The Mommy Blog | Adventures from the Wonderbelly of Motherhood

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

ABC News: The View from the Bay, aired on Monday, October 1, 2007

Have you ever dreamed of publishing your favorite family recipes or write your own novel? See how easy it is and how you can make a profit off of your creative writing from your own home!
View the ABC Segment

Archive clips expire after 90 days.I received an email from Lulu.com today letting me know that my book was featured on a six and a half minute clip on ABC’s The View from the Bay! Eeeeee! So excited!! Of alllll the books published on Lulu.com, they chose MINE to be one of the five or so they brought to feature!

I watched breathlessly through the first five or so minutes, loving how they showed each book and told a little story or painted some background, especially about the one written by a five year old with her dad. I was so touched. I watched as they slowly made their way to my book, the thickest one there. It was five minutes, fifteen seconds into the segment. On ABC! I was breathless. Mine was next. I leaned closer. They picked up my book and then proceeded to talk about all the help you can get from folks in the Lulu.com community in cover design and layout. You know, if you need help making a really great cover. There I was, mouth hanging open like Mike Wazowski in Monsters, Inc. when he sees himself on a TV commercial and the logo is right over his face.

Anchor: “How do you come up with a cover?”

Beg pardon?

Anchor: “Is that something you come up with on your own?”

I was all, “What?”

Lulu Representative: “You can either design on your own, or we have a marketplace on our website—” Cut to full shot of my book. “where there are graphic designers you can hire—”

“Noooooooooo&mdash”

And then, “We help you market it, we have marketing services, we can teach you how to make a press release.”

“Noooooooooo—”

And finally, “That was Mommy Confidential—what a great title—and we’ve got one more. This is my favorite title, it was my favorite title of all the ones here...”

“That’s it? Aaaaaahhhhhh!” Five minutes, thirty seconds.

I worked for weeks getting that cover just right. There were several brilliant generations of that cover that had to be discarded because of copyright permissions, logistical errors, finally admitting that there were too many inside jokes in the design, and other quirky lessons learned along the way. But it’s a damn good cover, so good that I made covers for other aspiring authors, and started dabbling in graphic design for print and web. I cannot tell you how many great designs I have sitting around my hard drive with no place to go. I have more ideas than practical applications, but boy, is it fun watching something develop into something I’d want my own name on.

I’m of course very excited to have it featured - after all, there are thousands of titles published through Lulu.com, but isn’t that just the way?

[Mike and Sulley watch a commercial featuring them, but Mike is covered over by the Monsters Inc. logo]
Mike: I can’t believe it…
Sulley: Oh, Mike…
Mike: I was on TV. Ha. Did you see me? I’m a natural.

Purchase now on Amazon!

A new book by Melinda Roberts:

Take a woman fresh out of college, plop her down in Silicon Valley, saddle her with a mortgage, let her ride the tech boom, give her three babies in four years, slap her with the tech bust, watch vicariously as her marriage disintegrates, end her career, and hand her a computer. What do you get? Mommy Confidential: Adventures from the Wonderbelly of Motherhood, a memoir in real time adapted from the wildly popular weblog, The Mommy Blog.