Rachelle Ayala's Blog, page 95

Come the Shadows by Wendy Young

Come the Shadows by Wendy Young
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm a big city girl, not used to the slow pace and charm of a small Southern town, but Ms. Young does a good job of drawing you into Campbell Creek alongside of two cops, the aging Will and the young, brash rookie Ricky.

While it was hard to get used to Will's old-fashioned attitudes, I did enjoy the interplay between Will and his feisty wife Laura, who is determined to figure out why land developers are trying to buy properties for inflated prices.

Once the action started to roll, there was plenty of investigation interspersed with commentary on family values and different ways of handling marriage, children and career paths. Perhaps the story was too cozy for me, but I never got the sense that anyone was really in danger.

My favorite female character was the spunky Jessa, Will's younger sister. But the ending was less satisfying for me. There were a few loose ends that remained concerning a mother and daughter relationship. I suppose the author leaves it open to continue the series, but I'm just a big city girl and like to see everything nailed tighter than a taiko drum head.

A fantastic debut. I look forward to more sweet tea and peach pie from Ms. Young.

“Pie, Ricky-Bob, is a Southern virtue,” Will said, “and one I believe in with all my heart. And that’s all you need to know.”

Wendy L. Young. Come the Shadows (Kindle Location 221). Wendy L. Young.

View all my reviews

Selling Software and Selling Ebooks

Back in the dawn of the personal computer era, in the mists of time when floppys were really floppy, and PCs ran on command line DOS prompt, people bought their software packaged in pretty boxes off the shelf in gleaming retail establishments such as CompUSA and Egghead. Installation consisted of copying files into arcane locations and hand-tweaking .ini files. A software developer needed pretty big pockets to not only write the software, but get the media manufactured, the user guides printed, and everything packaged and distributed to retail outlets. In other words, a major outlay of cash or a contract from IBM [which was how Microsoft started].

Enter the Internet And Shareware
The Internet changed everything in the early nineties. This was before WWW, but forums such as Compuserve and usenet allowed ordinary people to hook up with developers through newsgroups. People began writing code and sharing it with others, and the "shareware" industry commenced.

Shareware works on the concept of providing code for free, either for a limited number of features, or a limited time period. The user tries the code, and if he or she finds it useful, he'll pay to either unlock additional features or pay to use it after the trial period was over. Shareware allowed developers and programmers to bypass the retail distribution channels and middlemen who controlled the flow of software to retail establishments. Programmers could market directly to their end customers. Many successful programs, games, and applications, too numerous to name, had their roots in shareware.

What about Books?
What is an e-book but a piece of encoded data? So why has it taken the publishing industry so long to transform like the software industry did twenty years ago? Just a year ago, people lounged at Barnes and Noble and Borders, sipping latte and thumbing through massive tomes of dead trees. A would-be author needed the support of publishing companies to upfront the outlay of money required for printing dead trees, distribution and marketing.

In less than five years since the Kindle was released and the concept of ebooks popularized, authors have turned to the shareware concept to market their books. Amazon's "Look Inside" feature is exactly the same as sampling before buying. Because of this ebook revolution, readers can browse hundreds of books, looking inside with a single click and have instant fulfillment to either purchase or delete. The middleman (other than Amazon) is cut out, and authors can spread their wares in front of the customers and let them vote with their "clicks."

And just as Egghead Software, Circuit City and CompUSA retail stores have gone by the wayside, so has Borders, Waldenbooks and Crownbooks. As for the music industry... same story. Information in electronic format will trump physical media in terms of cost, distribution, and direct marketing to the end-user.

What do you think? Do you still love the feel of paper books? When was the last time you bought a piece of software in a pretty cardboard box with a DVD? How about music? When was the last CD you bought? The last time you went to the drugstore to get your photos printed? Are there things too precious to be replaced with bits and bytes?

Importing a CreateSpace Template

CreateSpace is Amazon's application to create print on demand books from your Manuscript. Templates are available for various physical sizes. Changing your Microsoft Word document to the proper CreateSpace format basically involves applying one of the CreateSpace templates.
The template comes with four pre-defined Paragraph Styles:CSP - Chapter Body Text: Garamond, Indent: First line: 0.2", Justified
this is the default paragraph.CSP - Chapter Body Text - First Paragraph: Garamond, Indent:: First line: 0", Justified
this is used for the leading paragraph of each chapter and section and does not have a first line indent.CSP - Chapter Title: Font: Myriad Pro, 14pt. All caps, Centered
this style is based off Normal, but I changed it to base off Heading so I can automatically generate my Table of ContentsCSP - Front Matter Body Text: Font: Garamond, CenteredAnd that is all.
The following instructions are for Word 2010. Take your existing Microsoft Word document and go to the File tab and choose "Options: Select "Add-Ins":
Open up the dialogue and select "Template" at the bottom combo-box. Click on the "Go..." button. It brings up this dialogue box. Click the "Attach..." button.: Now go through your file system and find the CreateSpace template you downloaded: Make sure to check the box "Automatically update document styles" Go back to your document and you will see these new styles.
Now it's all a matter of selecting your text and changing it from "Normal" to the new style.