It’s time to publish your own book! Yeah!
You have finished writing your memoir or are nearing its completion. Now you begin to think about publication. Going the route of finding an agent and waiting years for your book to be accepted does not appeal to you. You decide to publish your own book—a realistic option in this day and age.
To help you, let me offer you ten tips to make the process by which you self-publish easier.
1) To reach a larger audience than family and friends, a book must look like a “real book.”
Today, a professional cover and binding will be required. It is possible to have a book designed that will look like it came from a big New York publishing house. Gone are the days when an independently-published book had “home made” all over it—that is, it is possible to pass for a New York publisher if you yourself are a designer with computer skills or if you engage the services of self-publish. Don’t skimp on the book design when you publish your own book. Your audience will judge your book by its cover! (more…)
Organize Your Memoir with Life Phases
Life phases are one way in which you can organize your memoir. Life phases are the emotional and psychological cycles or phases that have marked your life.
Every life proceeds in irregular and unpredictable phases. We can go along with our lives for a long time without much change, thinking that we have arrived at a resolution of the great “who am I?” question, and then unpredictably and perhaps quickly find ourselves dealing with totally different emotional and psychological challenges. Often, it is only in looking back on our lives that we are aware of these life phases.
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What’s the Right Publication Option For You?
You have finished writing your memoir or are nearing its completion. You feel satisfied with the text. It has been edited by a professional and you have made changes, You are ready for the next step. You are ready to be published. But what is the right publication option for you?
Congratulations!
Now, your task is to decide how to best send it out into the world—that’s what publishing a book comes down to it: making your memoir public after all these months of having writing it be a personal project.
The are basically three options.
What is the importance of point of view in a memoir? In the previous post on point of view, I shared my challenge of trying to write material in a ghostwritten memoir that I knew to be true but which the subject was not forthcoming with. This is not “Truth” material. It is more the sort of reflection that a more intuitive, self-reflecting person might make to cast light on her/his life. The memoir in question is We Were Not Spoiled, a memoir I co-wrote with my mother Lucille Verreault Ledoux. (more…)
3 Tips to Help You Write Today and Everyday
All of us struggle to some extent to produce writing content. Writing is often difficult. It takes time and energy—both of which the laws of entropy suggest we ought to preserve. Here are a few writing processes to help you write today and every day. While the following are not exactly self-motivation, they have gotten […]
Tips for Doing a Memoir Reading Program
Q. I am about to have my first opportunity to read from my newly-finished memoir. Any tips for a memoir reading program so that I can make the most of the opportunity? A. I have many tips for a memoir reading program, but I will limit myself to five. (more…)
How to Make Writing Easier
Why is writing so hard? Why does what you want to write become so difficult the moment you sit down to write? Where are the words you need to convey the excitement or the dread or the anticipation. You are shocked to realize that what appears on the computer screen has no pizzazz! This is […]
Don’t Let A TV Talk Show Host Get You – Three Ways a Memoir Content Editor Can Improve Your Memoir
A memoir content editor asks how might someone who is not necessarily on your side but out to serve her own needs—a TV hostess concerned with a good fight to get her ratings up, the local book reviewer who has an ax to grind because you have succeeded at writing a book and he hasn’t, […]
4 Tips for Saving Money With a Ghostwriter
Working with a ghostwriter can be exhilarating—and expensive, but never as expensive as losing your story because you did not write it. Here are some components that will go a long way in saving money with a ghostwriter. (more…)
Ten Tips on How to Publish Your Own Book
You have finished writing your memoir or are nearing its completion. Now you begin to think about publication. Going the route of finding an agent and waiting years for your book to be accepted, does not appeal to you. You decide to publish your own book—a realistic option in this day and age> As you […]
Organize Your Memoir: Life Phases
Life phases are one way in which you can organize your memoir. Life phases are the emotional and psychological cycles or phases that have marked your life. They are a great tool to give depth and cohesion to your memoir. (more…)
3 Suggestions For Choosing the Right Publication Option For You
You have finished writing your memoir or are nearing its completion. You feel satisfied with the text… (more…)
Point of View in a Memoir, Part 2
In the previous post on point of view, I shared my challenge of trying to write point of view in a ghostwritten memoir that I knew to be true but which the subject was not forthcoming with. This is not “Truth” material. It is more the sort of reflection that a more intuitive, self-reflecting person […]