4-H Parent Meeting

Our family is involved in 4-H. Each January we have a meeting where the parents do the work, taking over offices their children might have. Since one of my daughters is the chairman this year, that meant I had to hold the gavel at this particular meeting. It also meant I had to give a talk during the program. I chose to give an illustrated talk ~ 10 Steps to Getting a Book Published. I have no clue whether the kids enjoyed the talk, but it gave me a chance to get my feet wet by speaking in front of people about my writing--something I'm not very accustomed to. The ten steps covered were:

• The Book Proposal
• The Editor's Desk
• Making it Through The Publishing Board
• The Offer and Contract
• Macro Edits
• Line Edits
• The Book Cover
• The Gally or Advanced Reader Copy
• The Book's Release
• The Book Launch

I'm sure I missed a step or two, but hopefully this helped 4-H'ers see the process involved in making a book and why it sometimes takes 12-18 months for a book to hit store shelves. I'm supposed to get my line edits today--we now have less than 5 months to Release Day! I'm excited. I hope you are too!