Researching Research

If Cinderella Was On a Magazine Cover

I haven’t done a research-type paper since high school (I’m 24 now!), so doing research for our class eBook about my chosen literary work has been a fun experience. With a few ideas boiling in my mind, I started my research process by logging into Brigham Young University's library website. I thought for sure that if I searched “Cinderella” I would find loads of articles analyzing the story – I wasn’t disappointed. One particular article about economics caught my attention because it referenced something called the “Cinderella Syndrome”, sometimes called the “Cinderella Complex” – which is the idea that a woman is strong and beautiful, but incapable of changing her situations without the help of a third party (typically a male). With this syndrome or complex in mind, my ideas for writing a chapter about self-publishing in the digital age began to take form. 

I decided that I want my chapter to argue that digital platforms such as the Kindle, Goodreads, and Amazon provide the way for the common individual to break free from the “Cinderella Syndrome”. For this to work, I needed (and still need) to research how to self-publish on Amazon. I went to Amazon and searched for eBooks about that particular topic, finding two that seem particularly helpful. One is titled How to Self-Publish a Book on Amazon.com: Writing, Editing, Designing, Publishing, and Marketing and the other is titled Transformations: Stories of Successes from Authors, Innovators, and Small Businesses Thriving on Amazon. Both are free Kindle downloads and both will help me with my chapter, but I think they can also help with publishing our class eBook.

After finding those eBooks, I knew that I would need some more scholarly knowledge about my specific literary work. I found a neat article by Jane Yolen, a teacher of writing and literature, titled “America’s ‘Cinderella” where she discusses how the popular folktale has been made to present Cinderella in a weak light, but that, based on the original stories, she is actually a strong-willed individual.

Push to Kindle

So far, I would say my research has been fairly easy. I’m excited to delve into the eBooks I found so that I can better shape my chapter. 

Random thought: If you haven’t used the “Push to Kindle” option on your computers, you really should! It makes researching online so much easier because you can send articles that might be helpful straight to your Kindle. I love it! (Click here to learn how to install the “Push to Kindle” option.)