A Gold Rush Writer extra

Tom Johnson -- a digital trailblazer -- leads this day-long workshop highlighting basic computer programs and techniques readily available to help you publish your novel, memoir, poetry, dissertation, cookbook. Photo collections, enhanced with your text, can be published, as well.

• Learn how to use the computer applications you already have to prepare and publish your manuscripts.

• Learn how free, on-line web applications can guide you though the formatting of your work so it will look good in print.

• Learn how those formatted pages, created with easily available word processing templates and including graphics, can be saved and uploaded to web-based, print-on-demand companies.

Those pages become chapters that easily become hardcover or paperback books -- or an e-book -- available directly from your author-publisher's page and also listed on Amazon. You set the prices and the author's royalty, which is considerably more than traditional publishing house royalties.

• You will leave the workshop with rich introduction to the vocabulary and tools of Print-on-Demand publishing, a familiarity with using those tools, a detailed checklist of the self-publishing process and direct references to software and vendors to take your publishing skills to the next level.

Lagniappe: Learn how to project the statistical probability that your title will be a best-seller on The New York Times list. (Well, no guarantees, but it's fun.)

Not for rank beginners: This is a fast-moving workshop, covering a semester's worth of instruction in a day or day-and-a-half, so we must request a certain level of computing skills. We assume you are comfortable connecting to a wireless network, with using a word process program and knowing how to set margins, select fonts, have used headers and footers, inserted and formatted page numbers and, ideally, have inserted some graphic images into your document. You should know something about downloading and installing computer programs from the internet and be familiar with uploading and downloading files. Finally, we hope you know how to save a file in different formats, especially PDF.

Workshop attendees are asked to bring the following:

• A 3-4 page example of a manuscript that includes
• A chapter title
• One or two sub-headings within the chapter
• One or two images inserted in the text

If you can bring a laptop with WiFi capability, that's great. If not, don't worry because we often will be asking you to work in two-person teams anyway.

We will spend a fast and rich hour introducing the basics of Search-Save-Retrieve for first-timers to Gold Rush Writers, along with reviewing for repeat participants what has evolved since we met last spring.