Posts Tagged With: book

Self-publishing Checklist REVISED

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Kate Policani

Originally when I began my journey, I had the list ordered differently, and that was a mistake. I want to update for you who are starting out. I began publicity just before I sent the book to the editor, and that was a mistake. Start things up while you are still writing the book. If you are sure about the book, start as soon as you know you want to publish it someday.

Self-publising Checklist:

1. Publicity, publicity, publicity. I originally had this after publishing on my list and that was a mistake. Promote while you are writing the book you’re planning to publish. Start as soon as you can because you’ll need that web presence for book sales later. Also, write the book.
2. Choose a pen name. You’ll want all your online activity to feature this name. Your name is your brand just as much as your books’ names. Also, write the book.
3. Establish an email address, a WordPress site, a Facebook profile, and Twitter account for my pen name and a Facebook profile for my book. Also, write the book.
4. Write the book
5. Get 6 or more friends to read the manuscript and give me feedback and work the book over
6. Find an editor and give her the manuscript–I posted a request on Facebook and a social website and found several within a few hours! Thanks Kathleen and Kathryn!
7. Find a cover artist–my social website was full of these guys and I found two great artists who are working as a team on my cover. Heidi and Erik were awesome!
8. Sign up on CreateSpace with my pen name and new email.
9. Work with my cover artists to fine-tune the cover.
10. Once my editor has finished, implement her changes to my manuscript. (This took a lot longer than I thought. I recommend establishing a deadline whether or not you need your book quickly.)
11. Finalize contracts with my editor and cover artists.
12. Publish my book on CreateSpace. CreateSpace provides an ISBN number for my book. (Complicated and easy at the same time!)
13. Register my copyright at http://copyright.gov/ . This can be done online and there is a small fee. (Still have to mail in a copy.)
14. Submit my book to popular book blogs for them to review. (Also took longer than I thought)
15. Possibly publish my book on additional publishing sites.
15. Resarch appropriate websites and expand my web presence for publicity.

A comprehensive booklet with lots of links can be found in my newest Smashwords ebook: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/102331

Categories: Self-Publishing | Tags: advertising, Author, book, ebook, marketing, promotion, Self-Publish, write | Leave a comment

Review: Farsighted by Emlyn Chand

Posted on November 4, 2011 by Kate Policani

Farsighted

By Emlyn Chand

Genre: Fantasy

My rating: Four out of Five Stars

Bonus! This blog tour has a $100 prize for one random commenter as chosen by random.org. Leave comments on this post your chance to win! You can also visit other tour hosts and leave comments on their blogs to enter for the random commenter prize.

This is my first Blog Tour participation. I’m a person who learns by doing, so this is me doing. My review will live at the “Book Reviews” page.

Description:

Alex Kosmitoras, blind from birth, is an otherwise normal high school boy, until he develops powers of foretelling the future, as well as perceiving events currently happening elsewhere. His new friends Simmi and Shapri, two girls in his class, have been drawn to him because they also have powers. Simmi can affect people’s moods and Shapri can speak to the dead. Shortly after meeting Simmi, Alex begins to have feelings for her. Then he has a vision of her gruesome death. Prevention of this disaster becomes his obsession, compelling him to hone his powers and push his own boundaries. Alex must crack the mystery of his visions and stop a telekinetic boy named Dax from killing the girl he loves.

Review:

Farsighted was exciting and engaging. Emlyn’s characters were lovable and she made me want to know what happened to them.

Alex’s bravery through his challenges and his manliness was refreshing and made me respect him. I connected with him from the first few pages, loving his frank perspective and unique challenges. His many, shifting emotions were dead-on for a sixteen-year-old boy, and they enriched the story. I really enjoyed the view into his sightless world under the context that he had never seen before. Omitting that aspect from his descriptions made the descriptions sizzle, and that takes talent. Only once or twice did I think, “Would a blind boy be able to tell that was happening?” The plot engaged me as I was pulled through the book by the
momentum of the story, not left hanging by too much description or rabbit trails.

A few of the dramatic scenes seemed rushed. With all the great emotional description of Alex’s feelings through the rest of the book, I was surprised how little some of the big scenes were explored in this way. The scenes of Alex’s dad’s disappearance and reappearance, the false breakup with Simmi, the fake romance with Shapri, Alex’s mom knowing the whole time about his powers, and the final confrontation with Dax left me wishing for more details, particularly in how everyone felt. The characters’ feelings here so richly described elsewhere that I expected it to flow through the whole narrative.

The description of Alex’s identification of people by their smell, and his awareness of what was happening through sound was fantastic. I wanted to hear all about his perceptions and impressions in this unique perspective.

Alex’s numerous and dramatic visions belied the quick ending. There was so much buildup to the horror of Simmi’s death and the evil nature of Dax that the tame ending felt a bit like an anticlimax. This is truer with real life than with a novel, and I felt Emlyn could have gotten more out of her ending.

The segue into a second book was obvious, but not so abrupt that I felt cheated. I’m looking forward to the next book in this series!

Blog Tour Notes

THE BOOK: Alex Kosmitoras may be blind, but he can still “see” things others can’t. When his unwanted visions of the future begin to suggest that the girl he likes could be in danger, he has no choice but to take on destiny and demand it reconsider. Get your copy today by visiting Amazon.com’s Kindle store or the eBook retailer of your choice. The paperback edition will be available on November 24 (for the author’s birthday).

THE CASH PRIZES: Guess what? You could win a $100 Amazon gift card as part of this special blog tour. That’s right! Just leave a comment below saying something about the post you just read, and you’ll be entered into the raffle. I could win $100 too! Please help by voting for my blog in the traffic-breaker poll. To cast your vote, visit the official Farsighted blog tour page and scroll all the way to the bottom. Thank you for your help with that.

THE GIVEAWAYS: Win 1 of 10 autographed copies of Farsighted before its paperback release by entering the giveaway on GoodReads. Perhaps you’d like an autographed postcard from the author; you can request one on her site.

THE AUTHOR: Emlyn Chand has always loved to hear and tell stories, having emerged from the womb with a fountain pen grasped firmly in her left hand (true story). When she’s not writing, she runs a large book club in Ann Arbor and is the president of author PR firm, Novel Publicity. Emlyn loves to connect with readers and is available throughout the social media interweb. Visit www.emlynchand.com for more info. Don’t forget to say “hi” to her sun conure Ducky!

MORE FUN: There’s more fun below. Watch the live action Farsighted book trailer and take the quiz to find out which character is most like you!

http://apps.quibblo.com/static/flash/qwidget/qwidget.swf?s=&theme=black&quiz=fDlEAGP

Categories: Blog Tours, Reviews | Tags: blog tour, book, ebook, Emlyn Chand, Fantasy, fiction, Kindle, Prize, promotion, review | 3 Comments

Things I Thought Would Be Different About Self-Publishing

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Kate Policani

This self-publishing thing hasn’t gone exactly the way I thought it would, posting my books on CreateSpace and Smashwords. I tend to think more positively than reality affords, and I’m aware of it, so I’m not surprised very often when I am wrong. Things I was mistaken about:

1. Visibility for my book is low. For some reason I thought people would see my books. My sales numbers have been waywayway lower than I thought they’d be. I’ve been writing so much about self-promotion because I’ve been trying to fix this. You can’t just put them up and see them sold, though. You have to work to draw people toward your books even if they only cost 99 cents as an ebook.

2. Most of my Facebook friends are not interested in my book. They don’t want to read it, or comment about it, or tag it. I have a few wonderful friends who are the ultimate fans, but overall (unless I am also completely invisible on Facebook) people aren’t interested. I had thought that I could get at least 50 sales from facebook. Oh well.

3. Promotion is endless and can take up all your time. I couldn’t just put up my website and go. To promote, I have to constantly post (see these words in front of your eyes), converse in various places about my book and others, read others’ posts, and squeeze each contact out of the internet like the last of the toothpaste. I have recently said ENOUGH and I’m not looking for more promotion ideas, or joining any other communities to promote. There are too many and I do want to write and pay attention to my family occasionally.

4. I may not “pay off” my book with profits before the end of the year. I made deals with my editor and artists, as a concession to my first book status, to accept payment when I made money on the book. I can’t exactly send them checks for percentages of an $8 month’s profits. If things don’t pick up, I’ll have to dip into my household budget to pay them off at the end of the year. I also was (heh) hoping to make enough to pay up front for editing and art for the next book. Yeah, I know. Now I am wondering but not brave enough to ask my husband if we can just suck it up and pay it to get another book out. I really want to keep going, you know?

5. There is more money to be made in promoting someone’s book than in writing and selling a book. If you really want to just write and have somebody else worry about it, you can. I would love to do that, but it will cost money I can’t spare. If I could get paid to do for others what I have done for myself, that would be awesome. But again there is my whopping $8 monthly payout, which wouldn’t cut it with another author paying me to promote them. Grrrr…

6. There was another one that I thought of between 4 and 5 and if I can remember it again I’ll put it here. Yes, this is how I roll. I know. If you have kids or anything else to do in life besides read blogs, you’ll know that it gets worse, not better.

***And I remembered #6 a day later. Dur. I thought when I emailed/filled out forms to get reviews from book review blogs that I would get responses in a week or so. Nope. It’s at least 4 weeks I guess for the bigger blogs if that.***

Anyway…I’m tired of writing and I know most of you won’t read this far. I’ll pull a joke off some random website to end: I Googled “joke write” and got a bunch of tutorials for writing a joke. You know that your joke writing is going entirely the wrong direction if you need a tutorial. I’m just sayin’. So I Googled “joke writers” and found http://sites.google.com/site/writersjokes/jokesaboutwriters and picked the first joke, which was good enough to be first.

“There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer. When asked to define great, he said, “I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!” He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.”

(Note for the author of jokesaboutwriters: Why did you use such a tiny font and put so many spaces in your post?)

Also, I can’t see that there is any way to change font size in WordPress. If you know this vital information, please comment. I just clicked “remove formatting” to un-tiny the joke. I will write a review for your book in exchange (unless it is erotica. Women with wild imaginations like me shouldn’t mess with erotica. Bad things happen.)

If you have read all the way down

Categories: Self-Publishing | Tags: advertising, Author, blog, book, ebook, facebook, marketing, promotion, publicity, Self-Publish, write | 26 Comments

Tag surfin’! Tag-tag surfin’!

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Kate Policani

They should really call it “Tag Fishing” because it is like finding some that are whoppers, some that are minnows, and some old boots.

Here are my faves from today:

http://timzimmermann.com/2011/10/28/the-publishing-revolution-in-one-table/ I love the hard evidence, and I’m encouraged that though I am not making wads of money, the odds are in my favor. This one was short but fat with goodness.

Also there is a long one but interesting http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/are-successful-writers-just-lucky/ Maybe this one is an eel. I liked her progression through the book writing process to fame.

Categories: Self-Publishing, Writing | Tags: book, books, ebook, links, literature, marketing, promotion, publicity, Publish, publishing, reading, resources, Self-Publish, self-publishing, tag, writer, Writing | Leave a comment

Premium Distribution on Smashwords!

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Kate Policani

It’s a small achievement, but I finally tweaked my ebook version to qualify for premium distribution on Smashwords! As I’ve said before, they have a great formatting guide and have a lot of good advice and tips about good ebooks. Lets see if this increases my sales, as they claim it will…

Categories: Self-Publishing | Tags: Author, book, ebook, literature, marketing, promotion, Publish, publishing, Self-Publish, self-publishing, Smashwords, writer | Leave a comment

Making a Trailer!

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Kate Policani

Yes, I finally gave into the pressure to produce a trailer, worked out how I would do a trailer for my book, researched it, and am mostly done (translated “waiting for someone else to email me something”).

Here is my recipe for creating a trailer:

First, I downloaded Microsoft live Movie Maker for FREE. It’s part of Windows Live Essentials: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials?lc=1033 It was disgustingly easy to use and dummy-friendly. It was fun, and you just plunk everything in there with the “Insert photo” button. You can add effects and text and everything right there and export it in multiple formats.
Then I spent hours and hours finding photos for my trailer. Literally. Hours and hours. These are the kind of hours and hours where you say, “Hey! How can it be 7:30 already?!!?” It is VERY important that you find royalty-free photos, unless you want to get sued or pay royalties.
I came up with three sites where I got my photos: http://www.sxc.hu/ Has a selection of free and paid photos. For the free photos you must check and see below the pic whether the photographer wants credit or permission to use their photos. I just picked ones that wanted neither. The paid photos on SXC redirect you to istockphoto (below).
http://www.dreamstime.com/ These are also paid and free photos, but the free ones are really free and don’t require that you check the photographer’s permissions. The paid photos are about the same price as istockphoto’s paid photos. Both sites require you to purchase points or a subscription to buy their photos. DON’T BE FOOLED. Each photo does NOT cost only one point.
and http://www.istockphoto.com/ This is only paid photos. Their subscription is (at the time I wrote this) $18.99 for 12 points, which bought me 2 medium-sized photos and one large. The pics do NOT cost one point each, and two that I did not buy cost 30 points!!! If you can find them free, use those. Totally.
I encountered a problem finding a picture of people fighting. All the stock photo of people fighting is cheesy ham shots of men in business suits punching at each other or boxers. I needed a brawl. http://ectopicleiron.blogspot.com/2011/01/fist-fight.html was where I found one, and after extensive searching with no clue as to where the pic came from, I decided to go for it. There were no other choices, really. If this is your blog and I’ve stolen your photo, please contact me for an apology and to let me know if I can use your photo for my trailer. When I tried to comment on the post and ask you that way, it said I wasn’t allowed.
For music, I just emailed my dad, the composer with a Masters in music. (You should do that too. It’s really easy and cheap.) But if your dad isn’t a composer, you can contact mine: cdbarker@comcast.net . It won’t necessarily be so cheap for you, I’m afraid. Sorry!
If you need free music immediately, you impatient thing, go to this beautiful site: http://www.seabreezecomputers.com/tips/freemusic.htm. I particularly liked their link, http://www.soundclick.com/business/license_list.cfm and found a song there in case Dad didn’t have anything. (But he did. Neener.) WARNING: there is a lot of kooky stuff on musopen. Don’t worry, though, your music isn’t one of the kooky ones, user of musopen who is reading this post. It’s all those other people’s music that is kooky.

And, really all the rest was tweaking the text and pictures and music and stuff (incredibly easy but time-consuming) with Movie Maker. As soon as it is ready, I’ll put it up here and you’ll see if you want to follow my recipe for a trailer or not…

Categories: Resources, Self-Publishing | Tags: advertising, Author, blog, book, book trailer, dreamstime, ebook, fiction, istockphoto, marketing, music, musopen, photo, promotion, publicity, Publish, publishing, resources, royalty, royalty-free, Self-Publish, self-publishing, stock.xchng, video, Windows Live Essential, Windows Live Movie Maker, writer | 4 Comments

More Advice That Is Priceless and Free

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Kate Policani

Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords and owner of Dovetail Public Relations has a free ebook on marketing for self-published authors. Surprisingly, it is called Smashwords Book Marketing Guide. Go figure!

Definitely, this is an excellent read full of meaty, juice information for po’ little authors like me. http://www.smashwords.com/books/download/305/1/latest/0/0/smashwords-book-marketing-guide.pdf

He pointed out an important fact: Your webpage shows up in searches based on its links to other sites and other sites’ links to it, as well as how many people travel there. One big goal is to increase traffic and therefore increase visibility in an exponential way.

Here is my new list of things to do after reading his guide:

Update my email signature to include my web addresses (His reasoning is that we all send lots of emails and replies and should use that to our advantage. He suggests your blog site, any sites where your book is sold, and a webpage if you have one.)
Add the community pages I use to include my web addresses
Updste myTtwitter profile to include my web addresses
Update my Smashwords profile to include my Twitter address (There is a special list on Smashwords of Twitter users with increased visibility)
Write a press release (Scary!)
Participate in HARO (Help a Reporter Online) with my particular expertise (Aliens in the future…yeah…)
Hold a limited coupon promotion on one or more sites: on Smashwords (garnered 200 buys in his example), on the blog, on http://kindleboards.com, or other promotion sites.
Include the promotion on these sites (good links!) www.freeonlinenovels.com , http://online-novels.blogspot.com , www.getfreebooks.com , http://blog.booksontheknob.org , http://ereader.freebies.blogspot.com , www.bookbarista.com

Thank you, Mark for your fabulous advice, since I can’t use your promotion services! I’m passing it on because marketing tips to authors (poor) should be free!

Oh. Now I have to DO all these. Gah!

Categories: Resources, Self-Publishing | Tags: advertising, Author, blog, book, bookbarista, booksontheknob, community, ebook, email, ereader.freebies, freeonlinenovels, getfreebooks, HARO, Kindle, kindleboards, Mark Croker, marketing, online-novels, promotions, Self-Publish, self-publishing, Smashwords, Twitter, web presence, Wordpress, writer, Writing | 2 Comments

A link to a blog with a cool scene-writing technique!

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Kate Policani

http://dlmorrese.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/writing-a-simple-scene-in-five-easy-layers/
DL Morrese has laid out a simple but beautiful method for creating a scene.

Categories: Writing | Tags: Author, book, DL Morrese, scene, Writing | Leave a comment

Goodreads is Good!

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Kate Policani

OK. I know I have posted 3 times today, but I have to tell you about GoodReads! They are a great resource for self-published authors. There are tons of resources and a whole new medium for self-promotion and marketing. They are fast too. They set my author site up right away. www.goodreads.com You have to sign up, even if you aren’t an author yet, or never will be and just love books. I feel embarrassed that I didn’t see this site sooner!

Categories: Resources | Tags: Author, book, books, GoodReads, literature, marketing, promotion, Publish, publishing, read, reading, Self-Publish | Leave a comment

Self-publishing Resources Should Be Free!

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Kate Policani

I was looking up some marketing ideas, so I’ll post them here for you. There are tons of them, but here are some with good ideas/ideas I hadn’t heard of before:

http://askville.amazon.com/ways-advertise-market-self-published-book-online-neighborhood/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=5572327

http://holly-stacey.suite101.com/promoting-a-selfpublished-book-a122124

https://www.createspace.com/en/community/community/resources/marketing_your_work?view=blog

These are good lists of things to do for marketing a self-published book. Truthfully, some of these sound less pleasent than going to the dentist, but an author’s gotta do what an author’s gotta do.

And here are some more good links I found while cleaning up my “Favorites”!

How to self-publish well (good stuff!):

http://thespectacleblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/how-to-self-publish-well/

What is a virtual book tour? How do I do it?

https://www.createspace.com/en/community/docs/DOC-1008

Self-pub.net’s list, making this a list within a list:

http://www.self-pub.net/

All of these were good resources for me as a self-publisher. Marketing is so scary and this thing is so complicated that any filter you can get, such as a kind bloggers site with links, is wonderful. And it should all be free because we authors almost always start with nothing.

Categories: Resources, Self-Publishing | Tags: Author, book, books, free, literature, marketing, promotion, Publish, publishing, resources, Self-Publish, self-publishing, writer | Leave a comment

Learning from Smashwords

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Kate Policani

I just published through Smashwords and I love their style guide! http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 Even if you aren’t planning on publishing through them, I’d recommend going through this guide if you plan on publishing ebooks. (Once I’m sure I have it right through Smashwords, I’m going to update my Kindle book with my Smashwords submission.) The guide is full of great tips about what makes a good ebook and why, so you don’t feel like you’re beating up your manuscript for nothing. It looks so professional and cool when you’re done! It’s like a detailing job for your ebook. Good stuff!