CREATIVE EXPRESSIONS

OWL CREEK JOURNAL information & entry

NATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP CONNECTION information & entry

LOCAL BOOK PROJECT schools & non-profits edition

LOCAL BOOK PROJECT business & community edition

PROFESSIONAL ANTHOLOGIES themes & guidelines

CREATIVE EXPRESSIONS get published easy

Everyone who purchases a Creative Expressions book at the time of entry will be included in a Creative Expressions book. One winner will be included in this book also. If you should be the winner, you’re winners book, Nearly Famous, will be free to you. You must order at time of entry to be included, but you do not have to buy a book to win and it will not increase your chances of winning. If you would like your poetry group, school, or group of friends to be included in the same book, you must all enter in a single order. To do this, simply select the number of entrants at checkout and pay all your entry fees at once. You will all use the same order number to submit your entries and will all be in the same Creative Expressions book.

ABOUT YOUR CREATIVE EXPRESSIONS BOOK

Creative Expressions is a chance for new writers and artists to see their work in a professional book. It also makes a great keepsake for thise who just want some of ther work in book form without spending thousands of dollars and learning complex book design software

The books are 6” x 9” (standard hardback sizes), paperback, black and white interiors with full color covers, and are layed out and designed using Adobe In Design CS2 software, not Microsoft Word, so they truly look like every other book in a book store (see Geek Speak below for a better, geeky explanation). The covers come from artists who have entered our contests. These books retail for $18.95 but you can buy them for $15 at the time you enter the contest(s). You May be able to purchase additional copies later from our gift shop, but your work will only appear in this book if you pruchase at least one copy AT THE TIME OF ENTRY. This helps pay for the design and layout fees and printing of the books. If you should win, you will be published in the Nearly Famous book regardless of whether or not you purchased a Creative Expressions book.

You may also want to check out the Local Books Project Page.

OWL CREEK ARTIST ALERT #1 BEWARE OF “FREE” CONTESTS

Many free contests end up trying to get you to buy a book for $40-$75. I had a friend who was so proud of her daughter “getting published” in a poetry anthology, of course she bought the $75 dollar book that featured her poem. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she had been scammed in an artistic sense. First off, that is not “Getting Published”. When was the last time you saw any book at Barnes & Noble priced at $75? Usually only college texts can cost that much. Second, without an ISBN and being for sale in stores & to libraries, you are not truly published. Creative Expressions is chance to see your work in a book, and will be sold here, but it will not be truly published. Nearly Famous books will be published and placed with wholesalers and for sale on internet bookstores, like Amazon, & to libraries. (Owl Creek Artist Alerts are provided to protect & inform our creative community. Click Here to read other important Alerts).

GEEK SPEAK BREAK # 1

Books layed out in Microsoft, such as many poetry anthologies and self publishing or vanity press titles, don’t look quite professional. If you look at a page of type in Word, you will see what they call rivers. These are big gaps between letters and words that make the page look like rivers of white space are flowing through the words and sentences. If you compare that to a novel, you’ll see the novel doesn’t have these, or at least not as noticeable. That’s because In Design lays out a page by seeing the whole page, not just one sentence or word at a time. If a so called Print On Demand house is willing to print from Word files, just know that’s probably a bad sign, especially if they are charging fees for marketing. See more on this in our Alerts section. What it all boils down to, is our books look like books because they are layed out in Professional Design software costing thousands of dollars, not Word, so they do not look like photocopied “books”. So if you are considering self publishing and don’t want to learn this software or buy it, hire a designer who uses In Design or Quark Express, though most agree In Design does the best page lay out around. I hope you enjoyed this Geek Speak Break.