E-Books and the Learning Curve

If you believe once you’ve converted a manuscript to an ebook you’re good at it and won’t have much trouble next time you do it, you’re in for a surprise. The unpleasant variety.

Okay, maybe not you, but me.

This past weekend, I decided I’d put some of my longer stories – which are, by the way, included in the collections A Fine Cast of Characters and A Moonlit Stroll – into Amazon’s Kindle store as stand-alone stories for a cheap price. More name recognition, with a teaser to get the whole thing for not much money if you liked the taste. Not a bad plot, I guess, but I don’t know if it’s going to work. I figure what the heck?

So, I get to work on that in the midst of outlining my new novel. I need a break, so I wanted to spend a few minutes getting the new novella/story ready.

A few minutes turned into hours of fuss-budget work, flipping back and forth, converting and re-converting the file so I can check the look, the formatting, the spacing, the image, the cover, all that. It was horribly annoying and I still don’t know if I got all the bug-a-boos.

So, don’t take anything for granted. This is my fourth foray into ebook publishing on Amazon, and I could probably offer this to other aggregator sites like Smashwords too. But honestly, I don’t really want to, and with the Kindle Select’s five-day free period, it will manage to do it’s job – generate interest.

On the other hand, not being exclusive for 90 days has it’s appeal, too, and I can get the price set to free if I make it free on Smashwords and post on Kindle later. But…eh. I think less than a buck’s okay too. I guess I can experiment with this one and take the lessons learned from it to the next one.

Anyway, that’s how I spent my weekend. How ‘bout you?

-JDT-

Ready to Roll on Ahead

Okay, so, at least one of you felt it was important I promote my new novel as much as possible before getting into a new one. Others feel it’s just as important to get into a new book and get the product out there so your customers — loyal readers who maybe liked what you wrote — will have more stuff they can read when they finish the first one.

I believe it’s got to be a balance of both. I’d love to have a “publicist” who could promo my work, but I’ve seen “publicists” posting to Facebook and Twitter with little to no success. I’ve seen authors chase around all over their regional area going to “book signings” and such, all for a handful of sales.

Thank goodness eBook publishing means I don’t have to do any of that. It also means, while I should try and get people interested in my product, most of the people who read it will do so because they found it on Amazon themselves.

I read an article my buddy Bryce sent me a link to, on a blog by a young lady who’s trying to generate enough loyal fans — those that read everything and anything the author writes — to make her employment full-time writing. I’d love to be there too, but she had some stuff on her blog which made a load of sense, wasn’t that hard to do, and might have been key in making things happen for her. She had her best month ever in May and while she’s not sure if she’ll duplicate her results, the fact she made more than she did on her day job is very appealing.

Anyway, she had some tips and things on her blog I might try. After all, what’s it going to hurt? I’ve got not very much to lose.

So, for me, I’m going to dig in to Scrivener and start my next book. Not because I don’t value the advice of those saying I need to promo this book — I do appreciate the input and will heed the advice to the best of my ability — but I also need to have product for readers to acquire. If I don’t, there’s no sense in trying to market this one. (In addition, I’ve learned series do better than stand alones, and sticking with one genre per pen name helps. Great. Now I needanother pen name to use. *Sigh.)

That being said, I’m going to go forth and begin the writing process on my next book, which has an outline (albeit not horribly detailed yet), and get the ball rolling on that. My wife, the loving and supportive person she is, is excited about a book whose subject doesn’t in the slightest excite her. That is, she doesn’t even like the subject matter but finds the story compelling and wants to read it. I’m honored by that. I think she’s worth rewarding.

Finally, I sent out a few copies of my newest novel before I released it (the night before, it’s true, but still). If you got a copy and have read it, or are reading it, please consider leaving a review on Amazon. I haven’t got any so far, and I really need as many of those as I can to boost the visibility of the book. Add tags as well, if please. On the other hand, if you don’t like the book, please don’t speak about that. Lie. (Just kidding. Gotta take the lumps with the good, just like in a bowl of mashed potatoes.)

Have a great weekend everyone. See you on the other side.

-JDT-

Weekend Updates

I actually have some weekend-y updates to share this time. Weird, no?

Friday night I didn’t do much but watch TV. So sue me. I wanted to relax. I love Frasier, and have been re-watching the show through. Love it all over again. I forgot how fond of it I was, even though I didn’t follow it through to the end when it aired originally. I’m a little startled how long it’s been off the air. Goodness, the years get away from me.

The Dawn of a New Era

If you haven’t read my last post on this topic (Monday, June 6, 2011), this one won’t make sense. Just so you know.

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What I found was, most the agents and editors in the world didn’t have a standard. They set their own standards. Personal ones. “Check our (my) website for submission guidelines” is the common gatekeeper mantra, and it echoes through all the hallowed halls of that first level (yes, it’s only the first level) of the gatekeeper castle. Problem is, you can’t write a great query letter. That’s the primary thing I learned from reading agent blogs – there’s no such thing as a “great” query letter. Know why?

Because no two agents will consider the same query “great”.

So an author spends all this time banging their heads against the keyboard and firing off the query letter. They won’t receive any guidance on what’s wrong with their letters if something is indeed wrong; they simply won’t get a response. They are to assume from silence there’s something wrong with their letter.

What a Weekend!

Well! That was quite a weekend, let me tell you!

First, I didn’t get jack-sprat done on the SRLP. Nothing. However, I did get my second anthology edited, finalized, polished (as much as I can) and published. Now, some will say you can’t polish a turd, but that’s for another discussion. Right now, suffice it to say I’m exhausted. What a driven, pounding weekend which included more than one all-nighter getting this thing ready to roll.

But I discovered something about myself in doing it. I love editing my work. I love to chop, cut, pare and slice. I took a story from a flabby 18,500 words down to a fit and taut 16,400 in a matter of a single session. I bet if I sat down and really had time to dedicate to it, I’d be able to cut out another couple of thousand too. It’s absolutely amazing when that happens.

Other stories seemed pretty tight as they were. A lot of them, remember, are flash fiction writing for #FridayFlash. Those don’t have much fat in the first place, and I didn’t even mess with those. But I had three big ones, and of those, the one published as a series of #FridayFlash entries needed no help. Keeping yourself on a tight leash in the first place is a GREAT way to learn to write tighter, cleaner prose, I have to tell you.

Of course, there were bumps along the way. I saved three stories using one of the most helpful tools I have in my Kindle-formatting arsenal, KompoZer. But it added special character (CSS character) coding to the source mark-up of the stories I did with it, and when the browser looked at them it was beautiful. When the Kindle preview software looked at them it didn’t know what to show me so it showed me a series of boxes with a question mark in them. Everywhere. All over my page, wherever there should have been quotation marks or apostrophes. UGH.

After almost slitting my wrists and ripping out my hair – in no particular order, mind – I decided I’d just get the raw text, put it back in KompoZer and get the markup after I applied all the formatting tags. Then I copied the source code instead of saving it, pasted it into Notepad++ and voila! All better! Copy and paste those stories into the manuscript where they belong, make sure I didn’t delete anyone, ensure the ToC works, and I’m off and running.

Then I remembered Smashwords doesn’t like anything but Word.

I wept bitter tears and again contemplated the wrist-slashing, but instead I opted to open the HTML file I made in N++ with Word and see what it looked like. It looked GREAT, thank God, and so I saved the Word document and uploaded it to SW. In a few agonizing conversion cycles, it was finished and ready to go. I’m now on Amazon’s Kindle store AND on Smashwords, but Amazon hasn’t released the book to sell yet. That usually takes 24-48 hours.

I’m still undecided about whether to let PubIt! – which is the Nook Reader’s eBook self-publishing arm – have a crack at my stuff for their store. I don’t know how many Nook users there are and how they sell there. Anyone have any insights you can share? One thing I don’t like about them is they allow anyone in their brick and mortar store to download and read the eBooks they sell for free while they’re in the store. How they know when the user’s NOT in the store anymore is anyone’s guess. I’m … uncomfortable with that. Extremely. And the Terms and Conditions they put forward didn’t have any opt-out clause; you wanna publish to their eBook store, it’s gonna be free for their physical store customers. Period. So I haven’t committed yet.

*Whew!* What a weekend!

Today it’s back to the SRLP, and then I have a couple of things to tell you about on Friday. If you follow me on Facebook you may already know so don’t spoil it here for anyone.

Wish me luck. Three weeks left to write half a book about Cascading Style Sheets and I haven’t even started as of Sunday night.

How was your weekend?

-JDT-