The first book I wrote in Scrivener took forever because I didn’t know how to use most of the features and I kept having to look things up in the user’s manual. By the second book I was using Scrivener and Canva like a pro, and everything about organizing, writing and publishing a book was a breeze. And that’s what I want for you.

I want to inspire you to become self sufficient in your writing business so that you don’t waste time waiting around for designers, formatters or worst of all, expensive self publishing services to get around to doing things for you.

Really, with the technical advances in writing and image manupulation apps today you can do it all yourself. (Except editing. Unless you are an expert, always use a good editor)

One day when you notice a small typo in your book or you want to add a bestseller badge to your cover and you can take it down from Amazon yourself, fix it, and have it up again in a day you will be very glad you learned.

My name is Karen Prince, Kazz for short.

My mission is to help people to create and publish their own books and video courses and become a #1 bestselling author on Amazon or video course creator on Udemy like me.

I focus on the techy stuff like how to get the best out of your software so that you can get down to the business of writing your book or creating your content.

• Scrivener for long form writing projects like books
• Canva for creating book covers and social media images
• Screenflow for creating your own promotional videos or video tutorials
• InVideo for creating quick and easy marketing videos and book reveals on YouTube and social media.

I grew up on a fairly primitive farm just outside the tourist resort of Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. My family grew fruit and vegetables, raised livestock and ran a dairy to supply the local hotels. We had no electricity but we did at least have an indoor toilet.

What we also had was the most spectacular waterfall in the world as well as an abundance of wildlife. Few things are more thrilling than fishing quietly on the banks of the Zambezi river and a herd of wild elephants comes down to drink beside you. They won’t hurt you if you sit perfectly still.

Unfortunately, not everyone can make a living from viewing wildlife or a tourist attraction so when I left school I moved to the capital city, Harare, where I spent a couple of years as an airline stewardess, a model and then working at the local T.V. and radio station. Eventually, I got married and settled down to raise a family.

In the early 2000s, two things happened. The Zimbabwean government started a campaign of violence against white farmers and business owners causing the economy to collapse, and my husband ran off with a younger woman.

Finding myself suddenly a single parent in an unsafe environment, I moved to the beautiful city of Cape Town, South Africa with my four boys and raised them on my own which is my crowning achievement because they all turned out great.

It was there I was finally able to attend a design college at the ripe old age of 50 and where I found my passion for design software. Now I spend most of my time doing what I like best, designing book covers, websites and social media images, writing books and creating video courses and marketing videos.