Tool for creating a clever book trailer

One of my students recently wrote and self published a contemporary novel that he offers for sale on Amazon.  Like most students, he is on a tight budget.  So, when it came time to create an animated book trailer, he used the free web tool xtranormal Movie Maker.  I won’t link to my student’s trailer in this blog post because it contains a few cuss words, but really, the movie is quite clever.  The site allows the user to choose character avatars and settings.  Then the user simply types in the dialogue, and the site converts the package into a movie the user can upload to YouTube. My student chose two characters from his book and created a movie from a piece of dialogue from the book.

Send personal documents to your Kindle Library

I have completed a first draft of a historical manuscript and have let it sit long enough so that I can look it over with a fresh eye.  I could print it out of course, but I am a big fan of the Kindle as a reading device.  I also have a Kindle app on my iPad and iPhone, so I can read my Kindle collection anywhere, anytime. So how to get my Word manuscript to my Kindle device?

Send to Kindle is a free Windows program from Amazon that lets you send a document from your computer to your Kindle Library.  First, you install Send to Kindle on your computer.  Then when you click on a saved document, you have an option to “send to kindle” so that you can read it on your mobile device.  That is what I did with my story draft, and I was able to read through the ms without having to sit at my desk to read it on the computer screen.