Book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, Product, Update

Busy July (2019)

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Professional Highland Bagpiper Don Scobie
Yep — that’s me!

July is my busiest month of the year!  Usually this is due to all the events and dates I participate in as a Highland bagpiper while staying on top of everything else.  This year it seems like it has been a whole different juggle…

I just got back from the Seattle Highland Games.  These games have been going on for nearly 75 years and is the second largest event of its kind on the US west coast, held annually on the last weekend of July.  This year’s event was a long, hot weekend — and another great event!  For me it proved to be a good book sales weekend.

As I left Whidbey Island I delivered additional copies of Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies to Kingfisher Bookstore in Coupeville and at Goose Community Grocery in Bayview.  While in Enumclaw (where the Highland Games were) I sold a number of copies including some to veterans whom I give a military discount.  Something I’m particularly excited about is that I made contact with a friend of mine from my last round of college — Richard has a gift basket business and he is looking to feature my book.  More on that ASAP!  My book business went so well that I think I need to re-order for my supply.  If you’re interested in a book or e-book for yourself, please order on Amazon.com.  Also, my e-book is 25% off through July 2019 on Smashwords.com.

Usually my summer schedule begins to mellow after July.  For 2019 that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Coming up in August I will be …

All this while working to finish my next book.

… I expect to get some sleep come September.  Hopefully.

Announcement, e-Book, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, Product

My E-book for 25% Off – July 2019 SALE

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Would you like to
GET MY E-BOOK FOR 25% OFF???

I am pleased to announce that I just enrolled my “Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies” e-book in the 11th annual Smashwords July 2019 SALE!

From July 1st through July 31st you will be able to purchase my e-book for 25% Off Of The Usual Price through Smashwords*.  It’s a great time for summer treats in the northern hemisphere and winter treats in the southern hemisphere.  So as we take another spin around the solar system on this island we call Earth, LET’S GET BAKING!
*As I understand this includes the Smashwords affiliates.

https://www.smashwords.comhttps://www.amazon.comWhen the time is right go to my Smashwords ordering page or use the widget below.  If you prefer to work from a paper recipe book, there is also a great deal at Amazon.com.
It is my understanding presently that… If you purchase a paper copy of my book on Amazon you can then also download a copy of the e-book For FREE!  Keep the e-book for yourself and give the paper-book to a friend 🙂 July

Announcement, Podcast, Self-publishing

Coming Soon … Whidbey Island Writing Podcast?

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Tom E. Trimbath, author
Tom E. Trimbath

You will of course remember my friend, Tom Trimbath — the gent who helped coach me through getting my first recipe book published on Amazon. Tom is a great guy and we have continued to talk about various creative ideas to produce together. One of these is a collaborative writing project, another is to present a series of self-publishing workshops, and we’ve talked about starting a podcast!

A podcast — that’s neat! What’s the plan, Don?

Whidbey Island map
Whidbey Island – We are here!

Our plan so far is to keep things fairly open — we want to talk about all-things-writing as it relates to Whidbey Island. Self-publishing, marketing, writing groups on Whidbey, local authors, visiting authors, you name it.  I have portable recording gear, so one of our ideas too is to produce our podcast recordings at different locations on Whidbey including local business who would be interested in hosting us and in turn receive a plug on our show.

COOL!  When can I tune-in?

My book available on Amazon, Smashwords, and …. EVERYWHERE!

Last month Tom and I set a goal — to record 1-2 podcast episodes by the end of June. As summer has switched on, this has been a bit of a juggle — and if you look at the calendar … yeah … time is drawing near. We are currently working to schedule our first recording tomorrow morning OR during next week. With launching our show we also have the recordings from the how-to self-publish workshops we have presented — so we should have a decent collection to start with out of the gate.

Stay Tuned!
~ Don

Book, Progress, Update

Bagpipe Book UPDATE!

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AS Most Of You Know I have been working on my next book — and it is close to DONE! The work has been going well and I am excited to debut it — but what is it?!?  Get ready, it’s a mouthful… UPDATE

SAMS Post 1889
SAMS Post 1889 — that’s me on the left, #94

While it looks to include some modern-traditional Scottish & Irish recipes, the book will in-part serve as a FUNdraiser for my Scottish American Military Society veterans Post.  The main feature of this text is military & patriotic Scottish & American bagpipe tunes & their histories. The News about this — the UPDATE — I finished writing the tune histories Sunday night! This is a major chunk of work on this project and the accomplishment feels GREAT 🙂

I sent these histories to one of my Post-mates yesterday who is formerly a copy editor.  He’ll go over my work while I keep my nose to the grindstone retouching the notation, finishing the writing in the beginning of the book, and starting to write the sales paragraphs for the back of the book.  Suffice it to say — there is still some work to go, however with this latest development I Am OPTIMISTIC that this book will be completed and that I will have copies-in-hand by or before my target end-of-June release date. 😀 UPDATE

& Updates On A Few Other Things…

Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies

While I’m EXCITED to get the Post Piper book released, completing that project paves the way for me to return to re-doing my mini freE-book.  My plan is for this project is to first go up on Smashwords with the possibility of following as a book &/or short recipe book on Amazon. A few weeks ago I did a second publication of my e-book on Smashwords — previously only available on Amazon. The cool thing with Smashwords is that they push your e-book to all the other e-book platforms — B&N, Kobo, Overdrive — EVERYONE! Go check it out — my e-book is currently lower-priced on Smashwords right now than it is on Amazon … or at least it was the last I checked 😉 UPDATE

ENJOY ~ Don UPDATE

Click here for my debut recipe book & e-book on Amazon or use the Smashwords widget to buy the e-book in your preferred format Right Here! 😀

Announcement, e-Book, e-Publishing, Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies, Progress

I’ve Published WIDE!

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make your own darn good cookiesIf you’re not already familiar, let me tell you a little about the world of self-publishing.  I’m still learning about this myself, so my details might be a little fuzzy, but here goes … PUBLISH

Last October I published my recipe book on Amazon.com.  A month later I followed with publishing the e-book version.  When you release your e-book out with just one self-publishing company that’s referred to as ‘publishing exclusive‘.  When you put it out with multiple companies that’s called ‘publishing wide‘.
(This is a rather good article on publishing exclusive & wide and the pros & cons …. if you can stay awake through it.) PUBLISH

As of TODAY I have published wide! PUBLISH

smashwordsOver the weekend I uploaded my e-book to Smashwords.com.  When your manuscript is formatted correctly — that is when it meets the particulars of Smashwords — they then push your e-book product out to roughly twenty other companies**.  While I uploaded my e-book to Smashwords Sunday, 24-hours later I received noticed I’ve officially published wide! PUBLISH
(** also known as getting accepted into the Smashwords Premium Catalog)

OverDriveKobo Rakuteningram contentAnother great thing about having my e-book go out to these other e-reader entities is libraries.  Many libraries get their e-books from companies other than Amazon.  My understanding is that most draw their e-books from — chiefly — OverDrive and Kobo.  If they don’t have it already, please contact your local library and ask them to purchase a copy of my book (in addition to Amazon it should also be with Ingram) and a copy of my e-book. PUBLISH

I’m glad to be with Amazon.com, and I’m glad to be widening my net so people who enjoy other e-reader devices can access my recipes.  Just think, if I get as many sales per month with these twenty other companies as I do with Amazon right now . . . well . . . I won’t be living rich, but it would be a nice little chunk of change to bring in. PUBLISH