Follow @HTBphotos on Musero

Attention ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS:

Finally, a social media app designed for artists and photographers.

MUSERO: a social network run by people who are dedicated to artists, who are dedicated to beauty, and who worship creation.

How to Join Musero

It’s easy to join. Just download the Musero app from your mobile phone, create your login and start posting your art and photography.

About HTBphotos

Tall Palms – La Jolla @HTBphotos

Katharina and her husband John Notarianni enjoy photographing wildflowers, wildlife and stunning landscapes while traveling. HTBphotos represents their collaborative efforts.

HTBphotos are available exclusively on Dreamstime.

Self Publish Your Book 3 Ways on KDP.Amazon.com

Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) now offers hardcover books (with a case laminate cover) as an option for authors who self publish their print-on-demand books. Previously Amazon’s KDP only offered paperback books which are not ideal for coffee table / photo feature books.

Over the years many of the authors I have helped publish have wanted to offer a hardcover version but without the expense normally associated with this option. Usually the author would have to order a certain number of books, store and sell them. Now, Amazon’s KDP allows authors to create a hardcover version of their book as a print on demand book! That means, no additional production expenses out of pocket. Amazon does take their usual share of profits, however in exchange they offer a trusted global distribution system to sell all versions of your book: eBooks, paperbacks and now hardcover books, too.

What is Self Publishing?

In case you are considering whether to publish your book, it may be useful to know that self publishing is an avenue of publication of media by its author without the need to involve publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy in paperback or hardback using print-on-demand (POD) technology.

Trim Size

Now Amazon offers 16 trim size options for paperback books, and five trim sizes for any book you also wish to offer in hardcover:

  • 5.5 x 8.5”
  • 6 x 9”
  • 6.15 x 9.21”
  • 7 x 10”
  • 8.25 x 11” 

Page Count

Another difference between Amazon’s paperback and hardcover specifications is the page count.

  • Paperback can be anywhere from 24 to 828 pages
  • Hardcover must be between 55 and 550 pages

Design Your Cover

KDP has cover design software to design an elegant cover for your paperback and hard cover books. You will need to change your cover size for the hardback. Here are some tips:

Note that the case laminate covers Amazon produces are made of chipboard, and wrapped with laminated paper. Amazon does not offer the usual clothbound or dust jacket option you may be familiar with. As a result, be sure that your cover design wraps around the edges of your cover. Simply extend your design beyond the actual cover dimensions (this is referred to in the industry as “bleeding”).

The basic requirements for Amazon hardcover cover designs are:

  • Your background should extend 0.51” past the edge of the front cover;
  • All text and images should be 0.635” from the edge of the book; and
  • No text or barcodes should be within 0.4” of the spine.

Get Help from a Professional

Having trouble with the layout, or worried you are formatting your book or cover incorrectly? To ensure your book layout and cover look as good as possible, you can hire a book designer who can help maintain your ideal aesthetic while working within Amazon KDP’s rules.

Healing Time Books Publishing and Website Services
Healing Time Books Publishing and Website Services

Healing Time Books helps authors utilize today’s digital technology to publish their books.

Contact info@healingtimebooks.com for help with your self publishing project.

Photo credit: Studio Media Inc on Unsplash

Tribute to Dr. Eleanor ‘Reenah’ McGill (1939-2021)

It was with great sadness we learned that our dear friend Dr. E. Reenah McGill passed away at the end of last year. She will always hold a very special place in our hearts.

Eleanor “Reenah” McGill was born in 1939 to James and Maude McGill in Onalaska, Wisconsin. She had a passion for knowledge earning a Master of Arts, Master of Chinese Medicine, and a PhD of Philosophy in Oriental Medicine. She was still practicing acupuncture.

Throughout her years, she also lived in Germany, Georgia, Minneapolis, and LA before settling down in the Weston area of Wisconsin to be able to enjoy her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. She loved to travel to China, Peru, Mexico, taking an Amazon Cruise and travelling to so many other countries.

She is preceded in death by her parents, James and Maude and, her siblings: Frank McGill and Deb Kropelin. Reenah’s memory will live on in the hearts of her family and friends.

We first met Dr. Reenah McGill at her clinic in Los Angeles. She was impressive in the scope of her knowledge in her medical practice. She used her skills as a doctor of Chinese medicine, neurobiofeedback, and a new type of acupuncture called Esoteric Acupuncture, developed by Mikio Sankey, to make a remarkable difference in her patients. Reenah was a highly accomplished scholar and practitioner, always looking for new topics to explore and learn about in detail and overcoming any challenge with determination and resolve.

Books by Dr. E. Reenah McGill

Due to her type 1 diabetes condition which developed suddenly late in life, she became very interested in nutrition and other healing modalities. Dr. McGill and hypnotherapist Dr. Zaugg collaborated and published ‘Eat Right Lose Weight, Introducing the 5 Element Nutrition & Hypnosis System’ which is available on Amazon.com.

Eat Right Lose Weight book by Dr. E. Reenah McGill and Dr. Marianne Zaugg

Poetry by Dr. E. Reenah McGill

Dr. Reenah McGill was well known for her brilliance and delightful sense of humor and her poetry reflects her personality. Poetry MS Volume 1 and Poetry Volume 2 by Dr. E. Reenah McGill include her poems written over a span of more than forty years. They represent and reflect many changes in her life situations, thoughts and desires.

Poetry M S Volume 1 by E. Reenah McGill
Poetry M S Volume 2

Source of family memoriam information: Published by La Crosse Tribune on Dec. 22, 2021.

Get 15 images free

Discover HTBphotos by John and Katharina Notarianni on Dreamstime! For your website, digital and print marketing efforts.

Get 15 images free on your first order!

Copyright 2022 Healing Time Books and HTB | Website Design by Katharina Notarianni. All Rights Reserved.

Zoom Bombings and Zoom Etiquette

HTB | Website Design – advice about Zoom bombings, a new threat, and zoom etiquette for meeting hosts

Several years ago I started using Zoom for my webinars, mainly because I didn’t consider myself a speaker/presenter and was more comfortable at a computer. No surprise, since I am a web designer and publisher! In the meantime I have had a lot of opportunities to participate and host meetings via Zoom and I still love it.

In fact, one of the positives that has resulted from the last 2 years of intermittent quarantine and adjustments in our Covid-19 affected environment is that almost everyone who is online or has a smartphone has had a zoom meeting experience. I love that even tech challenged and people who consider them too old to learn new tricks are getting on Zoom easily.

While there are other webinar services, I am a fan of having choices, and I am glad that Zoom rose to the challenge to become the obvious favorite service. Zoom Meetings allow for direct interaction, breakout sessions, recording, archiving, audio only and video tracks for reposting and more. If you are a tech person like me and need to screenshare for better communication with your client, Zoom has a screensharing option for the host and the participants which the host controls.

Here are some tips when you host a meeting to ensure a great experience for your meeting attendees:

Make introductions – introduce yourself to the attendees and especially in a smaller meeting, be sure to acknowledge individuals by name to create a more familiar environment.

Create your environment using virtual backgrounds– at an in-person meeting you would be more aware of the quality of the environment, making it specific to your theme. It is easy to select an image or video to act as a “virtual background” with Zoom’s virtual background feature. In fact, I often find wonderful nature photographs on Unsplash.com which create a relaxing mood for my meditation events.

One thing to be aware of is that sometimes body parts like hands and hair merge with the background image when you move around too much, or if the color of your outfit matches too closely. If you need to demonstrate something with your hands, or show movement, it’s best to avoid the virtual background altogether and instead consider installing an actual screen, or hold your meeting in a more neutral setting like an office.

Look at the camera -This probably sounds obvious, however, the tendency is to look at yourself to make sure you are presenting well. Instead, make an effort to look at your camera so that the attendees feel that you are talking directly to them.

Eliminate noise – It may seem obvious but unless you are the host you probably aren’t aware of background noise. Driving or walking and breathing while you are hosting a meeting generates more noise than you think. Barking dogs and landscape maintenance crews with loud blowers and mowers can’t be helped sometimes. Even notifications that ding on your computer will be relayed. Some of these you can control and others you cannot. If you are outdoors or in a car, when it is your turn to talk, stand still and slow down your breathing to a normal rate or pull the car over to reduce road noise. And if you remember, turn off the sound notifications on your device during your meetings.

Best Sound Quality – If recording the event and repurposing the content is a high priority, get a high quality noise cancelling microphone. If necessary you can opt to wear a headset with a noise cancelling microphone, like Apple’s Airpods Pro.

Host Meeting Controls – As a host you have many settings you can choose when you create your meeting. Did you know you are able to set up the Zoom meeting to allow others to unmute themselves, or for the Host only to unmute people. For the Host only to screen share, or to allow multiple people to screen share? You can also assign co-hosts for your meetings.

Warning – Zoom bombings are real! I recently learned about zoom bombings through a personal experience when a few people showed up during an online event and immediately unmuted themselves and proceeded to make disruptive noises and comments.

As a Zoom Meeting host, you can mitigate some of this risk by not posting meeting passwords, requesting people to register and then set up a waiting room so you can allow people who have been verified to enter the meeting. In a more public meeting where all are invited it’s not as easy to control however the meeting host always has the option to mute everyone. Some meeting settings to adhere to include:

  • Disable “Join Before Host”
  • Enabling “Co-Host”
  • Disable “File Transfer”
  • Disable “Allow Removed Participants to Rejoin”

Zoom added two new security features that hosts can use to address these disruptive and uninvited Zoom bombers.

  1. Suspend Participant Activities enables hosts and cohosts to suspend meeting functions, including video, audio, in-meeting chat and breakout rooms.
  2. Report Disruptive Attendees enables users, not just hosts and co-hosts, but also the meeting participants to report disruptive behavior like Zoom bombing from within the Zoom client using the “Security” badge. All account owners and admins need to do is enable reporting for non-hosts in their web settings.

Sources: Entrepreneur; TechCrunch; and Security Intelligence

Copyright 2022 Healing Time Books and HTB | Website Design by Katharina Notarianni. All Rights Reserved.

Demystifying Stock Photo Sizes for Social Media

Stock photo sizes for any social media post

I love the brilliant colors of autumn!

Add some fall colors to your social media projects with HTBphotos ‘Fall Foliage‘ Series by John and Katharina Notarianni, available on Dreamstime.

HTBphotos fall foliage series available on Dreamstime
HTBphotos ‘Fall Foliage’ by John and Katharina Notarianni has been cropped and resized to 1200×1200 pixels for social media purposes.

Stock photo sizes for any social media post

Graphics, photos, and other visuals are a necessity when posting content on social media!

And with copyright concerns, it is best to either take photos with your cell phone, digital camera or even your iPad, or leverage the many reputable stock photography sources like Dreamstime, or design services like Canva. There are even high quality free stock photo sites like Unsplash.

The question is, now that you have the perfect image for your social media post, what size image displays correctly across multiple platforms? Is that even possible? Yes!

Keep It Simple Strategy

Square images are ideal for Facebook and Instagram posts. Square format also works well for LinkedIn posts – and can work for Twitter.

Easy 1:1 ratio (square)

Instagram and Facebook photos: 1200 x 1200 pixels

Pinterest Pins (repurpose from Instagram)

All profile pictures* (allows cropping to circle format): 500 x 500

YouTube channel icon*: 800 x 800

Best size for link posts

As you can see the featured image at the top of this post also from HTBphotos ‘Fall Foliage’ Series, has been resized to 1200×630 pixels which work perfectly for WordPress blog posts as well as for several popular social media platforms that have a similar size requirement: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

For specifics on all popular social media platforms, I recommend taking time to review Louise Myers’ Social Media Cheat Sheet.

Get noticed with a Video Cover

Facebook: Tell More of Your Story

Instead of a cover photo, now you can use a video. It can be 20-90 seconds and should be at least 820 x 312 pixels.

Louise Myers, Visual Social Media

HTB | Website Design

HTB | Website Design designs, develops and hosts mobile friendly business websites. E-commerce, SEO and Social Media packages available. Please contact info@healingtimebooks.com to request a free 15 minute consultation.

HTB Free Book Offer

Special Offer: Give Mom a signed copy of The Beauty of Irises to help relieve stress.

SPECIAL OFFER – FREE BOOK FOR MOM

Spring Blooms! Blooming in Katharina Notarianni’s garden… this one is called Night Moves, almost black when it first opens and turns more purple as time passes. Like velvet and silk. The lovely bright orange beard provides a nice contrast.

Click HERE to request your free book! ($10 shipping & handling)

For a limited time, you can request a signed copy of The Beauty of Irises by Katharina Notarianni for just the cost of Shipping and handling $10 to be shipped to your Mom or your Grandmother for Easter or Mother’s Day, or anyone else who is special in your life. Give them something beautiful to focus on, to relieve stress and panic.

Simply fill out our CONTACT FORM, or send an email to info@healingtimebooks.com with your and your mom’s name and address. Payment by PayPal or Square credit cards are accepted. Details will be emailed to you.

Thank you for taking advantage of this Special Free Book Offer.

Happy Spring Blooms!


Free Success Book Giveaway

Get your free copy of Be A Success Maverick Vol 2. Limited Time Offer so Hurry!

We hope all of you and your families are keeping well during this time of crisis unlike anything we have known. Our heartfelt thanks go to all who are helping our communities by continuing to provide essential services and all the healthcare professionals who are keeping us all healthy!

Those of you who are home-bound, helping to keep your families and communities safe, no doubt have spent some time reflecting. What you will focus more on when the home stay quarantine mandate is lifted? Are you wanting to reach for more, expand your success, make changes?

Learn Secrets of Success from Success Mavericks!

“To all the Mavericks in the world whom believe in a dream larger than themselves and continue to follow their dream regardless of sound reason and logic. To all the entrepreneurs who pursue their vision year after year, sometimes decade after decade, with no finish line in sight.” Paul Finck, the Maverick Millionaire

Get your free copy of Be A Success Maverick Vol. 2 – How Ordinary People DO IT DIFFERENT to Achieve Extraordinary Results. A compilation of success stories and lessons learned by many Mavericks from around the world.

“Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.” BIZ STONE

HURRY! LIMITED TIME OFFER!

Be A Success Maverick - HTB free book giveaway. Hurry! Ends March 31 2020. ORDER COPY OF THIS BOOK https://bit.ly/3dEiMI8

Learn How Ordinary People Do It Different to achieve extraordinary results!

Request your copy BEFORE midnight Tuesday March 31, 2020. Email info@healingtimebooks.com with your mailing address.

OFFER DEADLINE

Include “Free Success Book” in the subject line of your email to receive a print copy of this book.

Want a Kindle eBook?

Now available for download from Amazon.com. Order Be A Success Maverick Vol. 2 ebook available on Amazon.com in the Kindle Store for only $6.99!

Missed the Deadline? No worries…

If you miss the March 31, 2020 deadline, no worries! You can still get a Free Book. Just cover the cost of Shipping & Handling – only $9.95. To request your free copy of Success Mavericks Vol 2, email your mailing address to info@healingtimebooks.com with “Free Success Book” in the Subject line BEFORE APRIL 30, 2020, and a Shipping & Handling invoice will be emailed to you. Once payment is received your copy will be shipped.

This HTB Free Book Offer is good through April 30, 2020.

Book Launch: Be A Success Maverick Vol. 2 is #1 Amazon.com Best Seller

Congratulations to HTB author, Katharina Notarianni, for making Amazon.com’s Best Sellers list with her new book ‘Be A Success Maverick – Volume 2‘ in collaboration with the Maverick Millionaire Paul Finck and other authors.

Several powerhouse authors share their inspirational “Success Maverick” stories concerning their individual success and what they have done differently through their lives to create the results they have achieved. An absolute must read for anyone who wants to be successful in life.

Buy the Kindle edition today for only 0.99!

Prefer to read hard copy books? Buy the print edition for $19.99.

About Paul Finck

Author of ‘Be a Success Maverick’ (Volumes 1 &2) and ‘How to Become a Sales Maverick & Double Your Income,’ Paul Finck is The Maverick Millionaire™. Paul brings to the table a vast array of knowledge and skill sets from 30+ years of sales, marketing and entrepreneurial life experience. His successes include moving multi-millions of dollars in Real Estate, and over $20 million in informational products in the last 10 years. With his primary focus on multiple streams of income, he has built up several businesses in Informational Marketing, Network Marketing, Real Estate Investing and now speaks and coaches internationally, teaching others how they can create this success in their own lives while Doing It Different – The Maverick Way.

Read more about The Maverick Millionaire Paul Finck

About Katharina Notarianni

Author, publisher and website designer Katharina Notarianni began her career with her first book, ‘The Beauty of Irises,’ which motivated her to start Healing Time Books, a publishing company with a mission to help authors make the most of today’s digital technologies to publish their works. Her website business, HTB Website Design, provides mobile friendly website design services including website hosting, SEO, stock photography and social media marketing.

Read more about Katharina Notarianni

Interested in publishing your own book?

If you need help self-publishing your own book, please contact us by filling out our online Publishing Services request form, or by sending an email to info@healingtimebooks.com.

HTB Photos celebrates over 4000 stock photos on Dreamstime.com

Congratulations to John and Katharina Notarianni for making available over 4000 high quality web and print ready images from their stock photography collection on Dreamstime. HTBphotos stock images are available exclusively through Dreamstime.com.

HTBphotos on Dreamstime.com
HTBphotos Cafe Series available exclusively on Dreamstime.com

SPECIAL OFFER: Get 5 free images when you sign up for a Dreamstime’s stock photos subscription.