I’ve become a mini-publisher. It started when I received the rights back for all but two of my romances and all five of my mysteries (with the exception of one ebook). I created new paperbacks and ebooks for several of my romances and fourof my mysteries.  Having published those books, when a long-time friend, Linda LaRocque ask me if I thought going with a certain publisher was a good idea, I told her that she and I should talk. That publisher wanted a large sum of money to edit and publish the book and promised distribution on Amazon.

Linda and I did talk, then met at her house, and within six months she had Grandma Lou’s Wonderfully Weird Christmas Dinner available on Amazon. Her only costs were for the cover and copyright. Oh, and a glass of bourbon after each work session. It’s not perfect (we forgot to put her name on the cover), but she was happy with it. That was back in 2021. In 2023 I created a paperback and ebook for the last P.J. Benson mystery.(FiveStar/Cengage was no longer publishing mysteries.) I now had two books published by First Tier L.L.C.

I didn’t plan on publishing anyone else’s book, but last winter, during the Second Tuesday Writers’ meeting that I attend every month, Jim Bowers, a long time member of the group read his usual two poems and one of the other members said, “Jim, your poems are so good. You really should publish them.” Well, he liked the idea but said he wouldn’t know how to start. So, of course, I said, “I can help.” (Me and my big mouth.)

First step was to see how many poems he had, so Jim brought an envelope to the next meeting filled with printouts of his poems, He had more than a hundred of them. I took them home and called on my son, Deryk, for help. Together we weeded out the few duplicates he had then sorted them into three categories. Once I had that, I downloaded the templet KDP.Amazon.com provides for a 9×6 paperback and typed the poems into the templet. I also had Jim come up with the front and back material for the book and contacted the artist who designed the covers for my FiveStar/Cengage books. By the end of June we had a cover and had previewed the printed material (and made changes) a few time. Finally, Jim requested 3 proof copies of the book. Overall the book looked good, but I wasn’t happy with how the title pages for the three sections came out. Jim said not to worry about it, so he pressed PUBLISH.  Within a day he received a message that there was a problem with the spine and numbering. That’s when I, with my diminishing eyesight, noticed the numbering was wrong on the title page and that everything that followed was incorrect. I took the file home and worked on it so everything came out alright. We even added three more poems with the hope that increasing the page count would help with the spine problem.

This blog will come out the day Jim should receive a new proof copy. IF everything looks alright (fingers crossed), he’ll hit PUBLISH. If the proof still has problems, we’ll work on it some more. I’m hoping all goes well. Jim is a really good poet and I think a lot of people would enjoy this book, either for themself or to give as gifts. I’ll let you know in two weeks (next blog) where we are in this publishing process.