Next Thursday is Thanksgiving Day, my favorite holiday of the year. I love the turkey dressing, cranberry sauce and desserts; I love the colorful Fall place settings and flowers; I love having fun with family. I have much to be thankful for. In my business I am grateful to eight online companies and organizations that help me research and write about the Regency era. Without their products and services I could not own a small indie publishing company, design the interior of my books, teach myself new skills, post this blog, and gather information about the Regency era with a few keystrokes. Here are the eight most-valued entities in my business, arranged in alphabetical order but all equally important:
Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe Acrobat Pro makes it possible for me to read and search the Google books I’ve downloaded. Its InDesign software allows me to produce an elegant book interior that looks like a real book (!!) with formatted front matter, chapter headings, page numbers, and back matter. Read on to find out how I learned to use this very sophisticated design program.
An image capture of the lovely title plate from Vol. II of The Microcosm of London, published originally in 1810 by Rudolph Ackermann and downloaded from Google Books (PDF p. 12)
Google Books
I know, I know—some writers consider Google Books the devil. While I am skittish about the recent book copying infringement ruling in Google’s favor, I must confess: I wouldn’t know one-tenth of what I know about the Regency era if it weren’t for Google Books. When I began writing my first Regency era novel, Rosings Park, in 2009, I opened a folder on my computer labeled “Google books.” This is where I filed various 18th- and early 19th-century books I had downloaded from the Google Book website. When I had collected about 25 books, I thought, “Whoa! I need a bigger folder.” Today I have a main folder labeled “England” that contains 105 subfolders (many of which themselves have subfolders). I have probably downloaded and read all or parts of hundreds of books on topics ranging from Almack’s and architecture to botany, cookbooks, fashion, inheritance, land tenure, midwifery, military surgery, the peerage, shipping, surnames, and travel guides. If you’re wondering what sorts of books I’ve downloaded, just browse through my blogs. Nearly all include at least one 18th- or early 19th-century reference. Google Books saves me time and money; it allows me to download books I could not access easily. I only wish I could download a copy of every book I’d like to read, especially those that are two hundred years old, but some of them are not available for free—more’s the pity.
lynda.com
Being determined to learn how to format the interior of my novels, I migrated to lynda.com, an online learning company designed to help people learn “business, software, technology, and creative skills” through video courses taught by industry experts. I signed up for a month’s service and took Nigel French’s course “Designing a Book,” which explained how to use Adobe’s software program InDesign. When I began the course I had never heard of Master Pages and felt completely intimidated by this complex software. No worries! Nigel French began at the beginning. After watching his video course, I produced a professional-looking interior for my novel Rosings Park and, more recently, for my soon-to-be-released novel, Cousin Anne. If you picked up my books you wouldn’t know I laid out their interiors myself: they look like they were produced by a big publishing house. (Okay, a little bragging here.)
Mainly I am amazed that a 4 hour/13 minute course could take me from knowing nothing about InDesign to producing an interior that sailed through the gatekeepers at CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing. I was so impressed with lynda.com that I signed up for a year’s subscription so that I could take more courses. I now have certificates for InDesign Insider Training, Introducing Illustrator, Illustrator CC Essential Training, and WordPress Plugins:SEO. There are more than 4,000 courses and 160,000+ videos on this website. The nice thing is that I can watch a video more than once or even re-watch a section a dozen times if I need to. And the instructors are, bar none, incredible. Money well spent in my view.
Screen shot of Erasmus Darwin from his popular book The Botanic Garden (London, 1825, PDF p. 9) and downloaded from Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg offers more than 50,000 free ebooks that can be downloaded to iBooks or Kindle or read online. From this website I downloaded a copy of The Botanic Garden, a poem in two parts by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), a grandfather of Charles Darwin, and also Elliott’s book Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine. I browsed issues of The Botanical Magazine, beginning with volume I published in 1790, and read Culpeper’s The Complete Herbal, first published in 1693. This website is a rich source of material and I use it often.
Slamdot
When I was ready to find a company to design and host my website, I was determined to go local. I figured a local company would be easier to work with and provide better service. So far, my assumptions have been bang on. I chose Slamdot, headquartered right here in Knoxville, TN. My lovely website has been running for 18 months without a glitch. I’ve gotten great service overall and technical support right when I needed it. The company’s staff are young and fun. I love their energy and enthusiasm and drive. It’s a pleasure to work them.
Full view of an 18th-century Italian obstetric phantom (Source: Science Museum, London, Wellcome Images, # L0057768)
Wellcome Images
Wellcome Images online offers a large collection of historical images, many of which can be downloaded free of charge under the Creative Commons license CC-BY 4.0. I used the Wellcome image shown at right in my Regency blog “Regency Midwives: Toil and Trouble”. The Wellcome site is well worth checking for historical images.
Wikipedia
I barely recall a time when Wikipedia didn’t exist. When I was a teenager my family had a set of World Book Encyclopedias that my brothers and I used regularly for writing school papers. At university I had access to the Encyclopedia Britannica but mostly relied on books and journals for information. In fact, I recall writing a paper for an English class that sported this title: “Seneca’s Influence on Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy”. (What a strange thing to remember from my university days!) Back then I relied on the materials available in the university’s library because I had no other choice. Today, everybody reading this blog can find information on Seneca and Thomas Kyd by merely clicking the hyperlinks shown in the title. While Wikipedia isn’t perfect—one shouldn’t believe everything posted there—it is convenient for basic information. I have found many Regency tidbits by reading Wikipedia biographies of people who lived during Jane Austen’s day.
Watercolor of Jane Austen by her sister, Cassandra, c. 1804 (From Wikimedia Commons PD-1923)
Wikimedia Commons
Probably most of the images that appear in my blogs were found on the Wikimedia Commons website. Whether searching for a drawing of Jane Austen or an engraving of the first quadrille danced at Almack’s or a satirical print by Isaac Cruikshank or Thomas Rowlandson, there are thousands of images, both old and new, to choose from.
Final Words
In short, to these eight companies and organizations that make it easier for me to locate historical books, periodicals, and images; produce high-quality book interiors; and bring the Regency era right to my desk: thank you!