We had 5 in-person and 11 on-line members at Novembers “UPLOAD” meeting, and we did eventually get the technology to work. Apologies to anyone who had to wait to join – the library computer decided it needed to update, then it wouldn’t run zoom, then the spare machine… then… You get the picture. But the book was uploaded and will hopefully be released in the next day or so, ready for your Holiday purchasing.
Housekeeping
The meeting started with the usual reminders:
- Online members: use Chat, use Headphones, use Closed Captions, switch off mic if noisy
- In person members: remember the mic will hear you chat so try not to. And face the mic when speaking. And remind the presenter, if you notice they’re facing the computer screen instead.
Ezine/Contest
David did a fantastic job using ChatGPT to create illustrations for all the ezine submissions! He gave us the writing prompt “On the Other Side of the World” and the resulting ezine is a really good (and not excessively long) read. Find it at https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/nov-2024-ezine-contest-page/nov-2024-entries-voting-page/ and use the password below if needed.
- FIRST PLACE (most votes) went to Karin Krafft for “My Friend Madeha”
- SECOND PLACE was tied between Lyndsay Docherty for her poem “The Other Side of the World” and Gary Romans for his poem “There is No 3 Lllama” (and that isn’t a typo)
- THIRD PLACE went to Peter Letts for “Parchment in a Bottle”
THE OTHER ENTRIES:
- Judy Beaston composed both the poem “Here and There” and the story “One World Shared”
- Sheila Deeth wrote “Kittens Don’t Go On Cruises”
- Matthew McAyeal wrote “Max and Patty’s Space Adventure: Episode IV”
- Jessie Collins wrote the poem “The Far Side of Love”
- RJ (Ria) Russell wrote the poem “The Other Side of the World: Life Without My Mom”
Illustrations with ChatGPT
David’s amazing images had us wondering if we could illustrate books that way. However, Amazon does ask, during the publication process, whether AI was used in any form in the creation of the book. It’s probably best to avoid having to say yes. Also, if you have multiple illustrations, say to a children’s story, you would want more consistency between them. And for that you need a human illustrator.
David pointed out that ChatGPT does a better job of illustrating stories than poems, in general, since there’s usually more detail. But it created some really cool illustrations for our poems, and you could use it to create a frameable gift with poem printed over a gorgeous illustration.
The free version of ChatGPT only allows you a limited number of images per week.
GEMINI and POE are other AI illustrators, but they all have limitations. Photoshop, Canva and other programs now have AI generation too. POE allows unlimited images but the quality on humans is still iffy — sometimes 6 fingers…
UPCOMING Writing Prompts
- December’s theme is “The Spaces In Between” // Lyndsay Docherty is theme host AND the deadline is December 1st (many forget the deadline when it falls on the first day of the month!)
- January’s theme is “What if the other person won?” // Gary Romans is theme host // Seems a fascinating possibility to start off our year of writing — could involve something that happens at a holiday party (think Hallmark movies) or high school dance or summer fling or maybe even a lottery (money or otherwise)
- February’s Theme: “They were the perfect couple, but…” A fitting lead-in to the month of Valentine’s Day but there are so many OTHER ways to be creative with this theme in mind. Have Fun!
Entries to contest @ portlandwritersmill . org, 1200 words or fewer (6 is fine!), by end of 1st Sunday of month (so 2 weeks before meeting on 3rd Sunday). And don’t forget to check your emails. You should get approx. 1 per week from us, so if you’re not seeing them, check your spam. And don’t forget December’s deadline is December 1st!!!!!
Self-Publishing
Some of us have self-published before, mostly with Amazon kdp, which is free and even provides the ISBN free.
Some of us are almost ready to self-publish. Remember, you can find lots of helpful hints on the HELP pages of our website: https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/category/help/
One way to make self-publishing easier, and produce a better book, is to pay money, but you’re probably better off hiring individuals (or offering services for services) than using one of the expensive online websites. (Of course, free websites, like Amazon kdp, are cheaper still!)
- Hire editors
- Hire cover creators
- Hire formatters
- Try fiverr to find cheap options, or ask around and offer to share your skills.
- Remember all these things take time – expect to pay at least minimum wage!
If members would like a “shareable skills” page on our site, reply to this email with your shareable skills and let us know.
Upload to KDP
We are using the library’s account. If you want to upload your own book, and receive your own royalties, you have to
- Have an amazon account
- Give them information about tax id and bank account, so they can pay you.
- You are only giving permission for them to put money in your account, not to take it out.
See https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/19/how-to-upload-your-book/ for details on how to upload a book. The details change every time we do this, but the principals are the same. And you’ll always run into problems. And you’ll always be able to find a workaround… Well, except for the details of fonts and spacing on back covers.
Zita likes the amazon cover creator because it places all the essential elements in sensible places. Sheila doesn’t like it because it doesn’t give enough options for moving things around. Pati doesn’t like it because it doesn’t give you enough control over color and spacing. But the alternative is to download a cover template (you tell amazon how many pages and what size, and it sends you a template PDF file), then edit it with something like Photoshop, which is not a free program. Either way, you need to have a white box in the right place on the back for the (free) barcode. We like free.
Zita’s interior file is BEAUTIFUL! Sheila’s ebook file is okay. Sheila uses a free program, kindle create (see https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/19/how-to-make-an-ebook/, to convert the word document into an ebook. It’s pretty basic, but it’s free. Zita used Word, which can be a nightmare when placing images or text boxes (because, after all, it’s a word processor, not a book formatter). It does an excellent job in her skilled hands. For basic Word instructions, see https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/19/lay-out-your-book-with-word/ on our website.
As our final step, we set the price of the ebook at $1.99, and the print book at $4.35. This is the “minimum sale price” for the book from Amazon. Cheaper copies could be bought (for the print price) using the library’s account, but once you add postage, the prices are about the same. Selling at the minimum price gives all of you the chance to purchase cheap copies during the Holiday and have them delivered appropriately. On (or around) Jan 1st, we will increase the price to either $6.95 or $9.95, so that the library gets some royalties from any later sales.
Other Sites for Self-Publishing
Sheila showed various indie-published and self-published books (indie-published is published with a small, indie, publisher).
- Lulu produces very nice books, but costs more than Amazon when you try to buy copies for yourself.
- IngramSpark can, in theory, get you into bookstores (so can Amazon, but no book store wants to pay Amazon for copies to sell!). However, in practice you have to have sold lots of copies before a store will help you sell them.
- Draft to Digital used to just do ebooks, but they do print books as well now. They might be doing the same as Kindle Create when it comes to creating the print book though, and you probably want something better
- Getting a real, indie publisher is great, but they might not stay in business and they might not keep your book.
- Self-publishing means you can put links to the book on your website and they won’t change.
ISBNs
Amazon gave us a free ISBN. The book is listed as “independently published” but the ISBN is registered to Amazon. If we wanted to publish through another site, say IngramSpark, we couldn’t use the same ISBN.
IngramSpark used to charge $89 for an ISBN, but now provides them free. Again, they are registered to them – to IngramSpark. Lulu now does the same.
If you want to publish the same book in more than one place – e.g. you want to publish through KDP and buy cheap author copies, but you also want to print and distribute through IngramSpark – you have to buy your own ISBNs. You would normally buy more than one at once – you need a second one for the ebook, and for the hardback if you’re doing hard and softcover books, etc.
Bowker – https://www.myidentifiers.com/ – is the only place you can buy your own ISBNs from. They cost $125 for 1, $295 for 10, $575 for 100, etc. In other words, Amazon, Lulu and IS etc can buy them (thousands, millions at a time) for peanuts, but people like us can’t.
If you’re buying your own ISBNs, be sure to “register” with a suitable name that will apply to more than one of your books. You can use “imprints” to publish under a subset of that name, but many sites will only list the overall name, not the imprint, when “selling” (or at least pretending to sell) your book.
The Space In Between
By now our time was almost up. We took a few minutes to roll the story dice, looking for inspiration for the upcoming ezine – the space in between.
- Roll two dice, ask what connects the two images; that lies in the space between.
- Roll another die, because three’s a good number.
- We had a keyhole, a bare footprint, and a magic wand scattering stars. Can you write something based on these?
- And yes, we had quite a few short shorts ready to read aloud, all written in the space between 2:53 and 2:58pm!
Things to Remember
- Next contest deadline is two weeks away – December 1st
- Next meeting is four weeks away – Sunday December 15th
- We’ll do our usual review of the year and planning for next year at that meeting. Time to celebrate all your achievements – and be sure, even if you scarcely wrote a word, you’ll find you did achieve something!
- We’re still seeking website assistance. It’s a WordPress site, hosted on Bluehost. It has all the functionality we need, but it does tend to break from time to time. If you, your child, or your grandchild’s cousin’s best friend would be willing to help, we’d love to talk to you. But remember, we’re a free group, with a website owned by the library, so there are limitations on what we can do.