Well, thank you
everyone for coming.
Thank you to the organizers fortheir announcements up, up front.
Uh, those of you directly were there.
I think a lot of us are still here.
Um, I'm Chris.
I'll be your host if you'restaying in this room for, you
know, the next little bit.
Uh, I'm not Canadian.
Uh, sorry.
Um, but so, sorry, sorry.
Tall and that was my joke too.
Well, I was gonna say, did I steal it?
I'm so sorry.
Yeah, no, I'm so sorry.
Yeah, so sorry.
Um, I have been working on my Canadianaccent for about two months and uh, but
um, yeah, obviously I messed that up so.
Uh, so you can tell I'm not Canadian.
Anyway, I'm super happy tobe introducing Michelle here.
Um, and, uh, the, the, I'm super happyto be introducing Michelle for this
talk specifically because, uh, I have apodcast which is a shout out to myself.
Uh,
yes, it is a good podcast.
Uh, community and code.
Community code.
Yeah.
My first guess was in fact, Michelletalking about how, uh, one of the
things we were talking about was how shestarted the push status virtual stage.
Uh, so that she could give this talkand then never actually gave that talk
because she was the host of this, ofthe show and wasn't able to do it.
But that was the whole reasonwhy she made the virtual stage.
So I'm super excited toactually see the talk.
Um, if you don't know, uh, Michelle,I don't know, maybe even living under
a rock for a while, um, Michelle is,uh, all over the WordPress community.
Uh, she's what?
You're the executivedirector of post status.
Yep.
Um, you are a champion of open source.
Um, and a speaker, podcaster and author,um, and gonna be talking about, uh,
turning a blog into a book, um, whichis a really cool thing that, uh, yeah.
And, and, and no spoilers on thepodcast either, uh, for those of
you that have listening to it, butthere's probably none of you, but you
should go listen through it anyway.
Um, because we just talked about how,like, you know a little bit about that,
but, but I don't think probably there'sgonna be a lot more details in there.
Yeah.
So, uh, without further ado, uh, I'mgonna hand over the microphone to Mission.
Thank you.
Good morning.
So, I'm, I'm not technicallyCanadian except I am by heritage.
So my great-grandfather wasthe conductor of the, uh,
symphonic orchestra in Montreal.
And my family, um, comes down throughthat line to the basic line there.
And my last name is veryFrench Canadian Fresh.
So, um, so I feel very at home and Ifeel like a. Um, what do they call me?
Honorary Canadian when I comehere, I guess you have to spell
it with a U though, honorary.
So welcome to my talk.
Thank you for joining me.
I hope that, uh, what slides I puttogether at one o'clock this morning.
'cause I am an 11th hour person.
Well, um, we'll give you some insightinto how I put this whole thing together.
So I did turn a blog into a book.
And it wasn't as easy, but it alsowasn't as difficult as I thought.
So I'm gonna share some ofthose steps with you today.
The first thing I wanna shareis the slides that online.
So if you're interested in finding themlater, if you want to follow along on your
phone as opposed to looking at the screen,which usually helps in a bigger room.
I think you can probably all seeit here, but there's a QR code
and there is the um, the QRL, ifyou are interested in doing that.
The first thing I wanna say to youis if you can blog, come on in.
If you can blog, you can write a book.
It feels daunting at first.
And I'll tell you that right now, I'mfive chapters into writing a novel.
Way harder than the book that I wrote.
Way more research too.
Um, but if you can blog,you can write a book.
'cause you're already writing.
You already have a point of view.
You already have something thatyou're sharing with the world.
Whether one person visits yourblog or a million people visit
your blog, you have a point of viewthat you want to share with people.
So if you can write that blog, youcould turn it into a book column.
We all know though, right?
With blogging consistency is the thing.
Like I tell people that say theywanna start a podcast, do you
have at least 10 episodes of you?
Because if you only get to threeepisodes, that's not a podcast.
That's just a little blur, you know, blipin the podcasting world kind of thing.
And a lot of people think,oh, I don't know what I talk
about beyond that third one.
The same thing is truefor blogging, right?
I used to tell my clientsthat said that wanted a blog.
What are you gonna write about?
Can you give 10 topics today?
That we can put outover the next 10 months.
And the same thing is trueabout writing a blog to a book.
So if you can do that, absolutelyyou can publish a book.
So I wrote on that blog that Iwas doing, I'm gonna tell you
a little bit more about that.
Blogs build relationships.
Relationships build loyalty andloyal customers drive revenue.
I still believe that loggingisn't perhaps for businesses
as prevalent as it used to be.
But the SEO value in writinga blog is absolutely there.
Um, it was really hard forme to help certain kinds of
customers discover how to do that.
Like teach a guy who does HVAC, howto blog, that's not easy, right?
But when you teach him howto look for those things.
Tell him about for her.
How about what do you talkto your customers about?
Let's turn that conversationinto something on your blog.
Absolutely.
You can build, you know, the W'Sguide to HPAC or something like that.
So I was asked on the blog that I wasparticipating in, um, back in 2014, uh,
like what do I see for the future of, youknow, businesses and things like that.
So how it all started back in 2014.
I get this email.
From my local newspaper, the Rochester,Democrat and Chronicle, and they wanted
to know, they saw that I was teaching aclass on social media and they wanted to
know if I could write a column for them.
Uh, but I put her words on social media.
Of course, I said yes,because who doesn't say yes?
Was it a paid gig?
Nope.
Did it get me a lot ofcustomers over time?
Absolutely.
And so I was like, yep, putmy name wherever you can.
And one of the benefits was thatsometimes they would actually put
that blog in the Sunday paper soI could go out and buy the paper.
And I have, you know, little clipsthat are in a little book at home now.
'cause I was publishedout in the newspaper.
I was so excited.
Then they, you know, reached out to me.
I wrote that first blog and they said.
Hey, do you wanna be a regularblogger for our business section now?
And I said, yes, of course I do, becauseif one gets you a customer or two
more, we'll probably do more than that.
And so I also started teachingmore for the Rochester Business
Alliance, um, which was the Chamberof Commerce for Rochester, New York.
And so I was able toteach business classes.
I was able to blog about thosethings that I was teaching and it
was like a full circle moment inorder to also move my career forward.
So there was a time, probablynot anymore, but there was a
time, uh, when you searchedRochester, New York and WordPress.
My website was the first one thatcame up because I was doing so much.
Not only in in the workforce community,but also for the blogging community and
teaching the community at the same time.
So this is how it startedand this is how it ended.
And if you weren't here when Ifirst held it up, I've got books.
So I wrote this book.
I'm unfortunately titled because itpublished in 2019 and then we had this
thing called the Pandemic, where youwere told Don't shake hands with people.
And I was like, do I rebrand it?
Do I be like a really nice elbow bum?
But I did leave it the way it was, andthe whole idea behind the firm handshake
being what it was, is for 12 years I wason my school by my town school board,
so elected four times the public office.
And the bane of the existence for that wasevery year when the kids would graduate
and they'd shake your hand and it waslike this parade of wet fish handshakes.
And I said, why is nobodyteaching the next generation
how to do a good handshake?
So I, you'll see it a little bitlater when I show you the different
chapters, but I have a chapter calledSomewhere Between a Dead Fish and
Vice Grips because I've also hadpeople shake my hand, but left.
Bruised bones in my hand where I hadto have that treated because I don't
know, sometimes people think they havesomething to prove with shaking a hand
really hard, but you shouldn't havehurt somebody with a handshake that
that could be another talk altogether.
But the whole idea was that a good firmhandshake seemed like a good title,
and then other essential business tips.
So, but how did it get from that firstemail to actually publishing a book?
I'm so glad you asked.
So my name was Ames.
A blessed, I was still married.
Um, I, I pulled this one quote out'cause I thought it was really funny.
When you look at what socialmedia was back in 2014, um,
Instagram, YouTube, Google Plus.
Remember that
Vine four square.
Um, Yelp, Google Plus again, andyou've listed Yahoo, the local
yellow pages and urban food.
Remember those things, right?
Um, it was important back then thatif you were in those businesses,
you were participating in those.
Now of course, it'd bea little bit different.
We'd be talking about TikTok,we'd be talking a lot more about
Instagram, um, and, and YouTubeand some of those other things.
But at the time it was really important.
But you see the little, uh, laughingemoji because I pulled that out last
night and I was like, oh, that's funny.
How cute.
Vine was fun.
A last,
so what were some of those chapters?
So you saw that, um, under Uses SocialMedia, time to hit Refresh on your
website in Defense of Ugly Carpet, 10things to Consider for Your Business
Card, which still has business cards.
Yeah, I do.
I don't bring 'em, but I know somewherebetween with dead fish and ice grips.
Never stop learning.
Buzzwords don't get stung.
I'm so sorry for some of these.
Writing better email, letemployees do their jobs.
That was all about not micromanagingmarketing trends for 2015
tech trends to expect in 2015.
Uh, your free website is anexpensive decision, and that's
not saying don't use WordPress.
That's saying don't let yournephew build it for you.
Hire a professional customerservice makes all the difference.
Six indicators.
Your website is out of date.
And I had put together a series oflittle memes of me in very unfortunate
times in my life with really geeky sideand things like, if your glasses are
this big, um, when you built it, yourwebsite might be out of it kind of thing.
Um, going up, how's your elevatorspeech falling into business?
I didn't, I never intendedto start a business.
It just kind of happened.
I have a chapter in there about that, uh,five steps to qualifying clients because
every customer is not your customer.
Finding focus, crowdsourcingright here and now, five reasons
entrepreneurs need vacations.
Does everybody take vacations?
It's been a year since I've hadone and I'm scheduling one soon.
Sorry.
Stacy Pepper.
Talk about that.
Um, and then finding yourtribe, but I'm so sorry.
I didn't know back at that timethat saying that was so a cultural
appropriation cuts the, uh, chatGPT version of the cringing in that.
But that was, uh, finding your people.
So I had written all of these blogposts or most of those blog posts,
and then I took a trip, a roadtrip with my best friend Christine.
Christine is tangential to WordPress.
Her husband is the one who taughtme how to build a WordPress website.
He would not let mepush the one 11 install.
He said, I'm going to show you how todownload it, how to change your salt keys.
Remember salt keys and havingto do all that for yourself.
Uh, and how to do all these things.
I had like four steps written down.
'cause I said to him, I understand howto buy hosting space and I understand
how to use WordPress, but how do Iget WordPress into the hosting space?
And that was how I started.
And that was Christine's husband.
Christine is a time saving person.
She is all about process.
She has helped me redo how I organize mykitchen and all of these wonderful things.
And she's all about finding joy.
Joy in your life.
And so she had written this bookcalled Need More Time, and I
had had proofread it for her.
I love using my red pen.
And so I think, well where they'rewrong, it's one of the evil sides of
me, but it's also an appreciative skill.
Um, and so I had proofread this forher and we got in the car to drive
from Rochester, New York to Portland,Maine for Word Camp Portland, Maine.
And so we were in the car and I'mtalking to her about how awesome her
book was, and I said, but I am jealous.
She said, why are you jealous?
I said, because I've alwayswanted to write a book.
It's on my bucket list ofthe things that I wanted.
It's something I wanna doand wanna write a book.
And she said, so do it.
I'm like, oh yeah, like it's that easy.
And she said, you practicallyhave it written already.
I said, what are you talking about?
She said, just turn thoseblog posts into a book.
And it was like that lightbulb went off over my head.
Like if I had been a cartoon, itwould've been like, Hey, you're right.
And it would've been like, so exciting.
So I was like, allright, I'm gonna do this.
And then the real work beganbecause it wasn't like you could
just publish 350 word chapters.
That would've been a very, verysmall pamphlet, not an actual book.
Because the average length of a blog postin that newspaper was about 500 words.
The average length of of a bookchapter is a lot more than 500 words.
Um, so, and I needed more chapters.
I didn't have enough chapters written.
And some of the posts that I, Ihad written like what to Expect in
2015 did not end up in the book.
Surprise, surprise, becausethey were too timestamped.
As a matter of fact, when Iwrote the book, when I first
started the book, I talked aboutusing 140 characters in Twitter.
By the time I was ready to publish it,I had to edit that to 280 characters in
Twitter because things changed so muchfaster than we could even think about.
And so I had to kind of look throughsome of those posts, decide what
was important to include, whatwasn't so important to include,
and then also where were the gaps?
What are some things that neededto be talked about that I hadn't
written about for the blog?
By the time I was looking at this, theydiscontinued the blog in the series.
And so I wasn't, I I,I couldn't even log in.
Oh, here's something I meant to,I meant to mention to you too.
The, the email after that when theyasked me if I wanted to start blogging
on a regular basis, included thequestion, do you know WordPress?
And at the time I said, no.
'cause it was like 20 11,20 12, I kind of thing.
I had just literally started to use it.
And so I logged in and I wasusing WordPress for another.
I hadn't built a website yet.
I was using it for something elseand um, I was, I can't remember what
version it was in 2014, I loggedinto the newspaper and it was still
on version like 2.2 or something.
They were afraid to update itbecause it was a newspaper.
They were afraid it would breakeverything, so we were still logging
into something that looked verydifferent from what the WordPress
was that I was using at the time.
Very, very interesting.
So to evaluate and expand, Icreate this whole list of the
blog posts and the chapters.
And then I did a gap analysis.
So I looked at things like, what wouldsomebody in small business or a, you
know, a small business owner or smallbusiness manager, what would be helpful
for them to know that I hadn't loggedabout in the time that I was blogging.
And so I looked at thingslike crowdsourcing.
Um, I have, um.
Let's see, what was some of the otherones that I never stopped learning?
We had that one.
It was, um, a marketing integrity.
That was one that Ithought was interesting.
I, at the time, was working for GWP,so I had a lot of knowledge about,
um, about nonprofit organizations.
So I wrote an article about why nonprofitorganizations actually need to spend
money to help their business as well.
And I, I wrote articles about why, um,how you can win awards and what it takes.
You have to apply to win awards.
I don't know if most of you knowthat Very seldom does when somebody
just come out of the blue and say,we'd like to give you an award.
You have to be nominated.
Most of the time thatmeans self-nomination.
Or at the very least say, Hey Chris,will you nominate me for this?
Because it doesn't just happen.
You have to go after those things.
So, wrote a chapter about that,a chapter about outsourcing and
why it's important to outsource.
I like to talk about, um, outsourcing.
In the ways that make sense to people.
And that was one of the classesthat I, in some of the classes
that I taught, I am terrible.
Like absolutely terrible at askingpeople for money, including invoicing
them for time that I actuallygave them and worked on things.
I am horrible at it, and I'm doingbetter because I realize that I
have to pay bills and if I don'tinvoice, that doesn't happen.
But, um, but what I wasdoing when I was freelancing.
Was I built a website for a bookkeeperand we met once a month and she
updated QuickBooks and she sent outmy invoices because at that point
it was too cringe for me to do it.
I'm really good aboutasking for money now.
Well, better anyway, but, butat the time, so outsourcing that
made what made perfect sense.
She was not good at building a website.
I could do that.
I was not good at bookkeeping,but she could do that.
We were able to trade.
But if I hadn't been able to, itstill would've been a service I
should have invested in and would'veinvested in because I wouldn't have
money to invest in it if I didn't.
So things like that weresuper important to me.
Uh, the value of networking,uh, I, um, oh, right here.
Now that's the one Iwanted to tell you about.
So I used to experiment onlinea lot more than I do now.
Just social experiments.
And I had seen this one blogger wrote,write this thing on Facebook all
the time, like drop everything andanswer this question kind of thing.
So I kind of morphed that a little bitand I started writing these right here
and now tell us, fill in the blank.
So I would say like, right hereand now, tell us the funniest joke.
You know, that's clean.
'cause it wasn't on Facebook.
Four people responded to that.
Okay.
So people don't want to write long things.
Right here and now, tell us yourfavorite flavor of Jellybean 160 answers
because they could write one word andreply to that, or two black liquorice,
cherry grape caramel, whatever it was.
And so I discovered that you couldcrowdsource information easily if
you didn't ask much of the printof the people you were asking it.
And so I have that right here.
And now as a chapter that explainsto you how you can crowdsource
information from people easily ifyou don't ask too much of them.
So you might ask the jellybeanquestion today, and then tomorrow is
a yes or no, um, question, like, doyou like, you know, whatever it is.
I actually asked the p andpizza question back then.
I know that that's something thatwe hear a lot of nowadays, but,
um, or is it pronounced GIF or jif?
Like that's what that willget people talking to.
Right?
And so you want to engage more.
Even if it wasn't something I was usingresearch for, it built my following and it
built my cachet and my, and because peoplewere seeing and answering those questions,
the algorithm was rewarding me by showingthose questions to more and more people.
So all of those questions andeverything that you see on the board
was because I was experimenting.
Writing things.
How do I write better email?
How do I learn?
How do I continue tobe a lifelong learner?
How do I win awards?
How do I do all of these things?
And all of that endedup going into the book.
Now, was every one ofthose things a chapter?
It wasn't right.
I mean, a, a blog post.
It wasn't, some of 'em weren't, thatwas what the gap analysis was for.
And so I made this whole long list.
Um, I crossed off the things thatdidn't, shouldn't go into the book,
and I added the things that should.
And I tried to be really clever withtitles 'cause I wanted people to be
like a, a, a dead fish and ice cream.
So what's that about?
Right?
'cause I wanted it to be like, click baby.
So that on a newspaper, people likeclick through it in a, in a book.
You'd be like, oh, what'sthat chapter about it?
Let, I've turned to that chapter,but I also wrote it in a way that no
chapter is dependent on each other.
So if you get to a chapter, you'relike in math, skipping that one and
moving forward, that worked too.
And so that was a lot offun to be able to do that.
You would think that because I'dwritten so many blog posts that I'd be
like, oh, I can take a month and thisthing will be knocked out of the park.
It took me a year and a half, eventhough I had all those blog posts
'cause 350 words into like 2000 wordsor 2,500 words to expand on what you
thought was a complete idea already, forthe most part, actually took a lot of
brain power and a lot of time to write.
So the, it wasn't like the blogpost, just add a bunch to the end.
That black blog post had to expand andbe filled in in the middle as well.
I did have my own office.
I rented office space at the time, butI couldn't write in that office space
because that was where I built websites.
I didn't have the rightmindset in there at the time.
I belonged to a barter group, and soone of the things that was really cool
about this barter group was there werea couple hotels in the barter group,
so I actually took two long weekends.
Say goodbye to the family andchecked myself into these hotels.
I didn't leave the hotel.
I only, like, I ordered in, I went maybedown to the, to the cafe or something
for food, and I locked myself in thesehotel rooms and just wrote for the times
that I could, yes, I did sometimes writearound other ideas and things like that,
but it was really those long weekends andI wouldn't have been able to afford it.
I was freelancing at the time.
I was not doing a greatjob of like selling myself.
As much as I had hoped to.
So to like rent a hotel room forthe weekend, that would not have
been in, in the, in the cards.
But because I'm belong to this barbergroup, I built websites for people.
I stored up enough money in thesystem, I could move these hotel rooms.
And so I really literally locked myselfaway, turned off social media, turned
on the tv 'cause I like that backgroundnoise when I'm writing and like.
I couldn't sit at the desk though,like too totally uncomfortable.
So I discovered that if you sit onthe bed cross lage, you can put the
ironing board in front of you to useas a desk on the bed in the hotel room.
That's a little tip.
If you have never thought of that whileyou were traveling for work caps, that
ironing board really does double As, andyou can even lift it up a little bit.
It's so cool.
So yeah, so I did all of that,locked myself away and gave myself
the opportunity to write to it.
But what else needed to be done?
Writing is not enough.
I know.
Shocker.
So I wrote, I wrote some more.
I wrote some more, and then I wentback through to edit it and I was
self-publishing this book, so Ididn't have a publishing house.
It's hard to find a publishing housethat must have published your book.
Right.
Um, I'm hoping for a novel thatmight be a little bit easier, but
if not, Amazon Self-Publishing,we'll come through for that as well.
So I did self-publish this through Amazon.
I can't remember exactly whatthe, it's a series of numbers.
Could be something, um, gave mepublishing or something like that.
Um, and then I wanted to hiresomebody else to do the cover design.
And my daughter had gone to school with agirl who was a nice, a really good artist.
And I was sitting in a baby showernext to her and I said, Hey, um, Hey
Jess, do you have any interest in.
Creating the cover for thebook that I've created.
She's like, uh, yeah.
I said, well, how much would youcharge me for something like that?
She's like, I dunno, $50.
I said, $200.
Is that what I just right now, 200.
I could afford $200.
I should have paid her even more.
But at the time, that'swhat I could afford.
And I wanted to teach her twovalue herself through this process.
And so I even gave her anabout the, the cover artist.
So if you look at the back of the book,you'll see about me and about her as well.
Um, and so she did the handshake designon the front cover of the book, so I hired
her to do that, and she was super excited.
When the book got published,I gave her a couple copies.
She gave them to her mom.
Her mom said, you know, her momworks in the bank that I go to,
and she's like, Jess is so excited.
And it was really, it felt sogood to empower another artist,
another creative, to be able tobe part of that process as well.
Then I did edit itmyself, which took months.
Because I'm super critical of what Iwrite, and I wanted to make sure that
everything in the book was not onlyaccurate, but was authentically me
and how I know I succeeded at that.
And I was telling Stacy this morning,people read the book and if they
know me, every single person hasmessaged me saying, I hear your voice
reading the book to me in my head.
And that's how I know that I hit thatauthenticity part, because it was
like, oh, this is Michelle's voice.
This is how she talks.
These are the things that she said.
And I thought that was prettycool, but I was so hyper hard on
myself about the editing process.
I took a long time, worked throughit, changed things, tweaked things,
added things, and then I thought Ido need to hire somebody as an editor
to actually go through and makesure that this is worthy of doing
it, and I have no money to do that.
I also believe in serendipity.
I also believe in karma.
And all of a sudden I got a messagefrom an editor in the area, happened
to be Christine's book editor,Christine, that you saw earlier.
The editor said, I knowyou're a photographer.
I have this big event coming up.
How much would you charge me tobe a photographer for this event?
I said, well, normally I would chargewhatever it was, a thousand dollars.
Would you be interested inediting my book in exchange?
And she said, done.
And suddenly, I gotta forgetagain, talking about that.
I, I don't, I, I will say, youmight be skeptical when I tell
you what I'm gonna say next.
She might have just been like, okay, cool.
I'm not really gonna do anything.
She read that book cover to cover.
She sent me two slight suggestions thatI literally didn't take because she
didn't understand where I was comingfrom, and so I might tweak a little
bit to make a better understanding, butnot in the direction that she meant.
But her one comment to me was, I'venever seen a manuscript, so ready to
be published is the one that she wrote.
And I said it was those weekendsin hotel rooms that I locked
myself away to be able to do that.
Now am I saying everybodythat I'm that great a writer?
No, but I really worked so hardon it to make sure that there were
no spelling errors, there were nogrammatical errors, that everything
made sense as you read through it.
And the way I did that too wasto have somebody who doesn't.
Was it in business?
Also read it just to make sure thatit all made sense before I even
sent it to, sent it to the editor.
I had my mom go through it so she couldsay, I don't understand this part.
And so when she'd say that,I would tweak that section.
Then, so the point that it got tothe editor, it really was pretty
much close to being ready to publish.
Then I had to decide howI was gonna publish it.
So, of course Christine, howdid you publish your book?
Oh, I used Amazon self-publishing.
That is a nightmare to navigate.
It might be better now.
I haven't done it since 2019, buthaving to figure out how to format a
book, how to add the cover, how to sendit in, upload it, they send it back.
You have to get an ISPN number.
You have to register outsideof that organization.
Enter the ISPN number into itwas, it was a process and it
was a learning process for sure.
There's all kinds of, sincethen there's YouTube videos.
There's.
The blog post, it's so much easierto follow that process now than
it was, you know, seven years ago.
Um, mostly because I think the pandemicmade it so we're all sitting home
trying to figure out how I could writea book because I got nothing else to do.
Not going to Disneyland kind of thing.
Um, and not shaking hands unfortunately.
But um, but yeah, so I hadto decide on publishing.
So I went through that wholeprocess, registered that ISVN member.
It literally doesn't cost anythingto publish through Amazon.
Once you get all those things in there,because they take a percentage of the
profits of everything that you published,which I was perfectly fine with.
Is this book a bestseller?
Nope.
Have I sold maybe 50 copies?
Yep.
For me, it wasn't about selling thebook for me, it was about fulfilling
that bucket list item of writing a bookand getting it published so that people
could pick it up if they wanted to.
I am in marketing.
I could have marketed the heck out of thisbook and sold a whole lot more cubbies.
It wasn't about that for me, and Ididn't wanna spend my time marketing me.
I wanted to spend my timemarketing other people.
So, yeah, so it's, you're not gonnasee it on the New York Times, ever.
It was never there, but it was stillimportant to me to run through this
entire process, understand how it works.
And be able to put a book in people'shands to be able to see how it worked.
And then I had to figure out howto fund a lot of that, right?
So I had to, I, I did the,the bartering for one.
I, I paid just for the cover design.
I did pay somebody to proofread itjust to make sure that I, the grammar
was there and that kind of thing.
And then I did have to buy.