Anita Powell
I am a retired from working at the Defense Department and i am also a vet. I live with my spouse and 2 dogs. We have a e-commerce store Uniquethingsthingsonline.com. We live in Florida now but came from New Jersey. I am writing a teen book
Hearing The Words It’s Over
The first thing you do when you hear the words, "It's over" is pause and not believe that you’re hearing those words. You then ask, "Why?" while inside your heart is breaking and your mind is trying to figure out where this is coming from. When you hear those words, you try to figure out where you went wrong or if there were any signs. Yes, of course there were signs, but most of the time you didn’t get the hint. There are always signs. The person saying the words cannot have acted the same as when there was mutual love in the relationship unless that person is a very good actor/actress. There were signs you chose to overlook hoping they weren't real. When you hear those words you ask the familiar questions: "Who is the person, what can that person do for you that I didn’t and what did I do wrong?" Do those questions really matter? When you look back and think about those questions you’ll wonder if you really wanted to know or if that was just an automatic reaction to not knowing what to say. But that’s looking back after the pain.
Anita PowellPublished 2 months ago in Humans
Saying It’s Over
When you’re unhappy and know that no matter how hard you both try the relationship is over, how do you tell someone that it is best to separate? There’s no easy way, unless you just don’t care about the person or relationship.
Anita PowellPublished 2 months ago in Humans
Writing Isn’t What I Thought Part 6
I have taken you from imagination to publishing in my writing experience. What I will talk about now are all the things I did wrong. Writing is not as easy as people think. There's more to than just sitting down and putting words on paper. If it was that easy, then everyone would be a rich published author. The truth is, writing is just part of the equation to getting books into a customer’s hands.
Anita PowellPublished 2 months ago in Journal
Writing Isn’t What I Thought Part 5
I’ve talked about editing, book cover design, formatting files, illustrating, and promoting (briefly). I want to reiterate that self-publishing versus traditional publishing is a matter that each author must decide. There are pros and cons to both. I self-published because I had promoted Aninoids so early, I felt I needed to get it out fast or risk losing the people who had already started following me. If I had to do it again, I think I’d take my chances with traditional publishing if, for no other reason, to find out if I could get published. Both take time to see the results that we authors are looking for (success).
Anita PowellPublished 3 months ago in Journal
Writing Isn’t What I Thought Part 4
In previous blogs, I’ve talked about finding an editor, getting an illustrator, and a book designer. Now it's time to format your book and book cover files. The question at this point is self-publishing or traditional publishing. I think everyone struggles with this because each has pros and cons to it. I always envisioned going traditional so I could get paid upfront. When you can get a traditional publisher to take you on, it’s a badge of success in the publishing industry, especially if you’re a first-time author. However, it's hard to get a publisher to take on a newbie, and it can take months for your book to get published. You also sign away what your book will be once the publisher finishes doing their own editing. Actually, you might not recognize the book as what you intended it to be. Self-publishing what you write is what customers will get. Any changes have to be agreed upon by you and your editor. Self-publishing involves work that you don’t have to do with traditional publishing, such as promoting. I’m not saying with traditional publishing you don’t promote because it’s a mistake to rely just on the publisher. I am saying you have to do a lot more promoting if you self-publish. Remember, it's just you that’s taking your book from infancy to customers. There is no upfront money when you self-publish; its all on you. I’ll talk more about this in my next blog. I didn’t know that each publisher had their own requirements for formatting the book and book cover files. I did go to Facebook groups and bought a couple of books that talked about formatting and publishing. The main publishers I came away with was Amazon Kindle and Ingramspark. Again, each has their own way to format your files for publishing. I initially wanted to go with Ingram Spark. I paid my $49 for eBook and $49 for paper book. I started reading all that was required, and I was confused. I went to a Facebook group and was still confused on how it was to be done. Ingramspark still has my money. I think I was, for some reason, being stubborn because I had seen in many groups that Amazon is the easiest way for new authors to publish their works. I think I just wanted to go in another direction from everyone. I continued to go back and forth in my thinking as to what I really wanted. I wanted control which meant self-publishing, so I kept looking. I came across a publishing company called Draft2digital. I like what I read and signed up as I kept reading. They recommended to start with Amazon kindle because there is a benefit to Amazon Select and their global distribution. Some Reasons to go with Amazon Select:
Anita PowellPublished 3 months ago in Journal
Writing Isn’t What I Thought Part 3
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08K3L3T9V Https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08MFM2FKM In previous blog posts I talked about my experience with editing and illustrators. In this blog post I will talk about book covers. I never thought about how important book covers really are until I decided to fulfill my dream of being an author. A book cover is like your first appearance coming into a room. You want to look your best so someone might be interested in knowing you. A book cover is the first look a book gets that gives an idea of whether a person wants to read the book or not. The better a book cover looks, the more chances are that someone will turn it over to read the book's description and buy it. I can’t emphasize enough that you need to invest time and maybe some money into getting the book cover you feel will have the wow factor. Again, I reached out to Facebook groups and looked for book cover designers. I put this request in about 6 groups, among which are Self-Publishing, Book Marketing, and Great Books for Children of Color to name just a few. I was bombarded by book covers designers showing their work. I also checked out Fiverr to be able to compare not only prices, but book covers too. I realized this wasn’t something that I could skimp on, especially because Aninoids was different and I wanted it to stand out from other sci-fi books. It took about 2 days before I saw a cover whose designer could also work on Aninoids the way I wanted. She is a designer from the UK, and the price wasn’t out of this world. Again, Fiverr can be cheaper than having it done by someone in the United States. Fiverr not only offers you many choices, but the prices and work I have had done through that platform were very good. When I choose someone from either Facebook or Fiverr, I do let them know that I will work with them again so I don’t have to keep trying new people. I think of it as building a team; I know what I’m getting, and the person knows what I expect. It makes life easier for the next time I need that service. I am new to publishing, so I had no idea what to do except find a designer and tell them about my book, then they would work their magic. Boy was I wrong. A book designer does not need only to know about the book, but also about what you’re looking for in a cover. So the designer I chose needed to know my ideas, and I had none. I thought she would be the one to come up with the ideas. A designer might give you some ideas, but they also want to hear yours. Now I had to think about what I wanted Aninoids to look like. We went back and forth on this a couple of times before I was satisfied with a cover. A book designer will also need to know how many pages will be in the paperback book. A paperback requires a description for the back of the book; as I stated in the beginning, once a customer sees a book cover that interests them the next step is turning the book over to read the description. The description has to be on point, it should relate to what the book is about. It took me a while to get a description, and to this day I don’t think I did Aninoids justice in writing its description. It’s not easy, so take your time. If you’re only writing an eBook, then the description that’s usually on the back of a paperback would be put in the description box when you set up the eBook. Once I agreed on the design and I told her the number of pages for the paperback and paid her, she sent me the book cover files for the eBook and paperback ready to be uploaded to the Amazon Kindle. The whole process is time-consuming and when you don’t have a clue it makes it also frustrating. In the next blog post I’ll talk about formatting your book and publishing it.
Anita PowellPublished 4 months ago in Journal
Writing Isn’t What I Thought Part 2
My last blog I talked about my thought process in writing and finding an editor. This blog I take you through my experience in finding an illustrator. My book would probably be better with illustrations, however, I didn’t think of that until I was already editing. I didn’t have illustrations done but it would be for the Aninoids website. Don’t get confused here, the illustrator does illustrations that go inside the book. The book designer does the book cover, which is another job.
Anita PowellPublished 4 months ago in Journal
Writing Isn’t What I Thought Part1
I always wanted to write, there's something about writing that takes you outside of yourself. Putting words on paper and making a story come to life is an awesome feeling, however it’s not that easy.
Anita PowellPublished 4 months ago in Journal
