The next step in the mechanics of the process is typesetting and formatting for ebooks and print books. I tried a variety of approaches for the process. I tried Joel Friedlander’s Book Design Templates which is pretty cool. He’s got a lot of good information and the instructional video on formatting the book is great.

But then you have to go through another step using something like Calibre to convert it into Mobi or Epub, and I could never make that work cleanly.

This time I found Vellum https://vellum.pub/ . This thing is more expensive than most, but it works great. It makes a beautifully formatted book for both print and electronic publishing. It’s not a place to do a lot of editing. You need to be down to your final step for the most part. You need to review it to make sure you have everything in the right places before you pull the trigger, but the final result looks professional.

In my particular genre, I am inundated with information about air quality in homes so I want to say a bit about that here not because it is directly related to self-publishing, but because it is directly related to health in homes which is an important issue.

The fact is that we have been forced to spend almost 100% of our time in our homes - and not because we are sitting around binging on TV programs (although that may be happening as well). We are forced to breathe the air in our homes so you better make sure that it as good air as it can be. You might want to check your CO alarm. By the way, CO alarms that are listed by UL 2034 are just that - alarms. If it goes off, get out of the house. Do Not try to defeat it by removing the batteries or waving a dish towel at it. CO is colorless and odorless. Check the date on it. If it is more than 3 years old, you might want to replace it. CO is a killer - the weapon of choice in my novel - Death at the Edge of the Diamond.

There are way too many trees in this neighborhood to fly a kite anyway!

You can add Death at the Edge of the Diamond to your reading list. Check it out and add it to your Goodreads shelf here >>

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54473532-death-at-the-edge-of-the-diamond