Of e-books and such

Right before I retired from the library, a bookmobile patron approached me to help her publish in electronic format a novel she had written and published a few years ago. Since it is a fairly easy process, I offered to show her where to go so that she could do it herself, but she wanted to pay me to do it for her. I told her that was not necessary, but I will be going over this afternoon to try. I just put my Elijah book for sale on Kindle -- all three of the books already being available in Nook format -- and hope we will be able to manage the same for her. If she has all the things in acceptable form already (.doc version of the text and a doable form of the cover), it should go quickly. As with so many things of this sort, it takes more time to sign up for the account and the background information than it does to actually get the books out there for sale.

I did the Elijah book this morning and will do the other two books later. The Elijah book has been selling well lately -- another five copies were sold yesterday -- so I thought I would put it out there first. As I told Steve Payne, it's not like my royalties are going to push me into another income tax bracket or anything.

Another bookmobile patron who read my mystery was impressed enough to request copies of the other two books from the library. They don't have copies, so I wrapped up a couple for them to take to him today.

And one of the Spanish-speaking patrons asked for my telephone number because she had some questions about something. They explained that I no longer work there and that they could not give out my number. Katie told me she had emailed me the patron's number so I could contact her if I wished. I never got the email, though, so I will have to run by the library and see if I can figure out where Katie sent it. This particular patron is the mother of one of the children I used to see at the Ho-Chunk Headstart program. He is now in second grade and they come into the library all the time. He is, of course, bilingual and I helped his mother find an English tutor.

So the library still hangs onto me in its own way.

Tom, by the way, was interviewed by the local newspaper about the paintings on display at the library. He hmmphed about it, but he did give the interview. He grumbled that there must not be any real news if they are writing about a bunch of amateur paintings on the wall at the local library. I pointed out that the fact of my retirement was mentioned on the front page of the paper in three consecutive issues. So clearly, there is no real news.