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Category: Kindle

My first “cover”

Published by Kelly on July 3, 2011

This is a little embarrassing, but when I first posted my published short story, Two Steps Forward, on Smashwords, I really had no idea what I was doing. I read their style guide and followed the instructions, and gave it away for free since A) it’s a short story – no one pays money for short stories and B) I have no idea what the tax implications would be. So I got to the almost-final step in the process, and then it asked me to upload a cover.

I’m thinking, “What? Only books have covers…” but I know better because I have downloaded my fair share of free short stories for Kindle with cover images. Sadly, I only finally created a cover for the thing and uploaded it today. Check it out at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/36008.

I’ve read enough blogs from e-book author to know that cover art is very important in the electronic book world. It’s often what sways someone into spending the $3 to buy a book. And I’ve seen enough e-book covers to know what and what not to do. Still, I’m not a graphic designer, so I wanted to make sure I didn’t try to do anything too complicated. I had about 10 credits to Bigstock.com for some stock photography, so I ran a search on some of the themes in the story, and found what I think is just about the perfect image for the tone and themes of the story. Then I used my remedial PhotoShop skills to dial down the opacity and add the title and byline. Not bad for a first-timer, I think.

What do you think?

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My first electronic publication

Published by Kelly on January 6, 2011

One of the cool things about getting smaller works, like poetry and short stories, published is that they are considered small potatoes. The publisher gets one-time rights to print (or copy and paste) your work in their work, and then the rights revert right back to the author, which means the author can do anything she wants with it.

Trouble with this is, no magazine wants to publish something that has already been published somewhere else. They want to be the first ones to publish your work. So, after that manuscript has been published, it’s essentially useless.

Unless, as I recently discovered, you self-publish it as an e-book. I found Smashwords quite some time ago, and was very intrigued with their business model. If you’re unfamiliar, I suggest you go check them out. I decided to self-publish my short story Two Steps Forward, since it was published in a print journal late last year. After all, no one else is going to publish it, and it’s short enough I figured it would be a good one to cut my e-book formatting teeth on.  I read the Smashwords style guide, which was amazing detailed and full of information, but also made me inordinately grateful I wasn’t trying to format a science textbook for self e-publishing.

After a few hours, I had my first e-book. Yes, it’s 3 pages long, but they still call it an e-book. I’m not the only to put their short stories on there, so I figure it’s fair. If you’re a Kindler, as I recently am, you can find it here. Hell, even if you’re not, you can just download the HTML. I have no way of knowing how many people bought the first issue of Line Zero, where this short story first appeared, and I have even less way of knowing how many of those people read my story, but I do know that in less than 48 hours, I’ve had just shy of 1o0 people download my free short story to their e-reading devices, and only two of them are people I know. I’ve also already gotten one four-star review. All with very minimal tweeting and facebook promotion.

I made this one free, since it’s my first crack at it, and it’s already been published in print. You can bet your last dollar that I will definitely be adding more of my own published works to Smashwords. If I can get 92 downloads in two days, I bet I could probably charge 99 cents for my next work and at least make $20. And that will be the first time I get paid as a writer. Hello, 2011.

Unless, of course, you count my professional life.

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2010 in writer review

Published by Kelly on December 31, 2010

The week between Christmas and New Year’s is always a time of annual reflection for me, and as I was reflecting on the year that was 2010, I realized how much of a success it has been, and here’s why:

  • I had a total of seven manuscripts published in either print journals, online magazines, websites, or some other medium. Before this year, I had none.
  • I had nine works get accepted for publication. Two of them (ironically enough, the first two) have yet to go to print, so I can’t really count them in the “published” category. What can I say? The world of traditional print publishing is slow.
  • I got a book deal. I didn’t take the book deal, because it was really crappy, but if I can get a really crappy book deal, chances are I can get a less crappy book deal if I keep at it.
  • I started reaching out to other writers, booksellers, and other publishing industry people on Twitter. My relationships on Twitter are directly responsible for three of those seven publications.
  • I pimped my writing – mainly my novel – at South by Southwest and reached out to industry people at the trade shows. This led to two of my publications, both of which were accepted for the site’s best-of-the-year collection.
  • I got a Kindle. This is going to help me understand how writing for this medium is different and will also give me instant access to other independent writers like me and their work.
  • I read. It should be common sense that all writers are readers, but I think we take it for granted. Every time I read something from another author I learn something new.
  • I began participating in an organization to help me with better public speaking skills. I have this pesky slight stutter that comes and goes, and I am an introvert like most writers, and feel uncomfortable talking about my own work, like most writers.
  • I wrote more than 1o new manuscripts. I started far more, but part of a writer’s work is killing the crap.

So, I would say that on a semi-professional writer’s level, the year was a wild success. But I have to keep getting better. Since resolutions are just imaginary, unattainable pipe dreams, I set yearly goals instead of New Year’s Resolutions. Here are my writer’s goals for 2010:

  • Join a writer’s group. I didn’t do it this year because I am not sure if I will be in Kansas City for an entire year, and I didn’t want to pay the year’s dues if I wasn’t going to be.
  • Attend book tour and other events at local bookstores. I’ve already signed up for Pitchapalooza by Rainy Day Books next month, and I attended my first book tour event this year and couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it before. The more I see how other people talk about their work, the better I’ll know how to talk about my own.
  • Give out more business cards at South by Southwest than I did last year. It was my first attempt last year, and I have to get more shameless about it.
  • Write something new, even if it’s just a sentence, once a week, for a total of 25 new manuscripts.
  • Read more books, with 50% of them being independent authors. The Kindle will come in handy here 🙂
  • Publish 10 manuscripts. If I can get 9 accepted manuscripts in one year, I can get at least 10 more if I try harder.
  • Submit something every week. This is always the goal, but I don’t always reach it.
  • Start submitting my novel to both agents and independent book publishers, especially those who specialize in e-print.

I think this is a good set of attainable goals, and I look forward to all that 2011 will bring.

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My life with Kindle: Part 1

Published by Kelly on December 26, 2010

Apparently the Santa in my life thought I was just nice enough to deserve a brand new Kindle for Christmas. Eventually, maybe, I would have gotten it for myself, but it really is a very thoughtful gift and so far, I love it. It’s also important because it will probably be the first format I publish my novel in, and as writers, we’ve got to get with the program.

My favorite feature on it so far is the ability to download a sample of a book before buying the whole thing. I decided to try this feature out on a writer I follow on Twitter who has done a shitload of self-promotion and whose persistence I figured warranted my no-cost 30-minute (40 if you count the part where I stopped to reheat my leftover Christmas ham) perusal. On Kindle, his book’s list price is $5.99, which is about 3 times what I typically pay for a book, and since I had the option to try it before buying, I leapt at the chance.

I was THIS close to buying the book after the sample, and it wasn’t even that good. Still, it had enough good moments to make buying the book a weighty decision in my mind. I know the sample will sucker me into cracking open the wallet for much better written books in the future.

It also gave me a little confidence boost. After all, this guy isn’t some schmo who self-published in his basement. He’s a guy that got picked up by an independent press that does their business mostly in ebooks. He was trying way, WAY too hard to imitate Tucker Max but did so badly. He overused metaphors and even did some shifts in tense in the same sentence – things even a lowly barely-published writer with a BA in Creative Writing from a state school could pull off. If this guy can get accepted by an independent book publisher and charge $5.99 for his work, then I probably can, too.

New Year’s Resolution to follow…

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