As a first-time eBook author, Proof Positive is my first eBook and first eBook series. It is a self-help series where I offer advice concerning various general issues along with advice to help produce and boost positivity. This blog post here will fill you in with more information about this project of mine. You will get a lot more insight on me coming up with this series and what it is all about. Welcome to "John's Creative Space!"
Oh, and what do you know... this is *officially* my 50th post on "John's Creative Space!" Welcome to my golden (50th) post on this blog!
The "Proof Positive" Series
Let me tell you more about this eBook series I created. But first, here is a picture to help identify this post...
^ from:
www.amazon.com -
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The "Proof Positive" series (styled as "Proof Posi+ive") is an eBook project I started in trying to offer positive and encouraging thoughts to help people be and feel more positive about life and society. My method of offering advice is to provide a snapshot of a certain situation and then try to offer advice to help people deal with the certain issue and become stronger. I feel offering calming words and speaking with passion are ways to help people feel better. My hope is to motivate and encourage others with my advice to certain life issues. While Proof Positive is a self-help series, I also want to make things interesting by featuring self-help on certain issues outside of living life. For example, I was considering installments in regards to sports and sports fans. I want to mix things up a little bit while not losing focus of the main matter of Proof Positive.
Because I mention a bunch of life issues in my main blog, I feel the need to maximize the usefulness of my advice by creating an eBook. I take my blogging experience to try to create something people can access and (hopefully) profit from my work. I feel I could reach out to more people and feel like I am offering a service by making eBooks. I feel you can put more powerful content in an eBook than most blog posts (and even most videos) have. In the early development of my first eBook, most of my time was spent trying to learn how to make an eBook. This took away from me concentrating on making actual content. In fact, I actually spent more time trying to practice making eBooks before trying to actually make one. I even went as far as to purchase an Amazon Kindle eReader to practice and test my eBook on a Kindle (let alone a proper eReader). So this has been the work of about three or so months before eventually releasing my first ever eBook.
When I made my first eBook from an ODT text file in LibreOffice, my manuscript came out to 14,425 words using 80.426 characters. Now that I released my first eBook, I have the confidence to make more. I found a suitable workflow I can use to make eBooks quicker (content notwithstanding). A big part of this creation of an eBook was thanks to a program called Alkinea. Alkinea is a beta program used in the creation of EPUB and MOBI format eBooks taking ODT text files made using either OpenOffice or LibreOffice.
Timeline of Events.
Here are a few highlights of mine in making and releasing my first eBook (as of December 15, 2015):
• September 11, 2015 - made a folder dedicated to eBooks; includes sample eBooks as well as test material
• [circa] October 29, 2015 - made first practice eBook focusing exclusively on HTML coding
• [circa] November 27, 2015 - made second practice eBook, code named "Tormenta"
• [circa] December 9, 2015 - made third practice eBook, using a program called Alkinea, used actual eBook project made in LibreOffice
• December 11, 2015 - released first eBook on Amazon, later to other services with Draft2Digital; uploaded EPUB version of eBook
• December 13, 2015 - first sale of eBook on Amazon
To be honest, I actually was supposed to release my work on December 10; but since it was getting late when I submitted my work in the early morning hours, I settled for that Friday afternoon to release my work and do all the different editing to get my work live. Once I released my eBook, I felt accomplished. I was all on social media and such promoting my work from sites that took my work live online. You can imagine how proud I was of everything.
Here is a look at my first eBook and its content...
Proof Positive: Happy Beginnings.
Here is the description I offered for this eBook:
"Our lives and society are ripe with negativity. With so much negative in our lives, it can be tough to think positively. Proof Positive by John B. Marine is a supplement to help people think about things to be positive about. It is a collection of basic thoughts as well as advice to common and uncommon life issues. The Proof Positive series will take on a number of individual topics. The first installment, "Happy Beginnings" looks at positivity and negativity in general, and it also focuses in on basic thoughts and items to help people begin to think positively. All thoughts are expressed on a personal, passionate, and calming level in plain English. It is time to defeat negativity in our lives and in society with positivity and positive thinking."
This installment of Proof Positive is about starting out trying to think positively and starting out generating positivity. I focus on a few basic things people can think about to be positive about right now. All of the material featured are all mostly different snapshots of life coupled with my advice to help people deal with certain issues. Do not expect a masterpiece of formal writing and literary awesomeness, but I do offer my own thoughts on a personal level and from a standpoint only I feel I can provide.
Future installments will feature a number of thoughts to help people out with a number of other issues. As of December 15, 2015; I am working on my next installment of the Proof Positive series. The first book in the series is on providing positive insight on a few basic things. The next installment (and you read this first!) has to do with making yourself positive as well as discuss matters of being self-positive. The issues basically relate to certain things that circulate in our mind in trying to be happy and positive. I will be sure to further elaborate on the next installment once it goes live online.
For a Fee?
Because I feel I can better benefit offering eBooks for a fee, I can only provide only so much a preview for all of you. I don't want to spoil too many fine details in any of my blogs. I feel that the amount of content I provide and the sort of professionalism I consider in building this eBook series is of great quality. To be honest, I am actually working on this as a business outlet. When I wanted to build a game for the OUYA and for Android devices, I had in mind making some paid material. I have only so much to try to make any sort of material.
Just know that when I create something for sale, you can be assured I've given my best effort and that it will have value. I would never release anything I felt did not have any sort of value or usefulness to it. That is my philosophy with blog posts, and the same goes for any sort of paid content I consider. So you definitely have my word that my material is of exceptional quality and something I am proud to release and share.
Want to Use Resources?
Here are some resources I used in the creation of my eBook:
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LibreOffice - used in making an ODT text file
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Alkinea - makes eBooks straight from ODT files in EPUB; free for personal and commercial eBooks
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KindleGen - used to convert EPUB to Amazon's MOBI format; use with Alkinea to generate EPUB and MOBI copies
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Sigil - free program useful for editing
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Calibre - free program useful for editing, especially for adding metadata and refining EPUB, also manages eBooks.
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FBReader - a very good eBook app for PC and Android mobile devices. To me, it is the most accurate as far as eBook apps are concerned.
Good luck to any of you who are aspiring eBook authors.
Well, that's it. Thank you for checking out my work! Let me give you a little advice before I close this post... you can do a whole lot for me by Subscribing and Following my work. Stay in the know when I post new material. Get social with me to show your further appreciation of my work. That's all. Just saying. Thank you for reading! Take care and be well.
