At Interviews & Reviews we have two valuable resources - our reviewers/readers and authors. They kind of go hand in hand. We need each other.

We have a little over fifty team members from different walks of life here at I & R. Some are stay-at-home moms, and some are students and others are even authors themselves. All claim the title of "Christian" and know that our primary purpose at I & R is to promote books and authors who bring glory to God through their writing. We are not just a "book review blog," we are also a ministry, working to build up the body of Christ and spread the Gospel through the written word.

Therefore, when someone submits a book to us, we have certain expectations. We expect a "Christian" book to be without foul language, extreme violence and sexual situations. We expect a message of redemption, grace or hope. 

I have a book that I bought many years ago when I first began my writing journey. It is Ethel Herr's book An Introduction to Christian Writing. It's a great book and one I encourage new writers to pick up. 

I'd like to share with you a few of the points she brought out in her first chapter about writers who are Christian and what their responsibilities are:
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• A Christian Writer is - someone who writes! Sounds rather obvious doesn't it? They are editors, magazine staff writers, public relations specialists, technical writers, writing teachers, novelists. They are writers who happen to be Christian. In other words they have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. They belong to a body of fellow-believers. Jesus Christ is our Head and gives us our typing orders 

As an author, writing a book is the first challenge. As an indie author however, formatting and designing it is your second one. You want to put your best foot forward in this process because you don't want your readers to be able to tell the difference between your self-published book and a traditionally published book. If you have money you can get someone to design your cover as well as design and format your interior. However, if you are like me and you can't afford to do that, you have to do it yourself. The challenge of course is - can you make your interior look as professional as the exterior? That's assuming you invested in a cover designer, because if you haven't it will be obvious. If you have to spend money anywhere in the creation of your book, spend it on editing and a cover. Self-published book covers that are done in Microsoft Word are obvious and yes, I know you think what you created looks great. But trust me, we can tell you did it yourself. Unless you specialize in design, don't even attempt to design your own cover.

But today I don't want to talk about book covers. I want to talk about the inside of your book and the pages you should be including before you get to your actual book.