Tag Archives: challenges

Natural birth pangs growing intensely

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Natural birth pangs are growing intensely as 2020 moves on. The now normal reaction is, “Don’t bother me, it’s nothing new.” But they’re now closer & harder—and increasingly they are affecting the entire world. This month Lamb & Lion Ministries sent out their May Lamplighter magazine entitled The Signs of Nature. I support this excellent and trusted resource of prophetic news and information. The links are for free PDF downloads. Natural birth pangs growing intensely and who listens? … Continue reading →

Pressure brings repentance using stress

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Yes, pressure brings repentance using stress to reveal problems with our character. Look at what COVID-19 has done for us. Most of us are feeling pressure to whine, complain, be rude, give up, or act obnoxious. If our character is mature and fruitful, our reaction is to seek ways to help others in this tough time, and to seek the Lord who is the only one with a plan and the power to bring it to pass. … Continue reading →

Peace relax mitigations working better than 1918

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Peace relax mitigations working better than 1918. I received a post from Grady’s Fire in my bones blog today. As you can see from the graphic he used, to the left, we tried many of the same things in 1918. I know it’s different times—no air travel then, we had no antibiotics to use until WWII, no anti-virals, and many more things. BUT, with 103,000,000 people in that day and 675,000 killed, that’s .5% killed. If we have … Continue reading →

The distraction of COVID-19 fear is foolishness

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The distraction of COVID-19 fear is foolishness. I’m not saying that the virus is not dangerous. You should be following the CDC guidelines. But the fear is foolishness. Life in the flesh is a terminal condition. Your flesh is going to die. There have only been two men in history whose flesh did not die: Enoch and Ezekiel. This is nothing new and the death of your flesh is no big deal. Unless, of course, you have … Continue reading →

Building powerful presentations with type

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I received a solid article on presentation design this morning. Building powerful presentations with type requires good typographic knowledge and a clear understanding of readability. I don’t think Illene went far enough on some points, but basically, keep it simple and clean with legible fonts. Simple, right? Certainly not! You’re fighting habitual reader/listener issues—boredom, attention deficit, ignorance, and a host of other issues. Your presentation needs to be one of your most powerful tools. You need superior tools—and … Continue reading →

Book marketing sanely gets attention the old-fashioned way

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It seems like book marketing sanely gets attention the old-fashioned way with well-written content. Sarah, in her blog Marketing Christian Books, has an interesting post this morning called How to get more attention for your books. The idea of intense, seemingly unnatural, social campaigns may be slowly passing away. Don’t get too excited though. The idea that search engines are pulling back in front of social media is no real surprise. However, it remains true that this applies more to … Continue reading →

New InDesign update arrives with nice feature upgrades

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The new InDesign update arrives with more than just a bunch of fixes. It gives us new controls for shading and borders in consecutive paragraphs. You can now export a document as individual page PDFs. There are several other things which might interest you. You can find them at Adobe’s What’s New page. Dealing with consecutive paragraphs As you probably recall, if you had shading or borders applied to consecutive paragraphs, you were forced to have a style … Continue reading →

Believe your book will change lives

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Susan, at Marketing Christian Books, makes an excellent point this morning—even for non-believers. You have to believe your book will change lives to market it effectively. This is contrary to the publisher’s position which is to believe your book will make them money. That may drive your publisher, but it will not drive your readers. Here’s a quote from Susan: Do I believe that my book has the power to help someone change their life for eternity? … Continue reading →

Kindle image size rules change again

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Again, Kindle image size rules change. Not a whole lot, but the new outrageous Kindle image sizes become more understandable. I was reading a Kindle formatting guide, from Amazon, the other day which said full-width images needed to be 3000 pixels wide. This is not that bad. However, in Aaron Shepard’s Publishing Blog today, I read the following paragraphs: But not long ago, I received one of those dread quality notices from Amazon, in this case warning me of … Continue reading →

2018 publishing realities are no surprise

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The 2018 publishing realities are no surprise to any of us who have been working and keeping track of sales, books, and so on. Traditional publishers believe they’ve whipped the self-publishing problem. But though there is some stability, they are ignoring many key facts. Mike Shatzkin gives us some insight Here’s a quote from today’s post. He sees tradpub missing the elephant in the dining room—Amazon One “tell” is that Amazon doesn’t believe ebook sales are reducing, they … Continue reading →