for free-to-use images
• c.      It would have been helpful if people who read the entries also made notes of what images would work.
• d.      We could have asked the analysts to do this, and we could have started asking for images much earlier in the process.

Pre-formatting and formatting:

• a.      Because we had lots of files flying around, we needed a pre-formatter to stick them together and order the sections. See https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/help-2/how-to-use-the-navigation-pane/
• b.      Then we sent the file to Zita.                                                    
  • i.     Zita did all the formatting in Word, and perhaps used colorful words as she so beautifully added the images. Next time she’ll use a more sophisticated program. See https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/help-2/lay-out-your-book-with-word/ but maybe Zita will add instructions on how to insert images with Word… please?                                                  
  •  ii.     The fully formatted doc is a pdf, but we still needed a basic Word doc with all the images to be converted into an ebook.

Ebook converstion:

We should find a separate volunteer to convert the book to an ebook next time.

• a.      For a simple ebook conversion, we’d need a Word doc with all the illustrations, all “inline,” though it may be possible to do a better job with a more sophisticated program.
• b.      The headings are a bit clunky, and the positioning of the text with some of the images isn’t ideal, but it works. There are probably (time-consuming) ways to improve it – e.g. replacing images with boxes that contain the image and image credit? – but someone else will have to look into that.

Uploader:

We had volunteers, but sharing the library’s account is complicated so Sheila did it. We might look into giving access to other members on another occasion. We should ask our librarian about this

• a.      If we do the upload at the library, perhaps with files on a thumb drive attached to the library’s computer, the librarian might be able to log us in, so someone else could upload things.

Banker:

We deleted the banker’s job because we’re still in Covid, so it should easier for everyone to order their own copies – small orders, less need for insurance, more guarantee that it arrives at your own home, and prime customers get free postage. This is why we’ve kept the price low.

• a.      We’ll still need a banker another year to take order and work out delivery.
• b.      It would be nice to have a real launch party when we’re back to meeting at the library.

Advertising: If you’re able to contact a newspaper, set up a reading, visit a library… please do.

What’s Next?

Next meeting is Sunday December 19 over Zoom. I will send the link in an email, and Joe will lead Matthew’s critique. Don’t forget to check your spam folders. The Library has us scheduled to continue meeting, either on Zoom or in person, throughout next year. We will continue to be on Zoom until the library says otherwise. The Floor Above is now available from Amazon so buy your copies – great Christmas presents; great gifts for family and friends…https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09M5B123Y for the print bookhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MCCY73K for the ebook Next contest deadline is December 5th: Family Gathering. Find details at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/december-2021-contest/ (password AdjustingNov21, which will change to FamilyDec21) Happy Thanksgiving Happy Writing! And congratulations to all!