Sheila's Guests and Reviews

There was a story in our local paper this morning that promises an interesting future for Print on Demand http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2010/10/portland_state_university_book.html . It seems that Lulu and HP have produced a print-on-demand machine that looks kind of like a large photocopier. Books uploaded and designed in a special section of Lulu can be printed on the spot with no long waits or shipping costs. Portland State University Bookstore is one of three locations trying out these "publishing machines." Professors can provide tailored text books at a fraction of the usual price, and test out the content before committing to the expense of traditional publishing. A 300page novel will cost around $12; a 100page book with color illustrations around $18... And, if I'm reading the article correctly, real people will really be able to publish there. Just think, if this takes off; the machines might be installed in Office Depot or Kinkos, making pri...

"Patience is a virtue." That's what my Mum would say, usually when one or another of us was failing to be patient about something. The thing I need to learn is to be patient even with computers, even with computer programs, even with other people's programs running over the internet... I finally finished formatting and editing my 150 stories and uploaded them as a "new project" on Lulu. I was a bit dismayed by the way the "file conversion" seemed to hang at 95% complete, but... you know... patience and all that. I exercised patience, got on with reading emails and blogposts etc., and I waited. Half an hour later (at least, that's how it seemed), 95% became 100% and I started to design my cover. I'd already made the picture I wanted (using Microsoft Paint), and I knew what words I'd need. I hadn't used the new Lulu cover creator much before, but it's really quite neat - even lets you pick colors from your picture to use in your b...

It's February. I'm supposed to be frantically writing book 3 of Hemlock for our writers' group challenge. But I promised my Mum I'd publish my next book of children's short stories soon, so I finally agreed to stop putting off reformatting it... ...and finally remembered why I'd stopped in the first place. 44 stories is okay - a few cut and pastes, file > page setup > set margins and headers and footers so they don't overlap, set the gutter, apply to all sections (and wonder where sections came from), edit the stories - start even, end odd - then you're done. I remember struggling to make the page numbers appear on the contents list - turned out it had hardwired the page-size in when I switched from docx to doc. But, as I said, easy enough. That was Genesis People, last January, just before my Mum went back to England the last time. This one's Psalms and Parables, and she's going back on Thursday. There's one hundred and fifty psalms an...