Editio Self-Publishing discussion

Hi. I am not quite sure where to post this. I hope it is appropriate to post it here.

I am at the very early stages of self-publishing and have been using standard sources like Gaughran and Quinn. In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to download the software they recommend and use some the on-line sources they talk about.

In the process my laptop has been subjected to a level of attack by all kinds of viruses which I have never experienced before. Many of the programmes I was trying to download were not robust, and some were clearly infected. There are worse things than pop-up ads.

I have two recommendations.

1) Before you start downloading self-publishing software make sure you have security software installed. I use Norton 360. It costs me £60 p.a. (I am a pensioner) and paid for itself several times over in the last few days.

2) The recommendations in the authors I mentioned were probably safe when they made them. Gaughran and Quinn are responsible people. They are not safe now.

What has been working for me is 'open source' software, which tends to be stable and robust and services provided by the majors like Yahoo and Google which are safe. (Yes, I get it about oligopoly. My laptop doesn't.

GIMP is an open source version of Photoshop and is free. You can make covers with it but you would need some previous experience.

If you have Windows you have no need to download photo organising software. Windows Live Photo Editor is just as good as most of them and is safe.

For free images I strongly recommend flickr from Yahoo. The geeks do not seem to think it is cool. It is large, it is safe, it is free and if you chose 'creative commons' you shouldn't have problems with rights.

I also downloaded Firefox which is an open source browser. It seems robust. Still cautious.

If this is inappropriate I apolgise. If it's useful let me know and I will update.

If you think this is useful you can - as we used to say in primary school - 'pass it on'.

Kind regards

Andrew

try www.lulu.com for self publishing. so far I have had no problems over about 5 years

Adam wrote: "try www.lulu.com for self publishing. so far I have had no problems over about 5 years"

Thanks

The easiest is Amazon with KDP and Createspace.