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I wonder if Gutenberg had as much trouble with his press as I've had with my format issues for my book. Self publishing is an adventure, a challenge, and yes I do appreciate the big NY brickhouses more. However, I soldier on and (shameless plug here), I am on Amazon Kindle - My Zoo World is available for download. Print edition coming soon (fingers crossed).

Back to Gutenberg. An article caught my eye (Dallas Morning News 10/15/11 p. 14A) about Germans in Cologne who have set up free-for-all libraries. Street corners, city squares, and super markets - shelves are available and books are donated and shared. Very cool concept. No questions asked. Take a book, leave a book, read and enjoy.

The project is open and financed by donations. Volunteer groups care for the shelves. The branch manager of Cologne's Mayersche Buchhandlung book store, Elmar Muether, said, "If books are present everywhere, it helps our business, too.". It's promotion versus competition. If someone gets hooked on an author, he or she is more likely to seek out and buy other books.

Anything to promote reading has to be a positive for society as a whole. Das ist gut!

Self-Publishing Adventure

I am a pumpkinhead. Total mush in the old brain cavity. I thought I could read and execute written instructions. Well, the Smashwords bible has proven me wrong. They said it would take approximately two hours for a conversion from Word document to the Smashwords meat word grinder. I'm on hour five with more to go. I did figure on double the number. Silly me.

Indeed, like this lily pond at the arboretum, tentacles reach into an unknown abyss causing strange formats. I've re-done some sections two or three times. Fix one thing. Ooops. Another goes awry. Fix that, and other sections are wonky. Close to tears at times, I forged on.

Why can't it line up all pretty, like this lovely arboretum display? My guess is that the horticulturist in charge sees a flaw somewhere in this display. Just like a misplaced comma, or weird line spacings, or ... argghhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd ask this young man, but he's trying to figure out formatting too. Ha!

But seriously, I sorta figured out a cover through Createspace. It's on hold, and actually Ray doesn't care for the picture. I can see his point. We'll seek some new material Friday at the State Fair (don't ask, but it's gonna work, I swear).

In regards to Smashwords, I shall conquer it. Then onwards to my Wordpress website. For some reason, I can't seem to get the correct username/password to connect. I was in a circle of hell for hours today. No wonder computer geeks are pasty white. I can see how one doesn't emerge for days during a computer project.

This is a new author adventure. I now appreciate how easy the actual writing was to do. We have far more to discuss in this publishing crusade.