Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Christmas Newsletter!




I'm working on my Christmas newsletter.  Yes, I know.  Christmas is done, but my newsletter isn't.  You see, I write BIG newsletters.  As in huge.  As in 18 pages.  My annual letter has been 18 pages for years, and for some peculiar reason, people actually read the thing.  Not only that, I get new people every year begging to be on my mailing list.  Go figure. 

But I do try to make it appealing to the eye, and chock full of amusing stories.  That's my life--one big amusing thing after another.  I'm serious about that.  My life is funny, and funny things happen to me.  So I like to share.  But these newsletters take months to produce.  I got a bit behind recently, and never mailed out a 2007 one.  So I decided to combine it with 2008.  I worked on it some more, and soon Christmas 2008 had come and gone.  Sooooo . . .

I'm putting the finishing touches on my gargantuan 2007/08/09 Christmas newsletter.  I hope to have it out by Valentine's Day.  *g*  In the meantime, I have to cut many, many pages, because I'm over my self-imposed 18-page limit by 12 pages.  Yes, it's 30 pages long.  I've managed to cut 5 pages tonight and gotten it down to 25 pages, but I'm still cutting.  So many good stories on the cutting room floor!  But if I go over 18 pages, the postage goes up.  If you're on my mailing list, you will eventually get the Christmas newsletter. 




Maybe by Valentine's Day.

6 comments:

Jacquie Rogers said...

How about keeping your 30-page newsletter and saving it to a pdf? You could still have a shorter version for mailing.

I hate to miss out on anything, though, so I'd opt for the pdf. :)

Keira Soleore said...

Am I likely to be on your mailing list?? :)

News From the Holmestead said...

Jacquie, I could try a pdf. But the newsletters are in MS Publisher, and I'll have to see if it can be converted to a pdf. The last time I checked, I believe I couldn't convert it. I love MS Pub, but it's darned near impossible to find anything that reads it or supports it anymore. Even printing houses won't accept it. They want everything in InDesign.

News From the Holmestead said...

Keira, consider it done. I have added you to my mailing list. *g*

NinaP said...

I love your newsletter, Sherrie! Can't wait to get it.

Here's an idea for those poor stories, dead on the cutting room floor. Post them on your blog!!

To the PDF... Adobe makes a "pdf-er" for just about anything, I think. Works like a printer driver. I found my copy on-line. There's a small purchase fee, if I remember, but cheeper than paper and postage, over all. :-)

Hugs, Nina

News From the Holmestead said...

Nina, I have discovered that I was trying to use logic to make a pdf of my newsletter and that's why it didn't work. I would try to save the MS Publisher file as a pdf, but had no luck. Turns out I have to open Adobe Acrobat and then import the MS Publisher file and THEN convert it to pdf. Sheesh.

It just seemed to logical to do it the other way. So we'll see how it works. Trouble is, I have so many graphics and photos in my newsletters that it may not look very pretty in a pdf. We'll see.