Publish Your Memoir: East Haven High School May 1

The Writing Continues...

Mr. Doug Gardner, English Literature teacher at the East Haven High School, teaches workshop participants two different online publishing tools with three different publishing options. The first tool, www.blurb.com, allows its users to create their own book and publish it using software templates downloaded directly from the site. Blurb is an excellent publishing source for combining a lot of photos with text. Blurb offers two options for book creation. One is an online software called Bookify and the other is a downloadable software called BookSmart. By clicking on "Apps" on the Blurb website, you can choose Blurb BookSmart or Bookify Online. Bookify is designed for photo books but it can be used for text focused books as well.

The second online publishing tool and a third book creation option is called CreateSpace: www.createspace.com. CreateSpace is owned by amazon.com and is a great tool for text focused books and memoirs. Once you have created an account in CreateSpace, the site assumes that you have already written and titled your memoir. It is designed so that you can upload your written and formatted text and images in one step. CreateSpace is also very low cost. The cost to create a book using this tool is only between $3.00 and $10.00!

Mr. Gardner went over all of these tools during session three of the workshop. There were 13 High School student volunteers who worked directly with the workshop participants to set up accounts with either Blurb.com or CreateSpace, and help download the necessary templates and software for the option chosen by the workshop member. Several students scanned photographs and saved them onto a USB flash drive for the participants so that these photos could later be inserted into the final books.

The student volunteers are part of the honors program and were credited with Community Service hours for participating in the workshop. This inter-generational partnership between the students and workshop participants provided enrichment and learning for both.

Mr. Gardner's presentation for Writing Your Life session three can be found here.