Welcome to my lens on How to Self-Publish!
This lens is going to serve as our community page for sharing our experiences as we progress.
We welcome any and all advice, tips, information you can provide. You can also email us your manuscripts for our feedback or maybe we can talk about publishing your books via Six Bicks Press. Feel free to just say hello or ask us for our advice as well. You can checkout our website at http://www.sixbickspress.com to get the latest scoop on our publications and order our books as they are published.
Lastly, if your wondering how we came up with the name Six Bicks Press, well there's myself, my wife, my three kids, and we have another one on the way. That makes a family of six.....six Bicks in fact. Thanks for stopping by!
First Book In Cheater's Series
Well, it had to happen sooner or later but... "Cheater's Pocket Guide to Digital Design: Project Organization" is finally FINISHED!!!This, the first book in my Digital Design pocket guides series, includes lots of great information, tips, website resource gems, and way more from the perspective of a professional multimedia/web developer/designer....me! I hope people like it. It has been fun writing it.Currently, it's only available on our website at Six Bicks Press.
Here's the book summary:
"A quick and dirty guide to digital design project organization written specifically for the proven-under-fire, everyday graphic designers thrust into the stressful world of business graphic design. Full of helpful information, tips, and tricks for collecting, cataloging, utilizing, and maintaining digital design project assets such as images, illustrations, text files, PDF files, utilities, tools, and more."
Six Bicks introduces our design project management software
Six Bicks Press is proud to introduce our "Digital Design Project Management Database " This is the premium project management software detailed in the Cheater's Pocket Guide to Digital Design: Project Management (also available on the Six Bicks Website)
The Digital Design Project Manager (DDPM) was designed by a graphic artist, for graphic artists and took four months of development. This highly sophisticated yet easy to use Microsoft Access database is perfect for designers, graphic artists, photographers, and consultants: in fact, anyone working with client projects on their computer, for organizing the far too often huge amount of information,, files, etc... that get strewn about your computer while working on a project.
Use the DDPM to keep track of:
- Your clients
- Your contacts
- Client projects
- Project assets
Features include:
- Classification of projects by user-defined project types
- Assigned project deadlines
- Detailed project asset management including
- User-defined asset types
- Asset preview images
- User-defined asset expiration dates
- Asset license managent
- Assign unlimited assets to projects
- Automatic reminders throughout the DDPM
- Save contact information
- Save client information
- Assign unlimited contacts as clients
- Assign contacts and/or clients to projects
- Print summary reports for project auditing
- Save complete database file backups within the DDPM
- Save individual DDPM components as text files from within the DDPM
- Full database backup and error logs
- User-defined preferences including:
- Startup form
- Tips of the Day
- Color schemes
- Includes detailed users manual (pdf included or printed version with software on a CD, optional)
3D Models now available from Six Bicks Press!
Six Bicks Press is proud to introduce premium 3D Models to our growing line of products. These highly detailed, extremely flexible models include textures and materials where applicable and are all suitable for closeup rendering in your favorite 3D software. A very low-cost alternative to modeling them yourself!Check the growing library of 3D models on our website
New Technical Graphics Design Firm
Just to let everyone know, I have officially launched my graphics design firm CB Technical Graphics (http://cbtechgraphics.com). We are specializing in technical illustration, technical writing, engineering drawings, patent illustrations and drawings, CAD, project visualization, and print services.To mark our official launch we're offering a 20% discount on our high-quality technical graphics design capabilities until December 31st 2007 to new clients as a way of celebrating and getting the word out about our excellent services to build our client base
Want to get paid upfront to write short articles?
News from the publishing front-lines
Kids can write too
As you've probably figured out by now looking at our lens that my family and I are starting our own publishing company, Six Bicks Press. Family-driven publishing is just not something you hear about much today. My wife and I feel that our kids are creatively very talented and have a lot to tell other children. What better way than to take them through the process of writing, illustrating, and finally publishing their own book. I can't wait to see their faces when they see their work and their names in print in an "actual" book! They will get to see it for sale on our own website but will, depending on distribution, get to see it for sale on the big book selling websites and maybe even in bookstores as well. They will also get to see their royalties go into their bank accounts for the future.My eldest daughter of 11 has completed her first book. Its a children's book that she wrote and illustrated about farm animals. It explains what each farm animal says, what they eat, and how they look. Each of the farm animals covered includes a fantastic hand-drawn illustration by her. The entire book was hand written so I have to retype the book and edit it plus scan in her drawings to get the book ready for publishing. I will keep you advised about when it will be available.
My son who is 7 years old, has also written his first book. He went to every member of the family and asked each what their favorite things were. He then wrote down their responses. He is in the process of illustrating it. Its looking really good. I will keep you posted.
I am really excited about the kids progress. My eldest daughter has already started working on her next book and she hopes to put out a series of children's books. Good for her!
How Do I Get Started Writing A Book?
My answer to that question is usually quite blunt, "Writing a book is neither easy nor cheap". Some will ask why should it cost me anything to write a book for the first time? Putting the ,"not easy" aspect of that statement aside for the moment, I will expound on the "cheap" portion a bit.
If you've never gone skydiving would you run right out and jump straight out of a plane? No. You would, I hope, go out and get some lessons from certified instructors and make sure you had all the proper tools and equipment you needed wouldn't you?
Writing is the same way. When you are sitting down thinking about writing that first book, or article or whatever else, do some research first before you jump ahead. Go online and find as many articles, like this one, about beginning writing. Join blogs or forums that deal with writing and talk to people who have done it before. This plays a bit into the "not easy" thing I mentioned before but also the "cheap" part since it will cost you time.
I would especially recommend getting as many books about writing and getting published as my budget would allow. Don't cheap this out. You are investing in yourself and that investment will pay dividends down the road.
If you're not willing to invest in yourself, forget about writing and find something else to do.
One of the most important things to remember about writing is that it is truly a learned skill. Nobody is born a writer. You have to practice but before practicing, I recommend getting some guidance on what exactly you should be practicing.
Click here to continue reading this article
How to design a book cover
- Front cover: Choose a good working title and subtitle. Do not get too wordy with the title. Keep it short. Make the subtitle as descriptive as possible without going overboard. Choose a very highly regarded member of your books field of interest and list them for the foreword. At some point later in the process, you will try to get them to write the foreword for you (see endorsements below in the back cover section).
- Spine: This is, most often, the very first thing a potential buyer in a bookstore sees about your book. It needs to be very readable so choose a bolded sans-serif font.
- Back cover: Typically, this is where a potential buyer spends the most amount of time looking before making a decision to put your book back on the shelf or not. Even then, they only look for about 8 - 10 seconds. Your back cover really needs to be hot.
- Title:This is the first thing on the back cover that "grabs" a potential buyer. Do NOT repeat your title here. That is too boring. If someone has picked the book up, they already know the title from the spine and front cover.
- Sales pitch:This is basically up to about four lines of description of what your book is about.
- Promises: Right below the sales pitch, put a bulleted list of what the reader will get from reading your book. Don't lie, of course. Make sure you are targeting your readership with these.
- Endorsements: Pick two or three top names in the field of interest for your book and stick them in here. Later you'll track them down and ask them to write them for you. Much has been written about getting endorsements so I won't cover it here but keep this in mind: giving endorsements has almost as much positive effect as getting them. What that means is its free advertising for the expert who writes your endorsement so don't be afraid to ask: they're getting something out of it too.
- Author! Author: Put in a few lines, no more than four, about yourself and why you're a leading authority on the book's subject.
- The closer: Just short of the ISBN number, barcode, and price is the closer. This is a single line statement in bold typeface telling potential buyers that they need to buy this book to enable them to%u2026.or will allow them to%u2026.etc%u2026 basically, your asking the potential buyer to buy your book.
- ISBN: Lastly, at the bottom of the back cover goes the ISBN & barcode along with the cover price. Don't worry about it, just make sure you leave enough room for it.
Self-publishing/General Publishing News & Articles
Great advice, tips, news, and information about self-publishing and general publishing from a wide array of experienced publishers.
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Let's have a group discussion about our Six Bicks Press idea, one of our books, one of your books, self-publishing in general or whatever related topic you can think of! Keep it friendly and G-rated though.
Leave feedback about this lens in the guest book further down the lens.
Elodie wrote...
Good work...loads of info - keep it up!Good luck with your company.
Posted August 26, 2008
Elodie wrote...
Good work...loads of info - keep it up!Good luck with your company.
Posted August 26, 2008
Elodie wrote...
Good work...loads of info - keep it up!Good luck with your company.
Posted August 26, 2008
Nicegoogoo wrote...
Great one and I liked the lens and rated 5 stars for this .
You can visit my women seducing lens on how to seduce a woman.
Posted July 20, 2007
Other helpful links
- How to Use Photoshop Layers to Enhance Your Photos - Associated Content
- Photoshop can be a terrific tool for editing photos but can also be quite intimidating and complex to newer users. Often times, new users of Photoshop don't realize there are often several different techniques to accomplish the same result and more often then not, resort to one of the canned filters to achieve something that is better left to using a layer technique.
My hope here is to give newer Photoshop users a quick introduction to some layers techniques to fix some of the most common photo problems.
Vote for Your Favorite Publishing & Self-Publishing Reading
You need to have good reference material if your thinking about writing and publishing your own book or starting your own publishing company. These are my picks at the moment, tell me what you think by voting on them up or down or perhaps suggest your own.
The Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print, and Sell Your Own Book, 14th Edition by Dan Poynter
The bible on self-publishing. Highly recommended b more...1 point
The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living by Peter Bowerman
Landing a publisher has never been harder. So many more...0 points
Complete Guide to Self Publishing: Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish, Promote, and Sell Your Own Book (Self-Publishing 4th Edition) by Tom Ross
"Self-publishing," say authors Tom and M more...0 points
Print-on-Demand Book Publishing: A New Approach To Printing And Marketing Books For Publishers And Self-Publishing Authors by Morris Rosenthal
The basic business model of the book publishing in more...0 points
How To Start And Run A Small Book Publishing Company: A Small Business Guide To Self-Publishing And Independent Publishing by Peter I. Hupalo
I wrote "How To Start And Run A Small Book Pu more...0 points
Small Publishing & Self-Publishing Websites
- Six Bicks Press - Family-driven, independent publishing
- Independent publishing of high quality technical reference books, children's books, and organizational books with a company philosophy on family, community, character, and integrity. Home of the Cheater's Pocket Guide to Digital Design series.
- Lulu - Self Publishing (POD)
- Lulu is fast, easy and free. Publish and sell your books and other printed and digital media easily , in most cases within minutes. No setup fees and no minimum order. You keep control of the rights and set your own retail price. Each product is printed on demand so there is no excess inventory and storage fees.
- Self-Publishing Wikipedia Article
- A good entry on Wikipedia about self-publishing. Worth a read.
- Para Publishing - Free Writing, Producing, Publishing Info Kit
- From Self-publishing guru Dan Poytner's resource heavy writing and publishing website.
Three tip-filled, resource-laden Information Kits on writing, publishing and promoting books. Each kit is tailored to the experience/need level you specify.
Fill in the form and you will receive a FREE kit immediately via email.
Publishing Links from Del.icio.us
Give us your feedback
We would appreciate anything you had to say about this lens provided it was G-rated. Thank you in advance!
Discuss other self-publishing topics in the round robbin area above.
Waterwalker_Publishing wrote...
Hi Craig, Welcome to Waterwalker Publishing's Squidoo Friends group :-)
Posted July 09, 2007
LegendPress wrote...
Hi,
We're a UK publisher and have just launched on Squidoo (www.squidoo.com/legendpress). Really like the look of it and we're always looking to work with writers, organisations, initiatives etc so be great to hear from you!
Tom
Posted July 04, 2007
Take a Trip to Our Home City!
Checkout Orbitz for the best deals on trips to Boston, Massachusetts, our home city! there is so much to see and do here, the USS Constitution, Plymouth Plantation, Plymouth Rock, Battlefield at Lexington & Concord, Salem Witch Trial Museum, and way more. This is the birthplace of the American Revolution! Plus, if your ever in town, drop us an email and let us know and we can give you some advice on what to see!
Dilbert, just for fun.
I have always loved Dilbert and have often worked in office environments exactly like his. Every lens needs a little humor so check these headlines out for a good laugh.
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