Microsoft Word – M.L. Humphrey

New Releases and Random Thoughts

First up. The Word 365 titles are out. Main titles are Word 365 for Beginners and Intermediate Word 365. Available in ebook on all major retailers as well as libraries and in print on Amazon right now but making their way to all the other places, too. (IngramSpark doesn’t approve print books on the weekend so hopefully I can review and finalize today.)

The spin-off titles for that series are also making their way to all the sites. Those would be Text Formatting, Page Formatting, Lists, Tables, Styles & Breaks, and Track Changes. Reminder that it’s a better deal to buy the main books than each of those individual titles since those individual titles are just extracts from the larger books. But if you just have that one area you want to learn about, then they’re a good choice.

Now for the writerly thoughts…

I tried to publish direct with Apple again with the main Word books but then just gave it up when I published the spin-offs. Too much effort and headache for too little extra reward. The spin-off titles were live within 12 hours, the main ones took three days. So going direct actually took longer. And because of the mess that is their pricing page those books are available in fewer countries, too.

Every single release makes me think about the issues of Amazon versus wide. Because if you’re wide the level of effort involved in any release is at least double and usually much more than that. I publish to Amazon in ebook and paperback, Ingramspark in paperback (and sometimes hard cover), D2D in ebook, Kobo in ebook, Nook in ebook, and Google in ebook.

That’s six times the effort. But not six times the results. Despite being wide I still am probably 75-85% Amazon revenue.

So why be wide? (Aside from not wanting to help them create a monopoly that will then be turned against authors to suck every penny from them. If you haven’t read that Doctorow article about the enshittification of TikTok, do so.)

One of the main reasons is because Amazon is very trigger-happy sometimes. I’m seeing mentions this week that a number of authors have had their accounts suspended because they’re in KU, so required to be exclusive, but their books have been pirated and posted elsewhere.

Instead of noting that pirate sites are largely out of an author’s control (because they don’t really care all that much about takedown notices, seeing as they’re thieves to begin with) Amazon just went after those authors.

It’s scary to put your entire livelihood in the hands of a company that runs largely on bots and cheap foreign labor. (No offense meant to that overseas labor. They try but employees can only do what they can do. And when you’re a cheap, replaceable cog in a voracious machine designed to chew everyone up and spit them out when they’ve lost value, well…you aren’t exactly empowered to be a problem solver.)

I should thank the person who reviewed my print books, though, because they caught a typo for me on one of my covers. (Reminder that being self-employed means the incompetent employee that made that stupid mistake is always you.)

So exclusivity just makes me twitchy.

I wish readers would turn to libraries or Kobo Plus or Scribd instead, but they don’t. They just see convenience instead of the long-term harm.

And KU is a big market to not have access to. At this point the fact that it can only be accessed by authors who are exclusive to Amazon is wrong. The biggest player in the industry wants to increase their dominance even more and they’re allowed to do so with impunity.

So authors take the hits on both sides of it. If you’re exclusive you know that you can lose your entire livelihood at any time Amazon makes a decision against you. If you’re not exclusive you suffer from lack of visibility on the biggest sales platform because of how Amazon treats KU titles in its rankings and you give up access to a pretty decent chunk of the ebook market at the same time.

It would be nice if the regulatory authorities would step in on any of this, but I have no hope for that at this point. They should. But they won’t.

The other writing-related thought I had yesterday was about Jim Croce. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with his music, but he’s one of my all-time favorites. I’m a very lyric-driven listener and he has some of the best lyrics out there, IMO.

The song I was listening to yesterday is called Age. I’d link to it on YouTube but I don’t see an official channel for him and I try not to link to channels that look like they’re set up to make money off of someone else’s content.

But look up the lyrics at least, they’re very good.

Why I’m writing about him here, though, is because I looked him up on Wikipedia. I knew he’d died young but couldn’t remember how young or what killed him. (Plane crash at the age of 30).

What caught my attention though was the mention at the very end of the career section that he’d written a letter to his wife that she received after his death where he’d decided to quit music and stick to writing short stories and movie scripts.

Here was a man who I would argue is one of the best singer-songwriters of the past century and he had not, while he was alive, found financial success or acclaim.

He’d already written and recorded some of the most timeless classics in music. And yet…He was going to quit.

He’d already done the work. But it hadn’t found success yet.

Now, would the world have discovered him if he hadn’t died tragically? I don’t know. We have this weird thing with music where someone dies and suddenly their music charts. So maybe if he hadn’t died he would’ve gone home and raised his son and written movie scripts and a few diehard fans would’ve listened to his songs but he wouldn’t have achieved the level of fame he did.

It’s scary, though, to think that someone that good was going to quit.

Of course, just because he had written works of genius that hadn’t found their moment yet doesn’t mean anyone else who’s thinking of quitting is in the same situation. Survivorship bias is real. We look at all the stories of “I persevered” and forget the Of Human Bondage flip-side where someone sacrifices everything for their art and fails miserably.

So I don’t know that his life is a “just keep going” lesson. But it’s something to think about.

Okay. Cozy audiobooks did well enough with libraries that I’m off to record number three. Once I update a million, zillion links for the new releases.

Free Ebooks

It’s summer. It’s hot. I have to move. I don’t want to. Because it’s hot. So I put a few books to free to make myself feel better.

Which is your gain. Haha.

Until the end of July (unless something drastic happens and I change my mind), you can get the ebook version of either Excel for Beginners or Word for Beginners for free on all major retailers.

If you already have the print versions it’s a great time to pick up the portable, color versions. If you don’t have one or the other yet, great time to check ’em out, because, free.

Now, keep in mind, Amazon sometimes has a mind of its own so it may fall off of free there unexpectedly. So if you click to Amazon and it shows as $4.99, try one of the other stores before you give up.

Enjoy!

Excel for Beginners: Amazon, Apple, Google, Nook, Kobo, Universal Link
Word for Beginners: Amazon, Apple, Google, Nook, Kobo, Universal Link

2021 Recap

I don’t normally do one of these, but it was a busy year and it’s quite possible that I published a few books but never mentioned that I’d done so.

I’m not one for big releases. I put a book out there, throw some AMS ads at it, try to remember to post to my blog and send a newsletter and maybe remember to do a FB post, and then it’s on to the next. If it does well, great. If it doesn’t, I turn the ads off and carry on.

So, 2021:

Let’s start with the video courses. New ones as well as two old ones that had been unpublished and I republished:

And now on to the books:

And some of the non-ML Humphrey stuff as well. The MH Lee title is very short, but I published it so I could publish the audio since that was a little experiment I did this year to see if I’d want to narrate the cozies myself since they’re written in first-person. (Conclusion, probably not because I’d need a better recording space than I currently have although it was interesting realizing how much more dynamic a story is in my head than on the page.):

I didn’t feel like it but I actually got a lot done this year. Keep in mind that about half of what you see above is either a collection or derived from other material so it was less writing than it looks like. But still…Not bad for a crazy up and down year where I also had to go through the process of listing my house twice, the process of selling it once, lived in a hotel for three weeks with my dog, and then had to move into a new place and go through all the fun of unpacking and setting up.

(Which I must find somewhat fun since I’ve already rearranged my office and my bedroom at least once each.)

What does 2022 have in store? I’d really love to dive in on some fiction. I’ve actually on my personal FB declared it the year I “walk into the woods” and basically try to get away from outside distractions so I can really focus in on the projects I want to do.

Of course, just yesterday I wrapped up the second draft of a non-fiction title. And it probably warrants a second title since I’d wanted to do a book about X and Y but only X fit in the first book. So…good intentions and all that.

Honestly as long as I’m moving forward and enjoying myself I call that a win. Hope you all had a good holiday and wishing you as good a new year as it can be.

New Releases and Random Writing Thoughts

First, I had a few new releases recently. Between moving and unpacking (how many books can one person own??), I didn’t post about them here because they were compilations of the Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Access titles I released earlier this year.

But here you go: Excel Essentials 2019, Word Essentials 2019, PowerPoint Essentials 2019, and Access Essentials 2019. These are perfect choices for anyone who knows they want to go as far as I can take them with learning one of the above programs. Otherwise I recommend starting with the beginner title in each series because often that’s all someone needs to learn when they’re just getting started.

Excel Essentials 2019 Cover — Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo

Word Essentials 2019 Cover — Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo

PowerPoint Essentials 2019 Cover — Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo

Access Essentials 2019 Cover — Amazon, Apple, Nook, Kobo

Now on to the writerly thoughts…

First, I had to work on these books a little earlier than I wanted to because of the lovely changes that IngramSpark (“IS”) has made recently. If you’re not aware of them, then settle in for a quick rant.

IS charges about $50 for every new title that’s uploaded to them and then they charge $25 to change a cover or change the interior. But there have always been promo codes floating around. Participate in NaNoWriMo, get a code for the next six months. Go to a conference, get a code for the next six months. Join a member organization like ALLI or IBPA get a code for however long it last until they decide to change it.

I joined IBPA and had a code from them that I happily used for all of my uploads and updates. But then suddenly this year IS decided that you could only use that code 50 times in a year. Which seems like a lot. 50 times. Who would need more than 50 uses?

Well, let’s look at my year-to-date. I published 22 titles so far. The four main Excel 2019 titles, three Word 2019 titles, three Access 2019 titles, three PowerPoint 2019 titles, and the Microsoft Office for Beginners 2019 title were all in paperback and hardcover. So that’s 28 uses of a code right there. Plus the other 8 titles that in this case were just paperback. So 36 uses for new titles.

Normally I might do something like update other titles I already had out to change the Also By page to reflect my new releases. If I did that for my cozies at this point I have 9 titles in paperback, paperback large print, and hard cover large print. That right there is 27 code uses and we’re not even touching on the new title which would be another three uses. So for one new release of my cozy mystery series I’d need 30 code uses.

Well, imagine how unhappy I was when IS decided that limiting codes to 50 uses per year wasn’t enough and instead decided that you could only use a code five times in a month. More uses per year (60), but it would take me six months to get all of my cozy titles updated for a new release under that scenario and wouldn’t be able to publish or update any other titles in the interim.

What makes it even worse is that they seem to have an automated process for interior updates once a book is published. So they’re literally charging $25 for a process that doesn’t involve a person. And they’re changing their rules to try and get that money out of authors who’ve been publishing with them for years who didn’t sign up for that kind of b.s.

(Their stated reason is because they want to support legitimate publishers only and not scammers, which…well. Way to throw the baby out with the bath water.)

So anyway. This latest release of four titles involved eight books, one paperback and one hard cover of each title. So to avoid paying $50 for books that might not make that money back (I do the hard covers for libraries but there’s no guarantee they’ll want the collections), I had to start the process in July and use my five codes in July and then finish it in August to do the last three titles.

Good times. Love me some self-publishing fuckery. (And there is always self-publishing fuckery.)

What else? If you haven’t yet heard about A+ Content on Amazon, it’s worth taking a look now that they’ve opened it up to all self-published authors. I’ve submitted some content for some of my titles, but it takes about a week to get approved from what I’ve heard so I don’t have examples of my own yet, but here is a link to what an author I know has done and I think it looks really good.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NJLC6R1

Scroll down to the From the Publisher section to see what she did.

One of the advantages with adding this content is that it can push an entire carousel of Sponsored Product ads down below that section, allowing authors to own more of their product page. (Not always, but sometimes.) Also, it’s pretty if done well. I think each of the images she’s added to her page there make a reader more likely to buy the book. For example, it takes what was already a strong image from the cover and makes it much larger and more engaging.

To add A+ Content, click on Promote and Advertise for one of your books and then scroll down to the A+ Content section. Next, choose a marketplace and click on Manage A+ Content. That takes you to a separate dashboard where you can create your content.

You can add the same content across books by listing multiple ASINs. (If you have a lot of books you should really have a list of these as I discussed ages ago in Excel for Self-Publishers which is no longer widely available but still available on my Payhip store.)

Content has to be added for each country, but there’s a note that they’ll let you know which other countries would accept content in that language and let you carry it across. I won’t know how well that works until my content is approved and I can test it out, but basically if you’re adding new content, just do it for one country and wait for it to get approved before you try to do all of the countries.

Also, if you use the comparison chart option it’s not well-sized for cover images, but you can do a white background and have your cover only take up part of the allowed space and that seems to work.

What else? I’m sure there were some other writerly thoughts I’ve been having lately but I’m still in post-move malaise so don’t ask me what they were. If I remember, I’ll post again.

7 New Releases

I had no intention of announcing the release of seven new books at one time, but, well, I forgot to announce the Word 2019 releases and then it happened that the Easy Excel 2019 proofs arrived at the same time as the Excel 2019 Formulas and Functions Study Guide was finished and here we are.

So, if you have an interest in Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel 2019, read on. If not, you can skip this.

First up, the Microsoft Word 2019 versions of Word for Beginners and Intermediate Word are now out. Once more, if you bought the originals, no need to buy these ones, too. I don’t think there’s anything so drastically different between them that you’d need the new ones. I think I may have moved one item from the intermediate level to the beginner level but that’s about it.

You can click on the images below to be taken to the store of your choice.

Okay. Next up. The Easy Excel Essentials 2019 books are now out. These are intermediate-level titles that focus on one specific topic: PivotTables, Charts, Conditional Formatting, and The IF Functions.

In this case, I’d say there are substantial differences in the IF Functions title because Excel 2019 includes IFS, MAXIFS, and MINIFS which didn’t exist before. So if you’re looking forward and don’t need to worry about backwards compatibility, this is the book you want. If you work with a lot of different Excel users and so can’t risk using the latest and greatest, then stick with the old version. Excel 2019 Charts also covers histograms which was not covered in the original title and Excel 2019 Conditional Formatting is expanded a bit.

Also, the print versions of these books have very different formatting. I decided this time around to go with the standard computer book size formatting for the print versions so these are all 7.5″ x 9.25″. They also have larger text than the original series so may be better for those who struggle with small type.

The astute observer may also notice that the 2019 books do not include Formatting or Printing which were part of the original series. Mostly that’s because even though I meant the titles in this series to be bought as one-offs a lot of people buy the entire series at once so I wanted to focus in more this time around. Really, if you need formatting and printing, just buy Excel 2019 Beginner. It will cost you less and you will learn more.

Okay. Final release to announce, Excel 2019 Formulas and Functions Study Guide. This is the equivalent to the quiz books for the Excel Essentials series. Basically, it takes the content of Excel 2019 Formulas and Functions and walks through that content in a question and answer format. There are also ten bonus exercises at the end to test putting the functions to use in real-world scenarios.

Once more, if you already bought and worked with the original 50 Useful Excel Functions and 50 More Excel Functions and their associated quiz books, probably no need to buy this one. It does cover some new functions like TEXTJOIN and IFS but you can probably fill in the gaps from within Excel itself without needing to buy a new book for it.

(Not that I object to making money, so buy it if you want. Just saying you don’t have to.)

Back To School Sale

Since the world is still on fire and many people are dealing with back to school craziness, I thought I’d do what I could and put a bunch of school-friendly titles on sale for a couple weeks. Each of the below titles is on sale for $2.99 USD.

Click on any of the images below to be taken to a Books2Read page for that title that has all the stores listed. (If you’re already set up with them you’ll go straight to your chosen store.) Or you can use any of the store pages on the right-hand side here and get to the books that way.

Excel Essentials

Word Essentials

PowerPoint Essentials

Access Essentials

Data Principles & Budgeting

Keep in mind this is only for the ebook versions, but all of these titles also have paperback versions and most have hardcover versions as well that are, I think, reasonably priced.

And some of these are very good deals indeed, because I was being lazy so I priced everything at $2.99 which means that Access for Beginners, for example, which is usually $7.99 is on sale for the same price as Excel for Beginners, which is normally $4.99. (USD. But equivalent discounts in your local currency.)

Enjoy.

New Release: Microsoft Office for Beginners

Just a quick note that buyers can now get Excel for Beginners, Word for Beginners, and PowerPoint for Beginners in one book, Microsoft Office for Beginners. This one is geared towards those who are looking to get a basis in all three program at once. It gives a bit of a price discount compared to buying the individual titles by themselves.

The ebook version ($9.99 USD) is already available everywhere. The paperback version ($29.95 USD) will be available within the next day or so. Click on the image below to choose the store you want or on one of the store tabs on the right-hand side.

Excel, Word, and PowerPoint Essentials

I published Excel Essentials, the collection of the four individual titles in the Excel Essentials series a while back. At the time I didn’t publish the ebook version on Amazon, but that is now available on Amazon for anyone interested.

And because I am also done with the Word Essentials series and the PowerPoint Essentials series at this point, those too are now available as standalone titles. Note that Word Essentials and PowerPoint Essentials only contain two titles each so are that much less expensive than Excel Essentials which contains four titles.

Also, for at least the next week or so Word Essentials and PowerPoint Essentials will not be available on Apple but they will be there soon. (I’m changing how I distribute my books there and it takes a little longer than I’d expected.)

The books are all available in ebook, paperback, and hard cover but it may take a few days for them to reach all the stores.

For those of you who already own the individual titles (Word for Beginners, Intermediate Word, PowerPoint for Beginners, Intermediate PowerPoint, etc.) there is no new material in these books, it’s just another way to provide the information for those who know they want it all at the time of initial purchase.

As of now I’m done with writing new material on Microsoft Office, but if there’s something specific you want to see that I didn’t cover, let me know and if I think it’s within my skillset I’ll work on it. That’s actually how Excel for Budgeting and Mail Merge for Beginners both came to exist.

Excel, Word, and PPT Books Now in Hard Cover

Just a quick announcement to let you know that Excel for Beginners, Intermediate Excel, 50 Useful Excel Functions, 50 More Excel Functions, Excel Essentials, Word for Beginners, Intermediate Word, and PowerPoint for Beginners are all now available in a hard cover version.

IMG_4875 - Copy cropped

I have to say, I’m pretty excited about this one because the books feel much more substantial in hard cover than paperback. (That Excel Essentials one which combines the other four Excel titles into one book is a behemoth. It’s one inch thick and weighs two pounds! Who knew I had so much to say about Excel.)

The covers are case laminate so there might be a little denting at the edges like you can see on 50 More Excel Functions in the photo, but overall I was pretty impressed with them. And keep in mind with the skinnier ones that the spine text might be slightly off center because of print-on-demand variances, but it will be there on all of them.

They should be available on Amazon (here’s my author page for the U.S.) as well as Barnes & Noble and any other location where you can order print books.

A New Release (or Six): Mail Merge

It’s been a busy week. I know better than to do this to myself, but I just released six new titles. The big one is Mail Merge for Beginners, which covers how to create customized letters, envelopes, and mailing labels in Microsoft Word using an Excel-based list of entries.

And, because it’s a pretty short and sweet guide, it’s only $2.99. So if that’s something you need (I certainly used mail merge back when I was working as a secretary at my dad’s little sign shop), then check it out.

It will also be available in paperback for $7.99. The paperback is up on Amazon now, but not yet linked to the ebook–that should happen in a couple days–but it will come up in search. It will slowly make its way to anywhere else you like to buy paperbacks in the next couple of weeks.

In addition to the mail merge book, I also just released five titles in a series called Easy Word Essentials. These books take specific topics from Word for Beginners and Intermediate Word and present them as standalone topics. They cover text formatting, page formatting, lists, tables, and track changes.

So if any of those topics are of interest and you haven’t already bought the two main Word titles, then those might be worth checking out as well. Each one is $2.99 and the paperbacks are $7.99. Same situation as above, the paperbacks aren’t yet linked on Amazon but can be found with a search and will be soon. They will also make their way to other platforms over the next couple weeks.

Easy Word Essentials

And now I can go enjoy my Easter and get back to proofing the next cozy mystery. Those murders don’t solve themselves, you know. 🙂 Happy holiday and/or family time to you all.