Apologies, Engagements, and Updates

So, my blogging has become a little sparse lately. I feel bad about that, and I feel a little worse knowing that while I will maintain roughly a blog a week, my posts themselves may be a bit weaker for awhile . . .but I'm going to be honest about why and in doing so let any guilt or self-reprimanding go . . .

The S.O. and I are engaged! I hadn't been expecting it any time soon, but it happened, and, unfortunately for my blog and Twitter, avoiding the work I get paid for by obsessively reading writing tweets and writing blogs has been replaced by bride sites and wedding articles.

The other reason that I haven't blogged as much lately builds on a previous blog. The S.O. and I are in a good position with his writing, but not in a position where there is much new to report on. Recently there were 3 library talks that went well. The libraries advertised his appearance, there were a good number of people who showed at each appearance, the talks went well and books were sold. Now he has a number of librarians who can serve to recommend him and his book to other libraries, which is one new plus. His writing has been steady and the goal is still to finish draft one by the end of February, then revise until it is ready to be sent out to agents, hopefully by the summer of 2010. Kindle sales of the self-published novel have been steady without us paying for advertising. We know that if we paid we could get it ranked in the top 50 or even top 10 temporarily, but we don't have the cash to spend on it right now. As it is, it has been successful overall and did make it into the top 100 a few times in the category of Men's Adventure fiction.

Bottom line: I will continue to share our experiences with getting published as well as other great information, blogs, and links that I find, but you'll have to forgive me if the blog is a bit sparse for awhile. ;)

eBook Architects and our EBook

So, eBook Architects came through for my writer S.O. and I in a big way last week. For $210 we had the galley PDF converted into a file for Smashwords Premium files (available for ALL e-book readers and computers) and a file for Kindle. I also paid $125 for our own ISBN for the e-book file. This is not something we had to do, so we could have had everything for $210. I bought the ISBN for the electronic book (not through eBook Architects) so that in the future, if we parted from AuthorHouse with the paperback/ hardcover editions of the novel, we wouldn't have to worry about the electronic book- the ISBN belongs to us, not another publishing company. We are truly 100% self-publishers of the e-book.

Now comes the hard part: selling. Uploading the documents to Smashwords and Amazon Kindle was relatively easy. However, in the past 7 days, we've only sold 2 copies on Smashwords and had 6 free sample downloads (awesome perk on Smashwords: you can allow anyone to download a portion of your book for free to sample before buying). That means I'll have to invest more time and possibly money into advertising, neither of which I have much of now, but perhaps after the holiday season. Bad news on Amazon front: their system says it will take them 24-72 hours to check you book and make it available for Kindles. It's been a week, and I'm still getting the same message. At the same time, on Smashwords, someone can download a Kindle version of the book. Frustrating.

I will keep readers updated on experiences with sales and marketing, but I do recomment eBook Architects. The owner of the company was VERY easy to work with and saved me a LOT of stress. Hopefully it will pay off monetarily in the future as well. :)

Kindle and eBook Marketing

To all who are HTML saavy or starting from scratch creating a digital file for their book, I commend you and envy your knowledge and wherewithal.

I, on the other hand, have finally come to the conclusion that 1) I don't have the time and won't have the time, any time soon, to learn to do a Kindle-friendly conversion of a PDF file. Nor will my significant other, who is more concerned (as he should be) with writing his next novel. AND 2) I can't in good conscience NOT have a digital file of the S.O.'s novel on the market, especially around holiday time.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me about the debatable necessity of having one's novel available in some electronic form, but from all that I have read in both the self-publishing and traditional publishing world, there are just too many people now reading on Kindles or Sony E-Readers, etc., to ignore. Some of them, popular literary agent Nathan Bransford included, argue that for those addicted to their Kindles (e-readers, etc.), the choice is no longer between hard copy or electronic format. It's electronic format or they won't bother to read it.

For the above reasons, I have decided to shell out some pocket cash to have eBook Architects convert my PDF to a Kindle-friendly format. The prices can run between $120 and $220, generally, for a work of fiction. Is it worth it? Will we even earn that back?? Hopefully, because that would mean good sales figures. :) I will keep you, readers, posted on our experience with it.

Kindle Issues

Finally in the process of trying to convert first self-published novel into a Kindle doc. Several problems:

1) Files uploaded to Kindle do not automatically transfer all of your indents and formatting to "digital text,"or basically in a way that looks the same on your Kindle screen as it does in your computer document.

2) You cannot edit the Kindle document; you have to fix your own document, hope it works, upload it to Kindle, then preview it to see if it shows up on Kindle the way you want it to.

3) Some documents transfer better than others. PDFs do not necessarily transfer well. HTMLs are one of the best for transferring.

4) Why is the above a problem? The most revised copy of said novel that we have is only available in PDF. I converted the PDF into Word and HTML. Tons of paragraphs with varying margins. Will take a loooong time to go through and fix so that it will upload correctly. :(

5) Older, original Word file, which might be the fastest way to get onto Kindle, was found, but will still need to be meticulously read through to re-catch errors that were revised and saved to PDF. (If you're wondering why they weren't changed on the old Word document it is because a self-publishing company was making the changes and saving to PDF during the creation of the hard copy of the novel.)

Headache, headache. I've tossed it on the back burner for now while I attend to paid work. I'll be playing around with Mobi (a free computer program for converting files for Kindle). If all else fails and I want to cut mucho into profits, I may turn to eBook Architects, who apparently will convert your files for Kindle within a few hours, paid by the hour (one file usually takes between 1 and 3).

If anyone has any quick advice or experience, let me know!

Self-Publishing on Kindle

Interesting blog entry on Kindle publishing experience from Publetariat.