Well, it certainly has been a while hasn’t it. You see, this whole “blog” began because a few friends wanted to do at least something to help influence their world for the better. We had some things to say, we had interests we wanted to share, and we wanted an excuse to do some digging, researching, and uncovering. And in todays world its ever easier to share oneself with the rest of the world. If you have access to a computer and the internet, you can acquire everything you need to publish your own book, or even movie…

Open Office:
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first, lose the old Microsoft Office programs you may be using and download yourself the OpenOffice Suite here. Open office contains a powerpoint type program, an spreadsheet program, but more importantly, a nice MS Word compatable word-processing program. Use this free program to write that amazing book you’ve been putting off…but you’re going to need some images won’t you?

Gimp:
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Next, download Gimp here. Gimp is a great image manipulation program that is extremely versatile and comparable to photoshop, and possibly illustrator. It can save in both raster and vector formats, and I’ve used it to make animated gifs for my own website

Now that you’ve written your book, and created all the images necessary, you’re going to have to put it together in a publishable format…

Scribus:
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Now, just download Scribus here. Scribus is an open source free desktop publisher, which helps you layout your book in a nice professional way. I’ve used Scribus to put together a couple of my small comics…One of which is here.
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But wait, where are you going to publish this book, and how are you going to get an ISBN and all that stuff?

Lulu:
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Lulu is a great way for you to publish that book. It’s an online on-demand publisher that even helps set you up with an official ISBN and barcode for the cover.

Well, now that you’ve written your book, complete with graphics, and published it on Lulu, all that’s left is for everyone to buy it and learn everything you have to offer. Thanks for being so great.

Lucy.