New Parent Survival Guide available at Amazon

Despite reading all about self publishing, the articles in Writer's Digest don't really do the process justice and explain the ordeal you have to go through.

First off, one article said traditional publishing can take as long as it does to incubate an infant, while epublishing takes as long as boiling an egg.
While that is a clever line, it's completely untrue. I think it took three evenings, probably six hours, to upload my book to Create Space and create the book cover. Boiling an egg is 10 minutes.
The book publishing systems, including Amazon, take 12 to 36 hours to approve the copy and cover of a book. None of this is instantaneous. At it shouldn't be.
But I must say, I am very tempted to just sell my New Parent Survival Guide on Amazon alone.
There are a lot of other publishing outfits but none as simple as Amazon has made it through Createspace.com, which Amazon owns. That process created the ability to buy a paperback and ebook version of my book. It also made making a book cover simple and professional.
So right now my book is only available at Amazon. http://amzn.to/XUI3Ag
I am in the process of uploading my book to Smashwords so that I can send it off to all the other ebook retailers but first I have to design a book cover.
This is the biggest hurdle and frankly, where I have felt the most stress in this ebook book publication business. I know a cover is uber important to the success of a book.
But there are no templates available out there. Createspace has a bunch you can use and makes creating a cover super easy.
So, I am resorting to using Gimp to manipulate the photo I have used on Amazon to make a cover. I have found a You Tube video telling me how to use Gimp to make a book cover and I'll be spending a few hours this weekend doing that.
I have to thank the woman who made the video. Otherwise, I'd have to resort to borrowing one of the photographer's laptops at work to use Photoshop.
My husband pointed out to me that if you want instructions for anything, check YouTube first because it's highly likely someone has made a video.
Just tonight my husband used a YouTube video for instructions on how to repair the clock in my car, which required him taking half of the dashboard off.

I have dived back into writing one of my young adult novels and I hope to have that finished in the next couple of months.

Thanks for listening. Read on.

Survival guide coming out in February for new parents

Because I secretly have ADD (not) I am putting out a survival guide for new parents in February.
I'm doing this before I forget all the wonderful tips I learned or were passed on to me before I had my now 3 1/2 year old.
I'll be publishing it as an e-book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. I'm thinking of pricing it at $1.49. It will only be about 50-pages full of useful information.
This is not a booklet repeating all the information already out there. It's interesting that you can read a ton of books before you have your baby and yet still know nothing!!!
I mean, did you know there were sleeper swaddling sacks with Velcro arms that are super easy substitutes for doing that incredibly complicated wrap to keep your kid swaddled? Did you know that Mylicon is one of the only essential must have you need beside diapers and wipes?
If you learned anything, you'll want to check out the booklet. I also have a section on all the useless crap they sell you at big box baby stores that you don't need.
In these hard times, the only thing you have to buy brand new is a bucket car seat and that's only if you can't borrow one.
For more check out the tab and online book stores in February.