Since last week I feel like I have done a huge amount of work on the book. I had already been thinking of using CreateSpace, Amazon’s printing company, to publish the book. This is a print on demand service, with sales through Amazon. Eventually, I can format the book for the eBook format. I finished setting up my account last weekend, downloaded the instructional booklet, and started studying. My book is now registered and officially has an ISBN number assigned to it. Things are beginning to feel very real! At this point, it would be great if I could have everything ready for the end of Thanksgiving when the blog celebrates its second anniversary. However, I have to be realistic and look at my heavy work schedule for the next few months. Best case scenario, the book will be ready by Thanksgiving; if not, probably early in 2015.

I finally finished organizing the chapter of November letters, and am more than halfway through December’s chapter. After reading the preparing your manuscript guide from CreateSpace, I know that my pictures should already be in the manuscript when I upload it. I have added 12 photographs/documents at this point with many more to go. Any images I use have to be a minimum of 300 dpi. While most of the photographs I have already scanned are at a higher dpi, some of the documents I want to use were scanned at a lower resolution. I am not using any color images so everything also has to be in black/white or grayscale.

I ordered a sample book from CreateSpace so I can see and feel what the paper I plan on using is like. It currently has not arrived, but I am anxiously waiting! For size, I have chosen on a 6 x 9 paperbook. This is one of the standard publishing sizes so it gives me more options for advertising the book in outlets besides Amazon. I believe my book will be about the same size and shape as my large paperback editions of the Game of Thrones. I have a feeling that the book is going to be about as thick at this point, too. As of last night, the manuscript numbered 426 pages. I think it might hit 500 before I am done.

While doing some preparation of my title page and the reverse side, I did some research on CIP, or Catalogue-in-Publishing information. This data is found on the reverse side of a book’s title page. The data is generated by the Library of Congress and it helps libraries to catalogue their books. It also aids in purchasing so libraries have a general idea of what a book is about before they buy it for their collections. Unfortunately for me, this service is only available for books that are printed by publishing houses. Print on demand and self-publishers are considered too small to warrant inclusion at this time. I had hoped to classify my book under World War II Letters, or Indiana correspondence, which would have aided in my sales marketing.

I learned some new formatting tricks this week with Microsoft Word as well. I figured out how to put title headings on every page, but have the first page of the Chapters be different (without a header). I played around with different styles of page numbering so now my title pages and the beginning pages of the book aren’t numbered. The numbering starts at the beginning of the first chapter. If you have never done this before, let me tell you, it was very frustrating to figure out! And of course, rather easy once the trick is mastered.

Goals for this week:

Finish assembling December’s letters
Begin writing Biographies
Continue to add photographs
Work on re-writing and expanding the chapter titled Who Were Roscoe and Gladys?

Question for readers: Do you think I should spell out words that were abbreviated, specifically if they improve comprehension and readability? Bear in mind I already have a ton of footnotes, so I really don’t want to make the reader look around and lose concentration to find what the word means/is.

Deborah Sweeney, © 2014.
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2014/08/09/the-book-progress-report-august-9-2014/