This morning I ordered a proof of my Father-in-Laws memoir, Thank You, America. Orphaned at a very early age in war torn South Korea. Forced to flee his village as an early teen because of the advancing North. With a little bit of luck and lots of perseverance he found his way to America to become a doctor. This is his story.
I decided to use Amazon’s CreateSpace for the project. CreateSpace’s tools are very easy to work with. They have downloadable templates that you can use with Word or InDesign to format your pages correctly. Then you can either upload a pdf file or a Word doc and their servers do their magic. They have automatic checkers that check to make sure things are with their printers limits. And before you can order a proof a human will check your file to the printers specs.
The easiest part was the CreateSpace process. The hard part was getting to the final edits. This project was a team effort. My Father-in-Law wrote the original manuscript by hand. His secretary typed those pages out. My brother-in-law(from the other side of the family) edited those drafts. I then had a friend Reese Spykerman(DesignbyReese who graciously carved some time to help) lay the pages out in the 6X9 format and create the cover and back graphics. I am grateful for everyone that has helped get this project to this point. We live in a amazing time where this type of content can be created so in such a cost effective manner. If anyone is interested in his story watch this space for info on how to order. I’m also working on Kindle and Apple iBook versions coming soon. I’m definitely not an expert in Self Publishing but it’s fun to have made it through book 1.