Kindling?

A couple of months has passed since I added to this blog and I can summarize most of it by saying I was looking for a publisher, and then the last two weeks I've been fighting with buggy free software while trying to publish on Kindle. And the interim issue was that, once I accepted the self-publishing option, I knew I had to proof read the manuscript exhaustively. The best way I've ever heard to do this is to read it in reverse. It picks up soooo many mistakes that your eyes are just glossing over from too many rereads. So I did some close editing.

I was waiting on a tiny publisher who'd expressed interest in the book, and finally heard from them. They wanted to know how I was going to sell the book. Actually, their word was 'market'. All of the small publishers I've contacted now begin the process by asking for a marketing plan along with the 'blurb for the story, so this wasn't unexpected. And it's not unreasonable. The only exceptions are the ones that announce they've already signed up work through 2020 and please get back to them in 2021.

I responded by saying, well, I'm willing to go on foot to bookstores and generate what attention I can to try and get it on shelves (they required that), if you can get me some reviews. They sidestepped that point, trying to dismiss the importance of reviews, and that's when I knew they were no great improvement over doing it myself.

Around this time I read the announcement by Amazon that downloads were outselling hardcover fiction.

Of course, self publishing has become both more expensive and more complicated than it was eleven years ago. Iuniverse's cheapest publishing option today is nearly $500, and many others charge that and more. That's for a basic plan, assuming you can clean up your own files. They pad the options with editorial services, marketing plans, and artists to design the cover. These would all be services you'd get from a publisher, so it's perhaps unfair to label this as modern three card monte. The difference is, of course, with a publisher that does this for you, they've put their money in limbo and will actively market the book. Self-publishers get their money up front and there goes the sales incentive. The only service you couldn't manage to buy in the old days was a reivew. Well, Kirkus Reviews, a well known publishing entity that reviews books, has become the first to sell their services. For $500 you can get a review from someone suitably professional.

The only benefit with the present day is that virtually all the self-publishing outfits give the writer several copies. Iuniverse, back in 2001, gave me one (1). So yes, I ended up buying a dozen more just to send off for reviews.

So anyway... I live among the rest of you in a cybernetic world and my wife gave me for Xmas a Kindle fire. Neither of us are using it much, both being printophiles, but it does intrigue us. And as I considered the marketing options for printing WTGIB, I realized I could push it into Kindle World for nothing. And that was irresistible. If, like me, you aren't expecting fat royalities, then it's all about people reading your work. I have published Where the Gold is Buried on Kindle, for the price of $1.29, which is the same cost as a current hot song on Itunes. (Because my audience is less likely to be Kindle-friendly, I expect to crank out a print edition. For that I'll probably use Lulu, and I'll have to actually pull out my credit card and buy copies to get into stores.)

As to Kindling...I have to say, the software guidance Amazon offers for producing a clean electronic facsimile of a book is useless. And if you accept the crappy looking file you end up with and try to publish it, they will reject it (don't ask how I know this). You have to search for better options - and they are out there. I learned that, this being a html document, I was better off cleaning it up in Dreamweaver, which I did with limited success. Word is the primary tool, and another roadblock I encountered was the version at my job is Word 2007, and the version at home is the old XP. And the commands for Table of Contents are very different between these editions. At this time I still don't know if this conversion process affected the file.

Then I learned that to get the cover photo on the damn cover I had to zip it with the book and upload the whole zip file. But then the Table of Contents disappeared. Actually it was there, but the Kindle software was blind to it. Some kindlefile posted some html tags to use to make Kindle see the cover. I tried that, withotu success. So then I found this free downloadable program called Calibre. Calibre did a good job of attaching the cover photo, though it trashed the author photo in the back and not only put in a Table of Contents where I asked it to be, but tacked another one on the end of the manuscript.

A mistake I discovered early on was uploading files to Amazon under the assumption that I was overwriting previous files with the most current uploads. That was not the case. I was uploading and uploading and tweaking and uploading and kept seeing the same damn mistake. (Picture cave man screaming, pounding fists against stone wall).

So then it occurred to me to delete my entire entry and start over. It gets a little tedious, like running an obstacle course, but after I saved my cover blurb it got pretty streamlined. As I said, Calibre gave me beaucoup T0Cs, and the current version up on Amazon probably has a TOC in the back because I couldn't seem to delete it.

So I consider this as much an experiment as Weathermen was back in 2001. I read that I can give out five free copies, but I don't know how to do that yet. I was going to drop out of Facebook (ironically the postings I kept going back for were my nieces', my sister's, and the self-publishing blog I signed up for). I have noticed writers of ordinary fame using it for self-promotion, and that's the other reason I stayed signed up. Once I'm sure the book is out there, and that its production values aren't too embarrassing, I'll post the link whenever and wherever. And I'll almost certainly push it on Linkedin as well.