Jennifer Lancaster

January 14, 2021

Review: ‘How to Fail Fantastically’

It’s not often that I chuckle aloud to myself while reading. But Ken Williams’ book on failing made me do it. It’s small in size but not in value, and has black & white cartoons and quotes that gelled nicely with the content. In Ken’s book, everything is opposite. Failure is good; success, well, you can surmise. Sometimes I think even he gets confused about how to say it. But by the grace of his awesomely silly humour, he pulls it off. It’s the perfect antidote to those simpering, ingenuous self-help guides. Like Rachel Hollis’s ‘Girl, Stop Apologising’. Meh. My favourite section was the Mini Guide on ‘How to Get Your Book Rejected‘ — right up my street. And the cartoon for “the anatomy of a slush pile” sent me right off — I just loved it. I received a…

January 13, 2021

Self-Publishing

A Blurb Book Publishing Review

I’ve talked about IngramSpark, Amazon and Reedsy, but never reviewed Blurb. With image-rich books as a point of difference, Blurb book publishing has two parts: one for the hobbyist putting their photos into a book for the family treasure chest, and the other for offering colour trade books. This post contains affiliate links and if you click on them, we may get a commission from the company out of what you paid. To be fair, the hardback, gloss paper photo book option is also useful for designers and photographers to showcase their work. Make sure you use the “au” site if Australian, e.g. au.blurb.com. Once registered and logged in, you can choose ‘personal’ or ‘business’ and fill out your author details. Looks to me like Product Reviews aren’t what they should be, with a 2.8* out of 5 on average.…

December 23, 2020

Book Writing, Self-Publishing

How to Motivate Yourself to Write (and Finish) a Book

Towards the start of the new year, my thoughts turn to how writers can motivate themselves to write and finish a book. It pains me to think of all those amazing books going unpublished or not promoted, just because of a lack of confidence, so let’s find out some motivation tips. When I’m trying to finish my own books and in need of motivation, I think about other people’s problems. I believe the power of writing is not in the medium – as readers enjoy books, ebooks or courses – it’s in the targeted solution to very real problems today. Young people growing up now need to see and hear your message, if that message is of a life-guiding nature, because very few have yet to recognise the most important priorities in life, e.g.: Health Family and friends The doing…

December 22, 2020

Book Design, Self-Publishing

All About Reedsy

Online Book Editor to Save on Typesetting One of the major costs of book production is typesetting and design. The art of book typesetting is a lofty one, with things like chapter rules, widow/orphan rules, and page bottom alignment. Reedsy Book Editor is an app to do your own layout and make the PDF artwork–for free! Let’s say we don’t mind too much about rules, we just want to get our book formatted with simplicity. Then online tool ‘Reedsy Book Editor’ is your tool. I tried it out, and some of the issues were: Inability to expand the type size, as it is set in the template style Difficulty aligning the table of contents (heading 2’s only would not auto-align) Not yet sure if PDF is compatible with IngramSpark, but Reedsy claims that it is. Background of Reedsy Reedsy was established…

October 29, 2021

Personal finance and scams

The Superannuation Debate Rages On

Last year in Australia, people could access their Superannuation of up to $10,000, if suffering because of COVID19 layoffs. However, it seems that four in 10 Australians who withdrew from their super under the Federal Government’s Early Super Access Scheme actually saw no drop in their income. In fact, as some were collecting stable Jobkeeper payments rather than being a part-time casual worker, 21% of these recipients had their overall earnings rise by more than 10%. (Collated data – source Savings.com.au) Recipients of the second round of Super withdrawals spent $3,618 more in the fortnight after receiving their funds, compared with the bank’s customers normal earnings. The second round of super access also showed that most used nest egg money to increase spending in a burst. And 64% of the spending was on discretionary items (non-essentials). (Source: de-identified AlphaBeta analytics)…

May 18, 2023

Book Writing, Self-Publishing

What’s an Aussie Alternative to Self-Publishing School?

Authors often look online for book publishing training, and some Australians find Self-Publishing School, by Chandler Bolt. He is American. Some novice authors enrol in these kinds of courses with the hope that they will provide book editing or publishing services but always remember that author training schools are not services. (SPS has changed and now includes this, hence the price increase). Let’s compare Self-Publishing School to Book Creation Success course at Business Author Academy, Australia. It is a sequential type of course, delivered one part at a time. With Book Creation, you can also get sequential lessons and videos, with no waiting. It is adjusted as feedback comes in and is regularly updated. There is a commitment contract to yourself and to the school. This is a good idea and we might implement this later. There are some common…