My Hassle With Staff At Office Works

Image by bookdragon from Pixabay

A couple of years ago, I bought a PDF eBook and I wanted a printed copy.  

The eBook came with printing permissions, so I uploaded it to Office Works, set up how I wanted it printing and binding, paid the cost, and waited for an email to tell me when it was printed and ready to pick up, which came through the next day.

Easy.

A few weeks later, I had another PDF eBook I wanted to print, so I set it up on the Office Works website again.

The next day I received a call from a woman who said she was a manager at my local Office Works store, and she said my eBook couldn’t be printed because it was copyrighted to the Author.

I explained that the eBook had permission for printing, and I asked her if she’d looked at the permissions of the eBook.

She said it didn’t matter what the permissions were, they couldn’t print it.

It was clear that she had no idea about copyright or printing permissions.

I tried to explain it to her, but she insisted that because of copyright, only I could print it, not them, but if I came to the store and printed it, they would put a cover on it and bind it for me.

So, I said, “So you’re saying that the only difference between you printing it and me printing it, is who pushes the start button on the printer?”

She was silent for a few seconds, then said, “Yes. That’s exactly what copyright means.”

I said, “How do you know? You’re not a copyright expert. You’re a shop assistant.”

With that, she hung up. I contacted Office Works online and asked for a refund.

I no longer use them for my large-volume printing needs. It seemed ridiculous that one person at the company, who clearly knew nothing about copyright, could dictate who pushes the start button on the printing machine.

The whole conversation with her, plus my time spent setting up the print job, getting a refund, and getting it printed elsewhere, was a waste of my time. I usually protect my time because, as a writer, it’s extremely important to me. My wasted time with Office Works could have been spent writing a chapter of a book or a few online articles.

Which is why I prefer working alone.

Many people feel that being a writer is like subjecting yourself to a life of solitary confinement.

But I disagree.

Being a writer does mean spending a lot of time alone, and spending hours every day speaking to no-one, but that’s the way I prefer it.

Being a writer is my mission in life, which is why I’m always happy to go home and work on my writing mission.

And I don’t have to let others into my writing time.

Except when I have to deal with ignorant staff at Office Works.

Mission Critical For Life

Start Living Life On Your Terms By Pursuing Your True Life Mission

https://cheritonhousepublishing.com/books/MCFL.html

The Easiest Way To Write And Publish Books

When it comes to book writing and publishing, it doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned writer, or a newbie writer. If you want to SELL lots of books, then you need to WRITE lots of books. You also need to publish lots of books, and you don’t need to do a lot or know a lot to be able to do it.

You just need to keep it simple.

And the way to do that is through e-Publishing, because you don’t need fancy formatting, or a complicated cover, and your books don’t have to be huge tomes.

Just write short to medium books and publish them through Amazon’s KDP Publishing.

You can upload your manuscript as a simple Word document. Or if you prefer, MAC computers have eBook creation software built right into the system for free.

eBooks don’t need a complicated cover, only a flat cover image, and KDP has free templates and free images that you can use.

All you need is your manuscript as a simple document including a copyright page and any other pages you want to add, a flat cover image, and upload it all for free and set a price you want to sell it for.

Author John Locke began this way. He uploaded his novels, sold them as eBooks, and sold over a million copies in less than a year.

I’m not saying that you’ll have as much success as he did (very few writers do), but you won’t sell any books unless you start.

And you can start as easy as K-D-P.

If you want to learn more about publishing, you can do it along the way.

Mastering Book Publishing
Discover How To Make Money Publishing Books On Amazon

 

How To Sell More Books Than Ever Before

 

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors
from Pixabay

I was recently re-reading the fascinating book by Dean Wesley Smith, Think Like a Publisher. It's been updated several times.

The reason I was reading it again is because it’s the middle of November, so the New Year is almost upon us, so I need to start making serious plans for next year.

I was going through the book, taking notes and making plans, and it was all so interesting and useful that I wanted to share a few insights with you here.

In the book it says to be successful and sell more books, you must stop thinking like a writer/self-publisher and start acting like a publisher with a business to run (and to that end I’ve got amazing plans for next year).

What you need is a realistic publishing schedule, with the emphasis on REALISTIC.

Think of how much you can write in a month and from there calculate how much you can REALISTICALLY achieve in a year.

You need to devise a credible schedule for one year. It should include books, short stories, freelance work, articles, marketing, e-Publishing and print publishing.

Having deadlines in your schedule is a must. A publishing business lives or dies with deadlines.

You can adjust how you work as you go along if it’s necessary, but you must stick to your publishing deadlines. This is why your schedule must be realistic.

You can start practicing from now until the end of the year to see how much you can comfortably achieve in a month.

Don’t forget to schedule everything including marketing your books and doing all your online work.

And most importantly, make sure you stick to your deadlines, no matter what, even if it means burning the proverbial midnight oil a time or two.

Just be realistic about how much you can do and treat your publishing schedule like a business.

The Almost Effortless Way To Write Books

My desk, where I write, is in front of a window.

Nearby, a new block of apartments has been built.

For weeks I’d see the huge crane being used to lift pallets of building materials up to the builders on all levels, and to remove all the big skips full of rubbish.

It was all quite fascinating to watch.

Then one day, as the building neared completion, the crane was taken down because it was no longer needed. I was interested to see how they did it because I’d never seen it done before.

Two men were at the top of the big crane, several men were on the ground below and they had a smaller crane on the back of a truck to help take down the big crane.

The two men up top worked carefully and methodically to dismantle the big crane piece by piece and working from the end of the long arm on one side to the balancing blocks on the opposite side. It was a careful process of knowing what to remove and when, to keep the top of the crane balanced.

Cranes that size rarely fall, but it can, and does happen.

The two men seemed to be following a process that they’d done many times before. They worked swiftly and efficiently so keeping the crane upright was not a problem. The whole job was done smoothly.

As I sat writing, I kept glancing up to see how the dismantling was progressing and I realised that they had a process for every part of the job, so everyone knew what to do so everything got done.

And I thought that it’s the same with writing books. It’s something I’ve done many times, so I know the process, and the more I do it, the easier it gets because I know every step in the process, making it simple and effortless to follow the steps:

Idea

Outline

Cover

Marketing

Writing

Editing

Proofing

Copyright page etc.

Publishing

Working through a writing and publishing process several times makes it faster and easier with less thinking and more doing.

It also makes the whole process more pleasant to do which makes me look forward to doing it again.

 

The 12 Month Writing Challenge