Writing / Publishing

It’s Friday Free Books Day! If you know of any free books, or are an author with one, link to it in the comments! Readers, please download these books to support the author community! Have a great weekend! What are you up to?

Sometimes new writers try writing a book by having different chapters in different entire DOC files. This gets incredibly confusing quickly, because it means you are always opening up different DOC files to get to different sections of the story. Also, if you want to move a section from one chapter to another, it means you’re copying and pasting material between different physical files. Even doing simple things like continuity checks for names and places becomes really tricky.

Make it simple for yourself. Work in ONE FILE. Have all of the book’s content in that one file. Give it a meaningful name like Cinderella-b1.docx for version beta-1. When you make a bunch of changes to it, save a fresh version to be Cinderella-b2.docx. That way you have the old versions in case you need to go back to them, and it’s always clear where all your latest information is.

Here’s how it’s easy to navigate that document.

First, start each new section on a new page. Type something meaningful at the top of that page. Maybe it’s “Junior High Dance”. Just something to help you remember what this section is about.

In Word (or your equivalent), highlight those words. Go to your STYLE section and choose “Heading 1” if this is a main-level section. If it’s a sub-section, choose “Heading 2”. Your chosen text should now change size and font to match that chosen style. I’ll explain later how to change the look and feel. For now, all that matters is that the words are tagged with that style.

Here’s how I did that for this very section in my book.

Now, you want to turn on your navigation pane. The navigation pane lets you easily see all the sections in your book and rearrange them. To turn on the navigation pane, click on ‘View’. One of your options to check-on, in the Ruler and Gridlines area, is the Navigation pane.

Now every phrase you have tagged as a Heading 1 or Heading 2 will show up in a nicely organized list down your left-hand side, like this:

You can now easily hop from section to section just by clicking on the section you wish to read. Also, you can easily rearrange sections. Just drag sections in that left-hand list and they will move wherever you drag them to. It makes organizing a document, and moving around in it, very easy.

Any time a book or artwork is sold in Massachusetts, sales tax is owed. If your item is selling in a store, the store takes care of that. You simply get your share of the profits. The same is true with Amazon. But if you are at a library, or a festival, or somewhere else that a buyer is handing you cash, you are responsible for the sales tax for that transaction.

There is no minimum amount. Massachusetts wants their share no matter what.
You get your Vendor ID for FREE online. Technically you are required to have that certificate with you at any event where you are selling. Some fairs require it to even give you a table. It’s good to print out a copy of the certificate and carry it with you and your supplies.

You then file your results once a year, also online. You generally do that around tax-time, which is when you’re figuring out all that financial stuff out. In Massachusetts it’s 6.25% of direct sales. So you just figure out how much you took in for your item sales, multiply by 6.25% in person, and pay that. It’s good to keep track of exactly how many books / art items you sell at each event, and the total income, just for general record-keeping reasons. I keep a file folder of them for each year.

Here are the links and details. I wrote this up for artists selling paintings, but it’s the exact same theory for authors.

https://bvaa.org/how-to/artists-and-sales-tax/

Ask with any questions! If you’re confused, just start by getting a Massachusetts Vendor ID. Just focus on that one step. Let me know what help you need while working on that.

Good luck!

This is a fairly specific field, but making videos can be really useful for all sorts of reasons. Let me know if you’re interested in seeing this to offer feedback. I sell origami videos, although I really need to make a fresh version.

My videos were made over 10 years ago and camera technology has improved immensely!

Do you ever make videos? Of what?

Finally finished my revisions on my Book Marketing book. Lots of changes here in 2020. It’s a challenge to keep up – but well worth it!

What are you guys up to? Probably sleeping :). 

Today I’m working on the microwave recipe book update.

Let me know if you’d like to see a copy to offer suggestions or ideas!

Thanks!

What are you up to today?

Friday Free Books! All books are FREE! Are you an author with a free book? Post the link and I promise to download it to help your sales ranking! Are you a reader? Please download and enjoy these free books! You’ll learn something new and help an author’s rankings!

We live in a miraculous time where free books are joyfully waiting for you to read them – treasure the celebration!

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I need some beta-readers for my low carb no-cook recipe cookbook! All of these recipes involve no cooking. I’d love feedback and ideas for this one.

I can send a PDF. Thanks!

What are you up to today?

I’m doing a sweep to update all my low carb books. I’m starting with my most popular one – low carb charts.

Left is the old cover; right is the new one.

I’m making sure the branding is more clear that this is part of a full 13-book series.

Suggestions? Ideas?

Let me know if you’d like to take a look at the ebook to offer feedback on its content!

Success! Just finished an enormous effort and updated books 3-4-5 in my author’s essentials series.

Book 3 is an overview of the various ways you can get published.

Book 4 is all about traditional publishing including magazines.

Book 5 is a dense, in-depth section-by-section-with-screenshots explanation of how to self-publish on Amazon and Lulu for both ebooks and paperbacks. It also covers Draft2Digital, SmashWords, WattPad, etc.

I’d love to have some beta-readers of my updated versions. Let me know if you’d like to see one of these!

What are you up to?