Hi everyone! My name is Michael Teferi, I am a Poet, Writer, and Positive Psychology Coach here on Substack. I am brand new as of this evening to The Language Portal via membership approval by Ms. Lynch. I have been having major problem# with self-publishing my poetry books as a trilogy, starting with my first one. Can people here help me? My problem is that I don’t have a working phone number, so I don’t have specific access to Amazon KDP. I just sent out an email earlier this evening to Barnes & Noble about publishing my poetry books starting with “Transformation” on bn.com and potentially having my debut poetry book in the local Barnes & Noble bookstore in their Manassas, VA location. Please let me know your thoughts and opinions about my potential new poetry book everyone!

One thing I enjoy immensely is formatting a book for a client. It right up there with coaching them through the entire publishing process. And the absolute best is celebrating the author when we reach the finish line. And that happened today! OMG. Please join me in celebrating @Lucie Haskins today! The final PDFs for her book, Married Widow, got uploaded to Amazon with a release date of March 12, 2026. As I wrap up this project with Lucie, I thought it might be fun to share my lessons along the way. I learn something new every time I lay out a book in InDesign, even though I've produced a dozen books for clients. 1. Metatron's Code: my first publication in 2019 ... so everything was a learning curve. Biggest challenges to overcome: chapter page layout with the dot leaders, tabs, running heads, and adding a graphic to the running footer. (It's the little things.) 2. Amy and the Angels: kerning and leading. 3. Beyond The Shift: orphans, widows, and runts. (My proofreader, Lucie Haskins, shared about orphans and widows, and I taught her about runts.) 4. Married Widow has 45 images, so it became important to learn how to anchor images to a page. But first, the handy resize tool in Canva made the resizing process super easy. Every book gets easier, but I love the challenge of learning something new that never came up in a previous book. I’m curious where you are in your book journey—idea, draft, editing, or publishing?