Timothy's Thoughts

   Pencil Drawing  P ublishing a coloring book seems like it might be a fun thing to do. I saw an article on eHow [1] in which Lesley Barker gave a process for doing it, starting with purchasing ISBNs from Bowker. From there, the article pretty much gave the general self-publishing process, with the exception of number two, which said to scan your artwork into the computer and save it as a jpeg. Lesley Barker’s article falls well short of a complete description of what must be done to publish a coloring book. Obtaining an ISBN and selecting a publishing company (a choice that will determine whether you even need to purchase an ISBN or not) are the least of your worries if you plan to publish a coloring book.  Ink Tracing of Pencil Drawing  The heart of a coloring book are the pictures. Creating a coloring book isn’t as simple as grabbing some of the free coloring sheets you find online and binding them in a book. Not only would it be illegal for you to copy ...

N ick Harrison made an interesting comment on his blog concerning an author he rejected a few years back, “Alas, Harvest House has not had much success with genre fiction (other than Amish historical romance), so I had to say no.” [1] Realizing that I have a few books at home with Harvest House on the spine and knowing that I don’t read Amish historical romance, I kind of wondered at this. So, to satisfy my curiosity, I went over to Amazon.com to see what Harvest House had to offer. The first seven books they displayed were Amish and so were the last two of the remaining five. What were the other three? All were books written by Lori Wick, including The Princess , a book that I own. I’m not sure what to make of this. I’m sure the folks over at Harvest House are scratching their heads as much as I am, wondering why Amish is the only thing they can manage to do. It becomes almost comical when you do a search for Harvest House books that aren’t Amish. Ten of the first twelve are by Lo...

A ll you folks out there who have been looking for a place to submit your work, you really need to check out this site. http://www.math.pacificu.edu/~emmons/JofUR/ I considered waiting a couple of months to post this, but I felt it just couldn't wait.

S ometimes I hate Amazon.com. While you can’t find every book on the planet there, they come close enough. I sometimes peruse their stacks to see what other authors are writing in my topic area. I’ll see a book and think, “I was going to write about that.” I’ll look at the one next to it, “well there’s another one.” You don’t have to look at Amazon.com very long to realize that all the good topics are already taken—and most of the not so good topics. Let’s face it, with over 1 million new books published every year, every topic has to be covered by someone. But what does that mean to those of us who have chosen to join this fray? Other writers aren’t going to politely defer to us so that we can write our book. Nor can we defer to them. What that means is that we are going to find ourselves writing books that have significant overlap with what other authors say about the same subject. It isn’t what you say, but how you say it. You’ve heard that all your life, but it is no more evide...

M y latest book is now available on Amazon.com. It is called Book Cover Design Wizardry:For the Self-Publishing Author . This book give detailed instructions on how you or anyone else can create a book cover for very little money. In fact, the primary tools are free. This book is printed in full color with more than 250 illustrations.

W hat makes a great self-publishing project? Novels typically don’t. We know that the most successful self-publishing projects are usually those in which the author is a speaker and can sell his books at the back of the room. Well, a friend told me about another kind of project that seems like it would make a great self-publishing project. He told me that his mother works in children’s ministry at church. As part of the ministry, she make use of puppets. She has been writing her own scripts—hundreds of them—and giving them out to other people to use. I believe this makes a great self-publishing project because the work of writing the scripts is already done or would be done anyway as a part of her ministry. All that really needs to be done is for someone to bind them in books and make them available for people to buy. The editing is already done. There is no need for her to try to convince a publisher to take on the project. She can put the scripts out there for very little cost to ...

W hat’s next? For the first time in a long time, I’ve finished a project without knowing for sure what I want to do next. Perhaps that is the problem with finishing a project so quickly. I didn’t have time to think about projects I would like to be working on instead. So, I’m not sure what I’ll be writing next. I think I would like to try my hand at mystery. I’ve always loved a good mystery and I’ve got a plot that is beginning float around in my head. I would also like to finish out Sara’s series. It currently has four books in it, but I want one more. I started one last year, but it seemed too weak and I put it aside. I want to finish the series strong. Maybe now is the time to just let thing simmer for a while and then go to work on what floats to the top.