Am I crazy? I've always used Vellum for layouts, but I want a design that is more complicated than the software can handle. I'm looking at getting someone to do it professionally, but I prefer to keep control of the text so I can make adjustments in the future without having to go back to the designer. So I am playing around with MS-Word. I took a really fast attempt at it and this is what I got. It would need fine-tuning. But before I spend more time on this, I wanted to make sure I'm not going down a path that I might regret. Thoughts? Thanks!

While I’m off at the world’s largest Turkey Trot this morning – for real, it’s a record breaking 23,000+ runners this year – I’ve been reflecting a lot the past many weeks on how fortunate we are to live in a world where we can make our own way. This past year has been full of book writing, learning, prelaunching, publishing, and all things book related for me. It’s been a literal new chapter in my life. Looking back, I had the naive idea that I’d write up my book, print to PDF, upload to Amazon, and in a very Silicon Valley way, ship a book in one Sprint. Hah! Fortunately, in that short 3 week sprint, I discovered some excellent books on non-fiction writing, which lead me to communities of warm and welcoming non-fiction authors, which led to wonderful new friends, and in turn more books and courses on publishing. Each time I thought I was a step closer to publishing… I discovered a new chasm of knowledge I didn’t know that I didn’t know about. And each time I dove in, I came out better for it. I’m immensely grateful for not just having the opportunity to write and publish a book, but for having an incredible team of experts (editor, keyword researcher, cover designer, photographer, coach, etc), advisors, authors, advanced readers (my ARC team!), launch partners, early reviewers, community leaders, and more at my side each step of the way. I so enjoyed writing up the acknowledgements section of the book knowing that the names of those who helped me get to where I am would be forever in print in the Library of Congress, the US Copyright Office, bookstores, libraries, classrooms, and the bookshelves of business owners around the globe. How lucky we are that we can each stretch our fingers out to the keyboard, write our thoughts, and share what we’ve learned with the world. Thank you for being part of that journey with me. I absolutely could not have gotten to where I am without your love, support, encouragement, early feedback, reviews, book purchases, referrals, media invitations, ratings, subscriptions, and more.

Greetings nonfiction authors. 👋 Does anyone have recommendations for indexing software? Also, I'd be interested in what formatting software you recommend. I am using Atticus.io and am quite pleased with it - better than Word or GDocs.

I am in the process of self publishing. And I am applying things I have learned from the course and the book. And I think I have a pretty good hook. I am writing a book for baby boomers. They are not into Bitcoin, but they are heavily invested in the current decrepit financial system. They don't really understand how exposed they are to the next crash. And they need to start to move to a sane and honest system as soon as possible. There is urgency here. But I don't want to scare them to death either. Here is my hook/subtitle "How baby boomers can protect their wealth and retirement, and to actually thrive when the economy goes boom". What do you think? I believe strongly in this. Do you think this hooks?

Hello Everyone! I am a new member here. I am hoping to find help so I can create my book cover and finally publish !