Welcome to Songdove Books Newsletter: September 2014
October 1st, and I royally missed sending out the September newsletter! Will you forgive me? September was a strange month for both me and Songdove Books. On the day job front, work was the slowest it's been in months!
My latest book, "A Year in Prayer With Jesus" launched on the September Long Weekend. It's available in a wide range of online locations in both paperback and various ebook formats.
As of this newsletter, no one has signed up on the calendar to publicly begin Day One in a bid to cover the various prayer points in this book every single day for an entire year.
Pumpkin Pie From the Ground Up! (Well, Almost!)
An ebook was also launched in September that shares my own recipe from picking out a pumpkin to breaking it down and turning into pie filling that everyone who's ever sat around my table at holiday meals has raved about. It is a departure from what I usually write, but it was a fun project and can be offered as a paperback booklet if requested. This book is entitled, "Pumpkin Pie from the Ground Up! (Well, Almost!)" and yes, the humour in that title continues throughout the book.
One Thought Leads to Another. . . and Another. . .
Towards the end of the month, an idea came to me about tweeting, "A Year in Prayer With Jesus". As it turns out, most of the book is quite tweetable with very little tweaking to make most prayer prompts fit into 140 characters. Songdove Books is also on Pinterest, so the thought progressed into making each prayer prompt into it's own image based on the book cover's background image. The result actually turned out quite well, which led to a third thought! Amazing how one thought leads to another eh? My goal now is to create 7 prayer cards for every day of the book's year and make them available for purchase. Unfortunately, most places I could go to have prices that to me, are prohibitively high if I wish to resell them to you.
I am therefore working on a system integration with my website that would let you buy each card one at a time at a price point that would bring a month-long sampling down a bit more than what I've been quoted to date. The beauty of buying one at a time is that you don't have to buy ALL the prayer cards necessarily, but can pick and choose which cards you wish to purchase. Prices go down with bulk purchases as well. The service that lets me do this offers a wide range of options, but I've narrowed them down to greeting cards, flat cards (postcard size), image downloads and ecards (which are free to send to anyone you wish). This service isn't live yet on my site because I'm currently not happy with the gallery presentation. You're welcome to give me feedback after looking at this page here: http://songdove.fa-ct.com/wordpress-mu/songdovemusings/a-year-in-prayer-with-jesus-daily-prayer-cards/ Clicking an image will open it up full-size and once everything on the page has loaded, the various buy choices will appear across the bottom of the image. Presentation options include the basic gallery thumbnail presentation, or a tiled mosaic presentation so far. Lightbox presentations or slideshow presentations don't work well with the buy choice links. But so far, all gallery options have the thumbnails quite close together. . . If you as my mailing list are ok with that, then I'll go live with one of the two presentations that work. But if you have critical thoughts as much as I do about it, then I'll have to keep looking for something that works a bit better before taking this concept live.
Wrap-up
So this month was all about pumpkins and prayer. Considering the Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up in October shortly, that combination of thoughts is very timely. If you've been wondering what to do for family devotions this year around the table, you may want to follow in one reviewer's footsteps and buy a copy of "A Year in Prayer With Jesus" to nicely fill that void. If you're looking for a lighter pumpkin pie this year that might actually be healthy for someone in your household, you may wish to purchase the ebook, "PumpkIn Pie From the Ground Up! (Well, Almost!)".
I don't know what October has to offer yet this year, but I do know the wetter weather is playing havoc with my health already. Fall is a beautiful time of year with leaves changing colours and decorating sidewalks as they fall from the trees. The temperatures get more livable as we leave the seering Okanagan heat behind. Cooler temperatures sometimes bring more precipitation in this part of the world as well, which is the bit my body kicks up a fuss over. Myself, I love the rain! It is so incredibly peaceful and quieting. I have yet to convince my lungs of the same thing however. So pray for me as we enter this Fall season. Pray for health, for domestic economic sustainability, and for God's continued leading as I move forward.
No book projects are on the horizon at this time, which means it's time to begin thinking about Fall, Christmas or Winter book tours to help get the word out about the books currently on the Songdove Books line-up. An offline order sheet has been created now, which you are welcome to download at this link here: http://songdove.fa-ct.com/stuff/bookorderform.pdf Feel free to share that with others who may not be comfortable ordering books online.
Past Newsletter:
http://songdove.fa-ct.com/wordpress-mu/songdovemusings/past-newsletters/
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