Uncategorized | Deborah H Bateman - Author

How to Write and Publish a Children’s Book

Posted on March 29, 2012 by

After reading many, many books to my daughter, I decided to start writing my own children’s book. How hard can it be? You write a cute story about some animals having a picnic, get published and have the money roll in. Yeah, no that’s not how it really works. Writing and publishing children’s book is not as easy as it sounds. You have to remember that you’re writing for little kids who have a understandably limited vocabulary and very precise taste. Based on my own experience and a bit of research that I did, I came up with some advice on how to go about writing and publishing children’s books.

Start by deciding who you’re writing for and what you want to write about. Remember that children of different ages and genders are into different things. Three year boys generally like Thomas the Train and Cars while the girls like princesses and tea parties. Of course at some point they all like things animals, boats and birthday parties, but it’s up to you to decide what to write about and for whom. Try not to follow trends because by the time you write your book and get it published, there’s a good chance that the trend may be going down or is over. Once you’ve decided on a plot, characters and who you want to reach, remember to respect your readers. Just because they’re little doesn’t mean that they need to be lectured by your morals or spoken to like they’re dumb. Children are very smart and have very strong opinions.

Once you’ve written your first draft and added the pictures, go back to the drawing board and think about how to improve it. Is there something or someone that you can add to the story to make it more memorable? Will your audience want to come back for more? Is the story and the pictures of the right maturity level for your audience and will they connect with it? When you have gone over this a few times, then it’s time to put your story to a test. Give copies to people that you trust and ask them for their opinion. Go to a children’s school and read the story to the kids so that you can see their reactions.

Once you decide that you are completely satisfied with your story, find a digital printing company. Make sure that you get a digital printing company because you want your wording and your pictures to be sharp, clean and precise. Digital printing is the best way to go about getting this done. Be sure to let the book printer know if you want to print a hard or soft cover book, how you want your margins set, and that they should put your name and telephone number on each corner of each page of the book. This is a very important step so be sure to be clear about what you want. How many books you decide to prints depends on how many publishers you want to send your book to. If your strapped for cash, instead of printing a book, you can print loose pages. I recommend printing a few extra books because the first twenty publishers may very well turn you down.

When you get your books from the publishing company, do some research on publishing companies. Find out where to send your books and to whom. When you’re ready to send your book to the publishers, have a short cover letter saying why your book is different from anything else on the market. Don’t compare yourself with another author. That author is already out there so you should be unique. Once you send your book out, all there is left to do is to wait. The publishers get thousands of books a day so it will take some time for them to get to yours. Most importantly, don’t lose patience. If it doesn’t work out with the first book, write another one and see how that goes. Good luck!

A digital printing company Printing a few copies of your children’s book may help to make a good first impression when you send your work to a publisher for review.

Author: Aleya Bamdad
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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How to Survive Being Edited as a New Author

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Deborah H. Bateman

Do you find it hard to accept criticism? I sometimes find it hard to take the criticism of others, but I think it has something to do with the way they do it. If it is done in a loving, caring manner it is much easier to swallow. If it is done in a critical, dog eat dog manner it is much harder to get over the hurt so you can move on to accept the suggestions.

Believe me since I have been online I have had to deal with this from time to time. One of the hardest for me to swallow was a person who totally did not want me sharing Bible Verses. It hurt my feelings, but it was more about the fact they rejected God. It made me realize how He must have felt walking around on this earth and being constantly rejected by people. Maybe this is something He wanted me to feel so I would not feel so rejected myself. Or maybe it was so I wouldn’t feel like I was exempt from rejection.

One of the processes we as author’s have to go through that is hard to get used to is being edited. It is something we all need, but how do we survive it. As a new author this was one of the hardest things for me, because I didn’t know what to expect. When I wrote my first book: The Book of Ruth: A Story of Love and Redemption and got it back from the editor I was devastated.

I felt like someone had torn my baby apart. It took me a day or two to get past the surprise to be able to do the updates. My editor gave me good advice. She said for me to leave it alone for a few days and give myself time to get used to the idea, then go back and make the corrections. It was good advice and it helped. What she did was good, I just didn’t have any idea what to expect.

I have had people edit me who were loving, sweet and kind with their words of critique and suggestions. I have had other people who looked at my work and were critical, mean, had nothing good to say and made me feel like I had just been chewed up by a bull dog. It really hurt my feelings bad. It took me a while to get over it. It ruined my day and I still haven’t went back to look at their comments to see what improvements I can make from them. I did keep them and I hope in the near future I can move past the hurt and see what I can gain from their critiques.

So as we try to help each other and learn from each other my suggestion is that we think about the way we present our critiques to people. Can we also complement something they did right? Can we say it in a way that will not cut them to the core, but make them feel we really care about them and their work? We don’t want people to think everything they did was wrong. Or that we think we have all the answers and they are stupid.

Can we not be jealous of what God is doing in the other person’s life? Not feeling like we have to bring them down a notch or two. Can’t we celebrate one another’s victories? How can we better support one another and celebrate what God is doing in each of our lives and still help make us all better for His glory?

I am sharing this in hopes of helping someone else who may have experienced the same thing or to help new author’s to know what to expect and not be caught off guard. I am not against editors or being edited or critiqued. I realize we all need to be edited and have our work looked at by other people to make us better and make our work better. But, let’s work together to make each other better and not bitter at the whole process. If we work together as a team, them we can improve the whole process and turn out work we all can be proud of.

Back to Writing – How to Finish the Book You Started and Set Aside

Posted on March 15, 2012 by

Sometimes, for any number of reasons, even the most well-intentioned writers need to put book projects aside before they’re complete. Maybe they need to get clear about what they really want to say. Maybe they have another big project they need to focus on. Or maybe they just don’t know what to do next and they move onto something else. I know I’ve been in all those situations before. So what’s the best thing you can do? Get back into it!

Just because you set something aside, doesn’t mean you’ll never finish it. All it takes is a decision to finish what you started. However, whether you set your book aside because of time, because you needed space to get clear on the topic, or because you just finished a draft and had no idea what to do next, picking up where you left off can be a challenge.

A few weeks ago, I started working on a half-finished book that I’d set aside nearly a year ago. For various reasons, I needed time away from it so I could focus on finishing other projects. And although I didn’t plan on being away for a year, the past is the past, and we do what we can. But I realized that the longer I waited, the harder it would be. And I was (am) still passionate enough about the book to make sure it doesn’t languish in this unfinished state for eternity. So I made the decision to do it. “Work on book” went back on my to-do list, and I cleared the space in my schedule to fit it in.

With the decision made, I spent an evening with my journal, thinking about what I REALLY wanted this book to accomplish. What did I most want to say? When I set this book aside, I did so, in part, because the meaning of all my ideas hadn’t become clear to me yet. I didn’t know what exactly what I wanted to say, and we all know that’s not a very productive place to write from. Therefore I decided to take a few months off to think about it. Now that I was back, facing 150 or so disjointed manuscript pages, I wanted to go into the project with the clarity I lacked before. Thankfully, those months away allowed me to return with some much-needed perspective.

After getting clear on what exactly I wanted my book to communicate, I started reading. I started at the beginning and read everything I’d written so long ago. Some parts were delightfully close to what I wanted them to be. But others were so disconnected from my new, clear message that they may even need to be edited out. Either way, I started working on it again! And no matter how long you’ve been sitting on your unfinished book, you can do the same.

Start by revisiting and getting clear on what you REALLY want your book to be about-the foundation of the book, as I like to call it-and then read what you have with fresh and critical eyes. Seeing where you need to go from there will be much easier, and you’ll be able to jump in and write with the same energy you had when you started writing the book, no matter how long ago that was!

Melinda Copp helps aspiring nonfiction, business, and self-help authors get clear on their story and book idea, and figure out how to put it all together so their ideal readers love it. Visit http://www.writerssherpaprograms.com/writeabook.html for a free copy of her “Jump Start Your Book E-course!” and get your book started now.

Author: Melinda Copp
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Birth of A Golf EBook

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Deborah H. Bateman

I would like to welcome my friend Dennis Krall to my author site. I met Dennis through a Christian Internet Network. Dennis recently published a Golf Ebook. I asked him to share his story with you. I hope you enjoy reading this post from my friend.

I have been an avid golfer since I was 13 years old and have worked hard to improve my game over the years. I read golf advice and tips from most of the golf magazines and talked with playing companions and other golfers to learn all I could about building a good golf swing. The internet became a high tech media for lessons and drills to lower my handicap. The only problem was that many of the tips were complicated and made changes to parts of my game that I did not feel comfortable changing. I became very selective in the advice that I incorporated into my golf game. I began to look for advice that made sense to my game and tweaked the parts of my game that needed help without tearing down the rest of my swing, as well as my mental outlook toward golf. I enjoyed reading about golf advice and was willing to share information with my golfing buddies if they were having problems and were interested in what I found worked for me.

I retired from my job as a civil engineer in 2010 and determined that I wanted to spend time with my grandson and playing golf in addition to my teaching responsibilities at my church. It was about the same time that my wife and I discovered James L. Paris’ Christian Internet Income web site and discovered that we might be able to turn our hobbies into money making opportunities via the internet. We quickly started auto content blogs that provided the potential for advertising income. We also learned to develop websites of our own that we could better control the content and the ads. This made good sense to us, but we had to start building traffic to our web sites. We did this through blogging sites that shared our common interests (golf in my case). I also expanded my reach by writing articles about golf that I posted on my web sites and submitted to Ezinearticles.com. I enjoyed sharing knowledge that I believed in and that had worked to improve my golf game. I shared my site with friends and acquaintances on social networks and continued to look for ways to expand my following on the web.

In late August, 2011, my wife and I listened to a training session from Jim Paris on writing EBooks. We decided that it made sense for us to write and publish our own books and advertise them on our web sites. We found out that we could bypass publishers and use on line EBook stores to publish and advertise our books at no cost to us and without taking large portions of the profits from the sale of the books. Being an author sounded intriguing but also frightening, but we quickly learned that we had knowledge in our field that people would have an interest in if we could find a way to advertise to a large group of people that shared our interest in the topics we wrote about. So on October 24, 2012, “Golf Tips and Advice That Work” was published.

I want this book to be helpful to new and experienced golfers. Ii is written to make good common sense and not confuse the golfer as it advises how to correct swing problems. I have chapters on purchasing the best clubs and golf balls and how to hit specialized trouble shots. I give tips on mental confidence and how to practice and plan your round. I have only included tips and drills that have worked for my game and I feel will work for yours. “Golf Tips and Advice That Work” is about 24 pages long and can be purchased through Amazon for $4.99. It is also available for loan for a limited time through Amazon’s KDP Select program.

My wife and I have been married 34 years and have an interest in Bible study guides and history and hope to publish future EBooks in these areas. You can find the link to my book at my websites:

http://lefthandedgolf.us

http://hittingthegolfbvall.com

E-Book or Paperback Writing and Publishing? The Key Question Facing the Author and Small Publisher

Posted on March 1, 2012 by

E-book or Paperback?

Whether to write an e-book or to write a paperback is now the perennial question facing authors and small publishing companies both new and old alike. It certainly appears that the e-book is winning, if you take the latest Amazon statistics as representing the norm. If you also consider the number of corner bookstores closing in our neighbourhoods, you would certainly lean towards the e-book.

However, I would like to suggest that we authors and small publishing companies prepare for both of these options. Small commissions in whole dollar terms for the e-books verse greater dollar incomes via the paperbacks and possibly even more profits per copy via the hardcovers, encourages us to prepare for both – e-books and hardcopies!

The Internet has the Answer

The internet is now the greatest asset we have to help make us a reasonable, good or even a very good income if our product is suitable to the market. Both e-books and hardcopies of these books can be sold across this medium. Initially you will probably need assistance from a company which can do both for you. There is an enormous cost and risk-factor trying to write, publish, market and distribute any book on your own. Major corner bookstores have their own suppliers and this is a difficult field to break into.

However, if you set up a very good website and create a very good SEO (search engine optimization) rating through the major search engines, then you should be able to sell your e-books and hardcopies through this medium. This is difficult to achieve and very time-consuming – but possible over time can be a reality.

The corner bookstore will also be of assistance to our goals, if we are able to convince them to stock and market our paperbacks and hardcovers. Not an easy task in such a competitive marketplace.

Amazon.com and CreateSpace an Answer

From my experience the best method is selling both e-books and paperbacks through some company like Amazon.com who have their own company which creates your publication in paperback and e-book formats. These obviously come at a cost, but in my opinion, at a reasonable cost for what you gain both as an author and / or publisher.

E-books will probably sell more copies with smaller dollar commissions per copy but with the strong possibility that the quantity of copies sold will be much higher than for paperbacks or hardcovers due to their lower cost per item. Hence, the overall income will be considerably greater.

I would suggest from personal experience to have both this e-book option melded with the paperback option. There are many people who prefer to have the real paper-book experience. Someone like Amazon.com and their company CreateSpace.com can open up this option for you. Selling both e-books and paperbacks from your own website will add another marketing and sales option.

Create Both Media for Success

Combining both the contemporary e-book version with the traditional paperback version of your books will open up many marketing and distribution options for greater sales and promotion of these books. Using a company, which does all the key aspects for your books i.e. creates both the hardcopy and e-book versions, markets and sells your books over the internet, always with your complete control, is something for which all authors and small publishers should aspire.

The author has found from his experience that both Amazon.com and his own website are two very good avenues to use to market and sell his e-books and paperbacks. The latest editions written by Bryan Foster were put into their present format by Createspace and are sold on Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3ABryan+Foster&keywords=Bryan+Foster&ie=UTF8&qid=1322387322&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B005DOPRMO The previous editions are sold on his own website at http://schoolchurchmarketing.com/online_shop

Author: Bryan W Foster
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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