Susie Baxter to Speak on Book Design

Note: Daylight savings time begins Sunday, March 13. Move clocks ahead one hour.

On Sunday, March 13, at 2:30 p.m., Susie Baxter will share tips she has learned from independently publishing four books in various formats, from paperback and ebook to hardcover and audible.

The main focus of her talk will be on book design using Microsoft Word, InDesign, Bookow, and Vellum software for formatting. But she will also discuss:

• Free resources that can help us improve our writing and the final manuscript (critique pods, Aztekera, Hemingway, Grammarly, and beta readers)
• Advantages and disadvantages of working with a local printer versus a book publisher
• Differences between vanity publishers, hybrid presses, traditional publishing, and print-on-demand (POD)
• Costs and tasks associated with independent publishing, such as the purchase of ISBNs and applying for a Library of Congress Control Number
• Hiring editors and proofreaders
• Working with a narrator on an audible book

A fifth-generation Floridian, Baxter grew up on a farm in north Florida. In adulthood, she attended Louisiana State University in New Orleans and the University of South Alabama in Mobile where she earned a BFA. After working for a few years as a graphic artist, she landed a job with a health-science publishing house in St. Louis. There, she advanced from editorial assistant to acquisitions editor and finally to the publisher of primary care. During her career, she commissioned dozens of successful clinical reference books authored by world-renowned physicians.

She has now written four books of her own: C.G. & Ethel: A Family History (2008); Write Your Memoir: One Story at a Time (2017), a nonfiction how-to book; Pumping Sunshine: A Memoir of My Rural Childhood (2018), which won that year’s Royal Palm Literary Award for Memoir and was named 1st runner-up for the Published Book of the Year; and her latest, I, Susanette… (2022), a coming-of-age memoir.

Baxter believes that everyone has a story to tell, and she drives that point home in the memoir-writing course she teaches annually at Santa Fe College in Gainesville. Information on her next course can be found on her website: susiehbaxter.com.