Book Review: Design and Upload Your ePub by Cheri Lasota

Title: Design and Upload Your ePub: The Steps to Your Success
Author: Cheri Lasota
Publisher: Ever-Sea Press (July 27, 2013)
Genre: Non-fiction

Format Read: Ebook
Length: Short Non-fiction Book
Source: Purchased from Amazon

This guide will cover several types of e-book design software and help you navigate the upload process for all the major vendor sites: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iBooks.

In addition, learn basic and more advanced coding and design techniques to make your novel unique, interactive, and beautiful. We'll cover e-book format conversion, epub validation, coding for interactive elements, and much more.

Review: From beginner to pro, anyone can pick up a formatting tip from Cheri Lasota’s Design and Upload Your ePub: The Steps to Your Success.

In a clear and well-formatted design, Cheri Lasota takes the reader through the steps and tricks of creating an ebook as well as self-publishing it on the major vendor sites. Having formatted ebooks for a while, I learned some new tricks to make better quality formatted ebooks, including the use of styles in Word as well as software called Jutoh for compiling an ePub. Lasota even goes through some of the complicated steps of using Adobe’s InDesign program to create an ePub.

I highly recommend Design and Upload Your ePub by Cheri Lasota to anyone starting formatting or wishing to take their formatting to another level.

Five Bookworms = I loved it!

Hook Me: Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder

Title: Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need! 
Author: Blake Snyder 
Publisher: Michael Wiese Productions (May 25, 2005) 
Genre: Non-fiction, Writing Craft 

Book Description: This ultimate insider's guide reveals the secrets that none dare admit, told by a show biz veteran who's proven that you can sell your script if you can save the cat! 

First line: Another book on screenwriting!? (From the Introduction) 
Last line read: How are you going to cut through all the traffic that’s competing for their attention and communicate with them? 

Overall Impression: The sample was filled with reviews, table of contents, and a foreword, so there was very little of the actual book. Snyder definitely has the credentials to know what he’s talking about, and the book had an easy-going style. 

Would I keep reading?: Yes.

Book Review: OUTLINING YOUR NOVEL: MAP YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS by K.M. Weiland

Title: Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success

Author: K.M. Weiland

Publisher: PenForASword Publishing (2011)

Format: Book

Source: Borrowed from library

Genre: Non-fiction, writing

Goodreads 

Description: Writers often look upon outlines with fear and trembling. But when properly understood and correctly wielded, the outline is one of the most powerful weapons in a writer’s arsenal. Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success will:

Help you choose the right type of outline for you
Guide you in brainstorming plot ideas
Aid you in discovering your characters
Show you how to structure your scenes
Explain how to format your finished outline
Instruct you in how to use your outline
Reveal the benefits:
Ensures cohesion and balance
Prevents dead-end ideas
Provides foreshadowing
Offers assurance and motivation
Dispel misconceptions:
Requires formal formatting
Limits creativity
Robs the joy of discovery
Takes too much time
Even if you're certain outlining isn't for you, the book offers all kinds of important tips on plot, structure, and character. Includes exclusive interviews with Larry Brooks, Elizabeth Spann Craig, Lisa Grace, Dan L. Hays, Jody Hedlund, Carolyn Kaufman, Becky Levine, Roz Morris, John Robinson, and Aggie Villanueva, answering important questions:

Can you describe your outlining process?
What is the greatest benefit of outlining?
What is the biggest potential pitfall of outlining?
Do you recommend "pantsing" for certain situations and outlining for others?
What's the most important contributing factor to a successful outline?

Review: Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by K.M. Weiland focuses on ways to outline without destroying creativity.

Writers are often divided into two types: plotters and pantsers, but both sides can learn from each other. Outlines don’t have to kill creativity nor take away the thrill of discovering the characters and plot. Through various tools, the writer can learn about their novel in way that doesn’t bore the person. This book also includes interviews with various authors and how they do or don’t outline.

Outlining Your Novel opened my eyes to various ways to outline from in-depth character interviews to brief key points. So much more goes into the best novels beyond good storytelling, and outlining can save a writer from wandering lost in the woods for a hundred pages. The author interviews honed in that every writer outlines differently. There is no one correct way to outline. Weiland often uses her own experience with outlining to show what works for her. Best of all, this book helps a writer focus on the key ingredients that need to be in a novel.

K.M. Weiland’s Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success is a brilliant tool for any person wanting to learn more about the craft of writing.

Five Bookworms = I loved it!

Book Review: HOOKED by Les Edgerton

Title: Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go

Author: Les Edgerton

Publisher: Writers Digest Books (April 12, 2007)

Format: Kindle eBook

Source: Purchased

Genre: Nonfiction

Goodreads

Description: *The first pages are the #1 key to acceptance or rejection of manuscripts--most agents and editors claim to make their decision on a manuscript after the very first page, which means that no writer can afford to have a weak story beginning

*The first and only fiction-writing book that focuses exclusively on beginnings--no other book on the market addresses story beginnings in a comprehensive manner

Agents and editors agree: Improper story beginnings are the single biggest barrier to publication. Why? If a novel or short story has a bad beginning, then no one will keep reading. It's just that simple. Hooked provides readers with a detailed understanding of what a beginning must include (setup, backstory, the inciting incident, etc.); instruction on how to successfully develop the story problem; tips on how to correct common beginning mistakes; exclusive insider advice from agents, acquiring book editors, and literary journal editors; and much more.

Review: Les Edgerton’s Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go delights in its knowledge to writers and witty humor.

Any writer knows the first pages of a manuscript are the key to acceptance or rejection by agents, publishers, and readers. If the writer can’t grab their readers at the beginning, then that writer has little chance of keeping readers. Hooked tells writers how to create those intense first chapters by focusing on the elements of opening chapters as well as focusing the writer on the story worthy problem. Edgerton uses his own experience as well as many examples to tell his valuable lessons to writers.

Hooked grabbed me from the beginning. Edgerton uses humor and examples to teach writers how to write those stellar openings. With a focus on the story worthy problem, the inciting incident, and the surface problems, writers learn the correct place to start their story as well as how to create that first sentence hook that will make agents, editors, and readers needing to read more. As a writer, this book was an “ah-hah” book. Everything clicked and made sense and excited me to keep writing with new focus. Although Hooked focuses on book’s openings, the lessons from it will help a writer with pace and the underlying tension that creates a page-turning novel.

Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go by Les Edgerton is a must-read for those studying the craft of writing.

Five Bookworms = I loved it!

Teaser Tuesdays: HOOKED by Les Edgerton

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title and author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

 

Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go by Les Edgerton

28% Kindle copy

As the author, you should have a firm understanding of your story-worthy problem before you begin writing. This will help you to provide your protagonist with an initial surface problem that kicks off the action of the story and successfully draws out your intended story-worthy problem.

Do you have a teaser? If so, leave it or the link in the comments.

Book Review: ON WRITING by Stephen King

Title: On Writing

Author: Stephen King

Publisher: Pocket

Format: Kindle

Source: Purchased

Genre: Memoir

Goodreads

Description: "Long live the King" hailed "Entertainment Weekly" upon the publication of Stephen King's "On Writing." Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, "On Writing" will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

Review: Stephen King touches upon life and writing in his On Writing.

King’s memoir will not tell a writer how to become a bestseller, but it does tell the story of how Stephen King became the writer he is. Like in the Wizard of Oz, he pulls the curtain back and reveals who he is. On Writing starts from King’s childhood to his near-fatal accident in 1999. For readers, it is a touching and memorable memoir filled with laughs, tears, shocks, and (what the King of Horror does best) horror.

For writers, King gives advice on the tools of the trade, how to learn the craft of writing, and his process. Some of his best advice comes in “read a lot and write a lot” and to create your toolbox to go with you into writing. His advice on agents is a bit antiquated in the fast-paced changes in the current publishing market, but any writer should be required to read On Writing, even as a gentle reminder on why we write.

On Writing by Stephen King is a must-read for his fans and those who want to learn a bit more about the writing process from the top in the horror field.

Four Bookworms = I really liked it!