Sheila had a PowerPoint presentation prepared to guide us through the upload of this year’s anthology, but Zoom and PowerPoint both crashed. Fearing the computer might crash next, she proceeded to give the talk off the cuff instead. By the end of the following day, our latest anthology was on sale at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNPQ2F92/. Get your copies soon, before the price goes up!
Continue reading How to Upload your Book to Amazon, from Sheila’s talk, Nov 19th 2023Category Archives: anthologies
Writers’ Mill Minutes Sunday July 16th 2023
14 members attended July’s Writers’ Mill meeting, and if you missed it, you missed a fantastic presentation from Erick Mertz. His topic—Self-Publishing Success: What Worked, What Didn’t, & What I Would Do Differently—was particularly timely as we approach the release of our next anthology, and included excellent advice and inspiration for all of us. Notes from his presentation will be posted online shortly, with the current password—which you will find in your emails.
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes Sunday July 16th 2023Writers’ Mill Minutes 202104
If you weren’t one of the 18 people at April’s meeting, you missed a lively and informative discussion, followed by a lively and informative critique. But you probably enjoyed the Sunday sunshine, so it’s all good!
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 202104Notes from Maren Anderson’s Talk, Jan 17 2021
Writers’ Mill Minutes 202101
With several new members, we started our meeting by reminding everyone of who we are: the Writers’ Mill, writers helping writers, meeting on the 3rd Sunday of every month. We all agree that our librarian is fantastic and Zoom is wonderful (if occasionally challenging). And maybe one day there’ll be mixed real-and-virtual meetings—it’s a dream, but please be thinking about how it might work. And on the subject of dreams… we run monthly contests online for which this month’s topic was dreams. Von announced the results, and you should have already received them from our contest coordinator, unless you’re a new member (in which case I’ve only just added you to the list):
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes 202101Writers’ Mill Minutes Nov 2020
Writers’ Mill minutes November 15th 2020
It was a Journey through Chaos, well-fitting for 2020, and well-moderated and recorded by Laura, as we brought our “Journey through Chaos” anthology to Amazon print and kindle. (Look, it’s already there! But no “look inside” feature yet. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NHWDJ6F/ ) Here’s a link to view the recording so you can catch up on what you missed if you weren’t there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjTluD345A4
Continue reading Writers’ Mill Minutes Nov 2020How to Release a Book on Amazon, presentation by Sheila Deeth, Nov 15th 2020
How to Release a Book on Amazon
There’s a certain amount of preparation required, so bear with us while we go through some of it.
Continue reading How to Release a Book on Amazon, presentation by Sheila Deeth, Nov 15th 2020CHALLENGES – 2020 Anthology
Topic
Challenges
Open to
Member of the Writers’ Mill
Deadline
End of the first Sunday of September
What we’re looking for
Please collect your challenges stories, from Writers’ Mill contests, from your computer, from your dreams and nightmares, or from anywhere else you can find them. Send entries to anthology at portlandwritersmill dot org.
Submission requirements
- No more than 5 separate entries per person (not counting pictures)
- No more than 5,000 words in total – for example, you might send one 5,000 word novella, or five 1,000 word essays…
- Pictures will be included as appropriate. Feel free to send pictures with your entries, or separately from your entries, but remember all images must be royalty-free for us to use them in a published work.
Writers Mill Minutes Nov 2020
Writers’ Mill minutes November 15th 2020
It was a Journey through Chaos, well-fitting for 2020, and well-moderated and recorded by Laura, as we brought our “Journey through Chaos” anthology to Amazon print and kindle. (Look, it’s already there! But no “look inside” feature yet. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NHWDJ6F/ ) And here’s a link to the recording so you can catch up on what you missed if you weren’t there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjTluD345A4
First, of course, was the announcement of results from the “words I never want to hear again” contest from Karin.
- First place – Von with Useless Old Man
- Second place – Joanne with Not Me and Ria with Very Stable Genius
- Third place – David Fryer with Eat Your Liver.
Other entries were:
- “A Few Words About 2020” by Zita
- “Absolutely No!” (poem) by Joe
- “Age is Just a Number” (poem) by Sheila
- “Are You Okay?” by Joanne
- “Erase This Word” (poem) by Judy
- “Fall Fell Hard Today!” (Haiku) by Robert
- “Kitkit’s Word” by Sheila
- “May 2020 Be Forgot” (poem) by Zita
- “The Dream of a Pharaoh” by Matthew
- “Too Many Words” (poem?) by Peter
- “Use of Words” by Jessie
- Comments only poem by Catherin – “I’m Dying”
Totaling an amazing 16 entries! Congratulations all.
Our next contests, with deadlines on the first Sunday of each month, word limits 1200 words, any genre, are:
- December: Judy’s prompt for “Endings and Beginnings” https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/dec-2020-contest-page/ password BeginDec20
- January: Von’s prompt for “Dreams” https://www.portlandwritersmill.org/contests/upcoming-2020-contests/
- February: Zita’s romantic prompt “Let me count the ways…”
Entries should be emailed to contest@portlandwritersmill.org, by the end of the first Sunday of the month. (And don’t forget, for anyone who’s only receiving this newsletter second hand, you can find us at portlandwritersmill.org, and either the librarian or admin@portlandwritersmill.org will happily add you to the email list, so you’ll get reminders when that first Sunday approaches.)
One way we give back to the library, in thanks for their many many years of support, is by bringing out an annual anthology, with all the royalties going to the library. Luckily, Sheila’s computer and internet (and voice) held up today, so we all joined in with the upload to Amazon over Zoom. Sheila will order books (she needs to be payed before she sends in the order, which will probably be Monday or Tuesday) and will email people with options for picking them up when they arrive. Laura thought we might be able to arrange pickups from the library.
The library recording will give you details of how we uploaded our book, but highlights from the presentation are below. Meanwhile, don’t forget to write your endings and beginnings contest entries for December, and don’t forget our next meeting, with a review of the old year and plans for the new. See you all on December 20th, and if you’ll have something ready for critique then, let Sheila know!
We made a book, and you can too!
Our “Let’s make another book” presentation covered and/or touched the following book-creation topics, with notes and additional information below:
- How to Title your book
- How to Format your book
- How to Edit your book
- How to Prepare your book for Printing
- How to Prepare your book for Kindle
- How to Upload your ebook
- How to use Amazon’s Cover Creator
- How to Upload your print book (and use Cover Creator again!)
- How to get your book onto your Author Page (yes, I know, I didn’t have time to cover this, but some of you asked…)