Monday, December 26, 2011

Critiquing

I’ve encountered a lot of advice on writing. The years fly by and it seems that certain aspects of the art become more crucial and pointed for me, whilst others seem like non-issues. What have I learned from these experiences? I was going to make a list, but perhaps just fragments of thought would be more appropriate (and more for you to criticize!).

(Okay, I’m making a list.)

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Self-Publishing and eBook Creation

Hello all. Thank you for visiting this blog once again. Kyle & I appreciate it very much.

It's not easy to "reach the masses" these days, despite ever growing media channels. And, perhaps that makes it even more crucial for bloggers and tweeters to keep up, lest they fall behind. We would hate to fall behind.

The order of business in this post is a discussion and overview of self-publishing, and eBook creation.

You'll say (since you've followed ALL of our posts), "Hey, you two fools, haven't you already done self-publishing posts before? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS." Well, we say, "That's why you're sitting...and something new has come up, so we feel it a good thing to update the STATE." Applause.

I have The Write Message onto Amazon and Barnes & Noble as an eBook. I am very proud. Exciting.

A few posts back I mentioned how self-publishing (and all publishing for that matter) require more than just writing and selling: you've gotta market. Without putting it out there, you are leaving your fantastic, golden baby to die in the annals of The Internet. The annals are a scary place. You don't want that.

Since I have just put my creation to the world in a digital format (other than in print  at the KU Bookstore), I have some words of advice: you'll become the person who people think of as "Oh, here THEY come, shoot. They're going to talk about their BOOK again. I bet you all of the glittering vampires in Twilight. Yeah, that's right -- you're not going to take that bet."

But, it must be done. The odds of your ebook or printed book selling past your family and close friends is low. It's lower than your room temperature, you poor, poor, person.

You'll have to be a bit annoying. And, it will hopefully pay off, assuming you have a worthwhile story.

That being said, publishing your creation on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble is surprisingly easy and quick. You'll probably want to learn a bit about formatting...seriously. If you spend the time learning how to format either in a word processor, or HTML (that's what epub and mobi use), then you'll be able to nearly obliterate all formatting oddities when you go look at the site previews. I'm not a professional, and I don't have to the time to become one, so I didn't get ALL of the problems out. Just the big ones.

When you've got that ready, for Amazon, go to the bottom of the page for Independently publish through us. Then, assuming you aren't doing print, go to Kindle Direct Publishing (versus print for createspace). And, the rest is straightforward.

For B&N, go to the bottom for Publishers. Then, you'll find information about pubit! That's the service you'll use and in my opinion it's even easier than with Amazon, which is saying something.

You get to set your royalties, the genres (you get 5 with B&N, vs 2 with Amazon), and any information about your book you think the audience would like or needs.

After that, you wait for the processing to go through. Amazon is fast, like Jimmy Johns. B&N is not as fast.

And, that's it for now! You can, of course, check out Smashwords. They also do eBook publishing. I haven't had much experience with them, so my guidance stops here.

And, as always, some useful links to help boost my ego:
The Write Message at B&N
The Write Message at Amazon


-JK

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