In February 2012, someone gave me a 'word' from God that I should write. My husband, Andrew, is very good with words and often confounds people when playing family word games, but writing is not my forte! Or, so I thought, I think I have improved a little with practice! My reaction to the 'word' was, that's really not from God!
After some months, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the material that we were using in our home group. Home groups, or whatever we call them, to my way of thinking, are for building relationships with each other, with God and with the outside world, so we need material that will inspire and motivate us to move forward with this. So the idea gradually dawned on me that perhaps the word that I'd been given, all those months ago, really was from God. I became inspired. In September 2014, our house group began using my first book: A short course for small groups; The Lord's Prayer.
Then I began to ponder; was my book just for us? Soon after this I met a friend who was in the middle of publishing her own book with Createspace,a subsidiary of Amazon. Could I possibly publish my book? I already had ideas to write more.
I had a go. I'm not very good at following step by step instructions and at first I found it quite tricky to get my head round the different steps that have to be made with Createspace. However, with a little bit of help and encouragement from my friend, and with a little bit of patience, I now find it quite straight forward.
Createspace is an amazing service. There is an American and English site. I suggest using the appropriate site to your nationality. Anyway, it's all quite doable. They do most of the work for you. I use a 6"x9" template in Word, substituting my words for theirs. Starting with the title page, the acknowledgements (I usually substitute thank you for that), contents, introduction and chapters. The book has to have at least something like 20 pages, but one can have gaps.
They give you an ISBN number, and sort out the copyright. They offer you a good choice of a picture for the cover, they set it for you and tell you it's ready for you to proof, they print it, help you set a price and show you how you can distribute it around the world!
The setting on to the page can be quite tedious but one gets there in the end. You think it's perfect, but then when they show it back to you, within a few minutes you realise you have to change it again. You just need a bit of prayer, patience and perseverance for that
However the result is a well presented glossy, paper back all for free. One even gets a little bit of royalties. If and when it's available in the States for the first time you have to register for tax.
There are now seven titles (books and e-books) on sale with Amazon ($s, £s and Euros) and it hasn't cost me a penny!
My dream is to write a hundred, I'd better get back to the desk! Why don't you have a go? I'd be happy to give you a few tips!
