I had an idea for a 365-page journal. Maybe 366. On each page, it would have the date, a quote relating to abuse or healing, and perhaps also a line drawing of a flower or leaf or something else simple and from nature. I would call it “Book of Days.”
It sounded so easy! And then I started working on it and it wasn’t so easy after all.
Poking around finding quotes is fun. But when I find a fantastic one, it makes all the others look sort of dull. Now I am thinking I ought to get about 1000 and choose the best ones. My work has just tripled!
And then how do I get it published? It would be useless as an e-book, because nobody could write in it. I doubt if anybody would want to download and print a 366-page PDF. Even if they did, the pages would float around and get lost because the book wouldn’t be bound.
These days there is such a thing as “print on demand.” You send a company a digital file of your book and they keep it on file and print the number of books you order from them. I priced a few and they turned out to be about what I wished the retail price to be. In this day and age, 366 pages is one beeeeeg book.
Some of these companies leave the marketing to you, others do the marketing (except for book signings, of course.) That brings the price way up. But I do not think it would be a good use of my time to do the marketing, which would be a half-time job, at the very least, in the beginning. Especially since I have never done it before and would probably make a large number of beginners’ mistakes.
So I’m asking for help on three fronts.
One is with the quotes. Got any inspiring lines that you are willing to share? Here are a few of my favorites so far —
It is never the child’s fault. – Anon
In all the years still to come, may your body walk as fast as the love and passion that moves you. – Catalina
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong. – Leo Calvin Rosten
Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break. – Shakespeare, Macbeth
The tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds. – Mexican proverb
Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible. – Saint Francis of Assisi
Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent; but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again. – Finn Butler
When in worry
When in doubt
Run in circles
Scream and shout.
“EEK! EEK! EEK!”
– contemporary Wiccan spell
Two is with the illustrations. Can you draw maple leaves? Daisies? Weeds?
Three is with printing advice. Have you published a book? What good choices did you make? Did you make mistakes I could learn from?
I’m open to all feedback. Even if you think this is a really dumb idea — I need to hear it.
Ritual Abuse 
I love this idea! I think it would be nice, even if it was not as many pages, it would still be awesome. after all, 365 is a somewhat random number in a lot of ways and I don’t think I would actually write in it EVERY day… Like, 200 pages would still be amazing and so healing. I do have a few nice quotes I have collected over the years and also I draw and paint a bit, so I would love to contribute something. let me know,
Storey
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In a digital form, a person will be able to add pages of any size at desired dates as many as needed.
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This may be a good idea to gather such condensed wisdom that survivors can easily get. You should just pick them well and focus on defeating evil and personality building. May be, make a complex of such quotes. You can publish it on demand, of course. But if you don’t care about profits, you can put it online as a text file people can edit, or, even make a simple app for mobile devices to write a diary there.
First, quotes. The last example is solid. To find a big amount of quotes you can visit Jeff Moore’s facebook and site
https://www.facebook.com/JeffMooreMotivation
http://everydaypowerblog.com/
feel free to raid it.
Second, illustrations. May be you’d like a lot of free photos of flora from
http://www.cgtextures.com/
Third, publishing. I don’t deal with it, but targeted ads on the Internet will bring some customers.
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I don’t know anything about aps, because I don’t have a phone. Maybe I will learn if it will help the book!
A text file — pple could download it and write on the page, is that what you mean? That shouldn’t be hard to do. I could put up some test pages and ask you-all for feedback. I could also tell pple, if they are in the mood, to make a donation to a survivor-oriented non-profit.
Thanks for the pages to go looking for quotes. And the photos.
What is a targeted ad? You mean if I surf a lot looking for goldfish all of a sudden some of the pages I go to have ads for goldfish?
I just KNEW I would learn a lot from you-all!
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You’re welcome.
The best idea seems to be an app. It would be the most accessible and convenient for the most of people today. Besides a diary, you could add there the other necessities for survivors, like a holidays calendar, an organizer, a list of triggers to write, links to resources and phones. It should be easy to make such an app, you personally shouldn’t do it, you can hire a guy and publish the app in Android and Apple stores. It’s not hard, I think there should be even programs allowing to write it without programming knowledge. You can ask for donations to do it.
A text file, like .rtf, is the easiest way. You can insert pictures there and anyone can edit spaces left blank. But not much people will discover it.
A targeted ad appears on internet pages and search requests related by topics to it. Like those Google ads you see a lot. It requires a bit of money, of course.
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Looking into the future, I see a lot of learning coming my way!
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Hiya Jeanie,This sounds like a Very Great Idea !You will create an Outstanding Book ! Here are a couple of Quotes: Shoot for the moonEven if you missYou will land inthe stars. ( L. Brown ) Each momentis a placewe have never beenbefore. ( M Strand ) from Fairlight
From: ritualabuse To: nrainbows@yahoo.com Sent: Monday, April 20, 2015 1:02 PM Subject: [New post] I Need Some Help #yiv4016790598 a:hover {color:red;}#yiv4016790598 a {text-decoration:none;color:#0088cc;}#yiv4016790598 a.yiv4016790598primaryactionlink:link, #yiv4016790598 a.yiv4016790598primaryactionlink:visited {background-color:#2585B2;color:#fff;}#yiv4016790598 a.yiv4016790598primaryactionlink:hover, #yiv4016790598 a.yiv4016790598primaryactionlink:active {background-color:#11729E;color:#fff;}#yiv4016790598 WordPress.com | Jean posted: “I had an idea for a 365-page journal. Maybe 366. On each page, it would have the date, a quote relating to abuse or healing, and perhaps also a line drawing of a flower or leaf or something else simple and from nature. I would call it “Book of Days.”I” | |
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I think it’s a fabulous idea, Jean… I’ll send a quote or two later… Self-publishing can be very expensive on the consumer end, and may not net you the money you put into it. I did it and it is hard to sell a book of 150 pages for the amount it takes to publish it, let alone the amount you would need to make a little profit… Good luck.
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Somebody must know a way around this. If there were no money in it, pple wouldn’t do it, would they? And many self-published books are on Amazon, which takes a giant bite of the retail price. I think it is simply a question of asking enough pple enough questions. LOL
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