Writings of Stuart Whitmore

This blog post is all about saving you time and grief, using a "cloud" service that is pretty much perfect for indie authors. In keeping with that theme, I'll save you the time (but hopefully not grief!) of reading this post if you've already discovered that service and know how to use it. So, if you're already using Dropbox and feel comfortable that you're getting the maximum value from it, you can skip the rest of this post. That was easy, wasn't it?

Whether you are already working on one or more books, or you're just getting serious about starting your first one, you must decide what "tools of the trade" you will use. This blog post offers you a virtual "toolkit" for your current and future projects. In the past you might have considered using a pen and spiral notebook, and some writers still like those tools (as do I, sometimes; the picture shown here is one of mine), but the low-tech approach has disadvantages such as not being able to make offsite backups (which leads to a risk of destruction), not checking your spelling, lacking an easy way to get a word count, etc.

When you think about getting a new book to read, your first thought might be that you'll buy one. Or, you might think first to check out your local library to borrow a book for free. Perhaps the idea of getting a book you can keep, for free, hasn't really crossed your mind, other than seeing what people have tossed in the "free box" for their yard sale. There's a better way that involves both giving and receiving free books, and it's called "book crossing" — BookCrossing.com, to be specific.

It's past time to end my hiatus from posting to this blog. As I was catching up on message threads on a forum site for Kindle owners and authors, I saw something that inspired me to address the topic of this post: One of the fastest ways to turn me off from a book is to compare it (or its author) to some well-known name.

Before the end of the year, I wanted to complete a "to do" list item that has been nagging at me too long. The task: Release my children's book (Two Boys, Two Planets) for the Kindle. As a non-color, text-oriented reading tool, the Kindle was originally not well suited to children's picture books like mine. With the recent release of the Kindle Fire, however, and the ongoing availability of color-enabled Kindle apps for various platforms (PC, Mac, iPod Touch, etc.), I now believe it is less likely to be a waste of time to convert the print edition to a Kindle edition. I also found it encouraging to read of the success of other children's book authors publishing for the Kindle platform.