Saturday, August 20, 2016

Follow the bread crumbs

Something happened yesterday to cause me to go back to 2006. A time when I finished my book, Journey of an Enlightened Egotist. The writing of this book was absolutely led by my guide. Every chapter was lived before it was written and I simply followed the bread crumbs. At the time I didn't have the money to publish it in the usual way so I chose to use the internet and Amazon. Although I don't believe it was a mistake it was not the end of the book's story.

Yesterday I started reading the book again. I didn't get very far before I realized how much information it contained in its 49 pages. I knew at that moment it was too good to waste and it made me very sad that I didn't even have one hard copy of the contents. Perhaps it is my age, but there is a big difference between online and pages you can actually hold in your hand.

I decided to check out a self publishing company that came up on my computer just to see what's what. I filled out a price check and got a quote. It really wasn't too bad and was within my means to meet. They required a minimum order of 24, which was also reasonable. I remembered that my first order from Publish America for my first book, Wake Up!, was 200. What a joke! I still have some left. I'm not doing that again.

My next step was to go through the book and clean it up a bit. I eliminated a couple of colored photos and changed a few minor items to give it a better fit. I liked the finished product, but something was missing.

I had over the years kept comments from some of the people I had given a copy of the material to. Even though this is technically my fourth book I had never used them to help promote what I had written. Now was the time! I had some wonderful positive comments from people who liked what they had read. Some of them are going on the back cover along with a short bio of my previous writing.

Whew almost ready for the printer.

The only thing left is the cover. For an extra $99 I can have the company create one, based on their interpretation of what I wrote, or I can do it myself. Since the book is being printed mostly for my own private use I don't feel it is necessary for anything to be on the cover except the title and the author's name- that would be me.

Now all I need is for my computer literate son to help me send the required data and the finished book will be ready in about a week. Actually I just need to have it by October because there is more to the bread crumb story that I need to share.

As many of you know I have been taking photographs with spirits in them since about 2000. I agreed several years ago (actually 2006) to use them to assure humans that we do not die. A few years ago I had talked to a local store owner about sharing the pictures with the community via an event. Things happen, as they will, and we never got around to it- until now.

The store owner and his partner just moved to a new store and we are planning an evening event for just that reason to be held sometime around Halloween. Although it is not meant to make money I will be able to offer Journey of an Enlightened Egotist in hard cover and Amazon E-book form to anyone interested. The book contains true spirit stories and much more.

It seems as if everything fits together like a puzzle if I just keep following the bread crumbs. Oh and patience helps too!




2 comments:

  1. What a great story, Barbara! I love that you have followed your "bread crumbs" onward to this next phase. What a great time to have an event for your book, too. Very cool! Looking forward to hearing about it in a future post. Rock on!

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  2. It's not really an event for the book it is just following along! I hope this happens this time. We will see.

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