This is just a quick update.
Since releasing my ebook, Sentry, my Amazon Bestseller ranking was "unspecified", but I just received word that I am now #50,536 below the bestseller. This may seem like a huge number from the top of the list, and if you read my previous blogs, my chosen genre (sci-fi) will probably never make the top spot, but there are around 2 million books on Amazon currently, mostly consisting of authors who are just like me. That means there are 50,536 other authors who are currently selling the same number of books as myself, which is oddly comforting. I will use this figure as a starting point, and update you regularly with any gains or losses, plus the steps (or mishaps) it took to achieve my latest ranking. I am HonestAuthor.
Friday, 6 September 2013
Why isn't my ebook selling?
In this post I'll describe my experiences of what happened just after publishing my ebook. I published Sentry to Amazon (Via KDP, or Kindle Direct Publishing), Smashwords, and Createspace. The latter I used for my POD (Print On Demand) paperback edition, which handily links the two formats of the book together on the same web page for the buyer.
On with the show:
Three weeks after publishing Sentry I now have ten (1....0) official readers! Yay! But in another way, Boooo! Let's not forget, there are millions upon millions of people upon our beautiful planet, and less than one sneeze of them have even seen Sentry on Amazon or Smashwords, let alone have read the free first few chapters each website offers, and even less have taken the gamble on the few quid it costs to own a copy. I'm not easily disheartened, but considering the potential readership, this is definitely disappointing. Nonetheless, it's a start, and I intend to take this tiny grain of sand and turn it into a big sci-fi snowball, emitting lasers and suchlike.
On the plus-side, Amazon has sold my ebook to a couple of countries I probably did not know existed. It's probably only one or two ex-pats, who are desperate to read anything in english, even if it is only a road sign, but again, it is a start. By the way, you only get 30% Amazon royalty when your book sells in some countries, not the usual 70% - it depends on how snuggly you want to get with Amazon.
Where did I go wrong?
The simple answer is that I'm not sure yet. It's still early days, but perhaps the front cover is wrong. After all, I took a hell of a risk depicting a dog-like face behind the spacesuit. That might come back to bite me in the wotsit with its blue canine gob. Another possibility is that the book simply does not get rolling quickly enough. When I wrote Sentry I wanted to take a little time at the start of the book to set the scene, but we live in a world of instantaneous gratification (shortcuts all over the internet, fast food), and even the blurb on the back of the book is a shortcut to what it contains, not the whole story. Again, if this blurb is not right, it will switch potential readers off immediately. I know all this, yet I have done my best to counter all these facts while keeping the book true to how I envisaged it. Was I wrong? So far, probably, yes. But we'll see.
What am I doing right?
I've sent my ebook to as many online reviewers as possible. If anyone cares to ask, I will give them a list. On one occasion I even subscribed to a reviewer's website to try to increase my chances (spending a hideously expensive $0.99 on a lifetime subscription). I then started the Facebook page, then I started writing this blog. After that, I shamelessly told my mates, work colleages, neighbours and anyone within earshot that I am an author. That's not counting my mum and dad, familiy and friends, of course, all of whom I'm hoping will support me in the early stages of my career.
Finally, I'm just about to launch a competition. Check out my Facebook page for more info, but basically I am about to leave myself wide open to abuse from the sci-fi crowd, while still giving them a free gift. I am HonestAuthor, and I hereby raise my shields in preparation for attack. You'll find out what I did on the next post. Stay tuned for what might be my demise as an author!
On with the show:
Three weeks after publishing Sentry I now have ten (1....0) official readers! Yay! But in another way, Boooo! Let's not forget, there are millions upon millions of people upon our beautiful planet, and less than one sneeze of them have even seen Sentry on Amazon or Smashwords, let alone have read the free first few chapters each website offers, and even less have taken the gamble on the few quid it costs to own a copy. I'm not easily disheartened, but considering the potential readership, this is definitely disappointing. Nonetheless, it's a start, and I intend to take this tiny grain of sand and turn it into a big sci-fi snowball, emitting lasers and suchlike.
On the plus-side, Amazon has sold my ebook to a couple of countries I probably did not know existed. It's probably only one or two ex-pats, who are desperate to read anything in english, even if it is only a road sign, but again, it is a start. By the way, you only get 30% Amazon royalty when your book sells in some countries, not the usual 70% - it depends on how snuggly you want to get with Amazon.
Where did I go wrong?
The simple answer is that I'm not sure yet. It's still early days, but perhaps the front cover is wrong. After all, I took a hell of a risk depicting a dog-like face behind the spacesuit. That might come back to bite me in the wotsit with its blue canine gob. Another possibility is that the book simply does not get rolling quickly enough. When I wrote Sentry I wanted to take a little time at the start of the book to set the scene, but we live in a world of instantaneous gratification (shortcuts all over the internet, fast food), and even the blurb on the back of the book is a shortcut to what it contains, not the whole story. Again, if this blurb is not right, it will switch potential readers off immediately. I know all this, yet I have done my best to counter all these facts while keeping the book true to how I envisaged it. Was I wrong? So far, probably, yes. But we'll see.
What am I doing right?
I've sent my ebook to as many online reviewers as possible. If anyone cares to ask, I will give them a list. On one occasion I even subscribed to a reviewer's website to try to increase my chances (spending a hideously expensive $0.99 on a lifetime subscription). I then started the Facebook page, then I started writing this blog. After that, I shamelessly told my mates, work colleages, neighbours and anyone within earshot that I am an author. That's not counting my mum and dad, familiy and friends, of course, all of whom I'm hoping will support me in the early stages of my career.
Finally, I'm just about to launch a competition. Check out my Facebook page for more info, but basically I am about to leave myself wide open to abuse from the sci-fi crowd, while still giving them a free gift. I am HonestAuthor, and I hereby raise my shields in preparation for attack. You'll find out what I did on the next post. Stay tuned for what might be my demise as an author!
Thursday, 29 August 2013
Which Books sell and which don't?
I really should have investigated this before writing Sentry, but even if I had, I would still not have chosen to write any other sort of book. Call me bloody-minded, but I wanted to write the sort of book I wanted to read and be known for, not necessarily one that is the most popular. The thing is, I am a bloke who is into Sci-Fi, so why on earth would I want to write a romantic novel? It's just not me, and to be honest, I would be appalling at it. But guess what - the romantic novelist is the person most likely to make a decent living out of writing! Damn. An obvious reference here is Fifty Shades Of Grey, but another great romantic novelist is Jilly Cooper. Get this - one of my male mates at uni was reading her novels as a teenager; that's the reach she had, and still has!
Oh, and would anyone like to guess at the genre which generally makes the least in sales? Yup, Science Fiction. Again, damn and blast.
But all might not be lost, I'm thinking, (optimistically as ever!). These days the kids are wearing t-shirts with "Dork" and "Geek" written on them (man, this blog will become outdated really soon!), so perhaps I have stumbled upon a timely gift in terms of my marketing (to be covered soon in another post). In a world where everyone is now encouraged to be themselves, perhaps it is cooler now to embrace your inner-nerd than it ever was. I've been doing it for years, playing computer games (when computers actually needed a keyboard and tonnes of patience to get any game to load, to the present day), discussing actual science with my friends, rather than whatever boy/girl band had just split up, and encouraging people to visit museums.
So perhaps this is now the age of the Sci-Fi writer. After all, it's the 21st Century and we're all living in The Future!
Now then, where's my hover-board floated off to...?
Oh, and would anyone like to guess at the genre which generally makes the least in sales? Yup, Science Fiction. Again, damn and blast.
But all might not be lost, I'm thinking, (optimistically as ever!). These days the kids are wearing t-shirts with "Dork" and "Geek" written on them (man, this blog will become outdated really soon!), so perhaps I have stumbled upon a timely gift in terms of my marketing (to be covered soon in another post). In a world where everyone is now encouraged to be themselves, perhaps it is cooler now to embrace your inner-nerd than it ever was. I've been doing it for years, playing computer games (when computers actually needed a keyboard and tonnes of patience to get any game to load, to the present day), discussing actual science with my friends, rather than whatever boy/girl band had just split up, and encouraging people to visit museums.
So perhaps this is now the age of the Sci-Fi writer. After all, it's the 21st Century and we're all living in The Future!
Now then, where's my hover-board floated off to...?
Wednesday, 28 August 2013
Uploading to Amazon and Smashwords - it's easy, up to a point.
Right, I want to relay my experiences of self-publishing on Amazon.com and Smashwords.com. For anyone who is totally new to all this, Amazon is the largest distributor of eBooks, and Smashwords is another eBook site which comes up frequently in search engines. In fact, quite often indie book reviewers (subject to be covered in another post) ask where they can find your eBook on both sites, leaving out most others. So I thought these two places were good to start with.
First, Amazon.
I found the whole upload process really easy, as they have a wizard which runs you through the whole process. I started with the usual boring stuff, name, address, etc etc, then got straight to the good stuff, which is where you upload your cover design and book content.
All of these steps were really easy, but something to note: With the cover artwork, it can arrive at your PC in a number of formats from the artist. Mine was sent in CMYK format, and I saved it as a JPG file and uploaded it to Amazon, but it didn't look right. The colours were way too vibrant, so something was definitely wrong. Then I checked Amazon's submission requirements, and it turned out the JPG needed to be in RGB format, so I did a quick conversion using a Photoshop clone and re-submitted it...perfect.
Then I uploaded the book's content. If you are using Word, which I did, then you will need to upload it in a .doc format, not .docx (the newer version of the MSOffice file format). Basically, that's it though. After that, you can preview the book.
Things to remember (I picked up these tips from blogs about the job Typesetters do (yeah, I wasn't prepared to pay for that either!)):
1) For your book, choose the right font. Here is a good link to the sorts of fonts you might like to choose.
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/07/top-font-links/
2) It should be noted that Kindle and other e-reader users can mostly decide which font and font size they would like, so I suppose the decision it taken largely out of your hands. However, I also wanted to publish an actual paperback with Amazon's Createspace (covered in another post), so for that I went with the Palatino font, and decided to use the same font for my eBook.
3) I would recommend not getting carried away with fancy fonts (unless you are writing a children's book, of course). The reason for this is your book will (hopefully) be read by many people, including those with impaired vision. Therefore, swanky fonts that have thin bits as well as thick bits in the character set might be very difficult to read, ruining the experience for the reader, and giving you low reviews of your book.
4) Start each new chapter on a new page. In Word, use the "Insert Page Break" function. Don't simply hit the ENTER key until it looks good, because if you change the content/font size/anything else, it will not marry up, and will CERTAINLY not look good when converted to Kindle format.
5) Don't go larger that 14pt for chapter headings. It just uses up space, and Smashwords' Autovetter absolutely hates it (I'm coming to that).
After that, my book was pretty much ready to go... with some caveats, covered later in this post.
Using Smashwords:
I found the upload process a lot less slick than Amazon's, but it's certainly not impossible. Smashwords has an Autovetter function, which is an automated process that checks your book content over after you submit it. Autovetter should be seen as the gatekeeper for Smashwords. If you have errors, fix them, don't ignore them. The reason for this is your manuscript will be passed to a more in-depth assessment process (which takes a couple of weeks) after Autovetter, so if you've not fixed the basics, you are back to square one. Here is a useful summary of Autovetter rules & regulations, but please note a full version is available also.
http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/52/15/smashwords-style-guide/-,Georiga
In Smashwords' favour, I like their "Dashboard", which is where you are taken after successfully uploading your ebook. This is like the "Reports" section of Amazon (where you find out if anyone is actually buying your book), but has more detail than Amazon gives. For example, the report contains how many people have downloaded a sample of your novel to their device (you can choose in the setup, as a percentage, how much you want to give away for free. I used the default 20% option). It also contains a "Libraries" field, which is where the users have added your book to their list of favourites, effectively. It ALSO states, by drilling down, how many actual page views you have had (those who have clicked on your book to find out more). As an ex-market-researcher, I really liked all this extra information. If it is available on Amazon, I have not found it. PLEASE REPLY TO THIS POST WITH MORE INFO IF YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP!
Finally, DON'T use the "Unpublish" option in the Smashwords dashboard unless you are intending to remove your book from publication permanently. Instead, use the "Upload New Version" link if you wish to fix the Autovetter errors or update your book's content. Removing your book from publication without good cause can seriously upset some of Smashwords' large partners, possibly damaging your reputation. And one last thing. Never delete your book from the dashboard and upload an updated copy of the same book. Again, you really piss Smashwords off.
But what if you live outside the U.S.A.?
With all this relatively easy stuff, there HAD to be a problem lurking somewhere, and I just found it. Amazon and Smashwords are U.S. companies, therefore they have some weird thing about withholding 30% of your earnings for tax purposes. Therefore, if you don't do something about it, you will be that much poorer. The slightly good news is the U.K. (where I live) has a tax agreement with the U.S. Then, more bad news, as you have to write to the U.S. IRS and tell them about yourself, so they don't deduct tax from you at source. You'll need this form http://www.irs.gov/uac/Form-W-7,-Application-for-IRS-Individual-Taxpayer-Identification-Number sent to America, then another form https://dwtr67e3ikfml.cloudfront.net/forms/itin-request.pdf, then another http://www.irs.gov/uac/Form-W-8BEN,-Certificate-of-Foreign-Status-of-Beneficial-Owner-for-United-States-Tax-Withholding. The last two you send to Smashwords. The last one only, you send to Amazon (plus, maybe another, like the Smashwords letter. I've not don't that yet. The first one you send to the U.S. IRS. To coin an American phrase, Jeez.
OK, so forms are all sent off and my book is online for people to read! Now it's time to sit back in my chair and wait for the money to roll in. Yeah, right...
First, Amazon.
I found the whole upload process really easy, as they have a wizard which runs you through the whole process. I started with the usual boring stuff, name, address, etc etc, then got straight to the good stuff, which is where you upload your cover design and book content.
All of these steps were really easy, but something to note: With the cover artwork, it can arrive at your PC in a number of formats from the artist. Mine was sent in CMYK format, and I saved it as a JPG file and uploaded it to Amazon, but it didn't look right. The colours were way too vibrant, so something was definitely wrong. Then I checked Amazon's submission requirements, and it turned out the JPG needed to be in RGB format, so I did a quick conversion using a Photoshop clone and re-submitted it...perfect.
Then I uploaded the book's content. If you are using Word, which I did, then you will need to upload it in a .doc format, not .docx (the newer version of the MSOffice file format). Basically, that's it though. After that, you can preview the book.
Things to remember (I picked up these tips from blogs about the job Typesetters do (yeah, I wasn't prepared to pay for that either!)):
1) For your book, choose the right font. Here is a good link to the sorts of fonts you might like to choose.
http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2012/07/top-font-links/
2) It should be noted that Kindle and other e-reader users can mostly decide which font and font size they would like, so I suppose the decision it taken largely out of your hands. However, I also wanted to publish an actual paperback with Amazon's Createspace (covered in another post), so for that I went with the Palatino font, and decided to use the same font for my eBook.
3) I would recommend not getting carried away with fancy fonts (unless you are writing a children's book, of course). The reason for this is your book will (hopefully) be read by many people, including those with impaired vision. Therefore, swanky fonts that have thin bits as well as thick bits in the character set might be very difficult to read, ruining the experience for the reader, and giving you low reviews of your book.
4) Start each new chapter on a new page. In Word, use the "Insert Page Break" function. Don't simply hit the ENTER key until it looks good, because if you change the content/font size/anything else, it will not marry up, and will CERTAINLY not look good when converted to Kindle format.
5) Don't go larger that 14pt for chapter headings. It just uses up space, and Smashwords' Autovetter absolutely hates it (I'm coming to that).
After that, my book was pretty much ready to go... with some caveats, covered later in this post.
Using Smashwords:
I found the upload process a lot less slick than Amazon's, but it's certainly not impossible. Smashwords has an Autovetter function, which is an automated process that checks your book content over after you submit it. Autovetter should be seen as the gatekeeper for Smashwords. If you have errors, fix them, don't ignore them. The reason for this is your manuscript will be passed to a more in-depth assessment process (which takes a couple of weeks) after Autovetter, so if you've not fixed the basics, you are back to square one. Here is a useful summary of Autovetter rules & regulations, but please note a full version is available also.
http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/52/15/smashwords-style-guide/-,Georiga
In Smashwords' favour, I like their "Dashboard", which is where you are taken after successfully uploading your ebook. This is like the "Reports" section of Amazon (where you find out if anyone is actually buying your book), but has more detail than Amazon gives. For example, the report contains how many people have downloaded a sample of your novel to their device (you can choose in the setup, as a percentage, how much you want to give away for free. I used the default 20% option). It also contains a "Libraries" field, which is where the users have added your book to their list of favourites, effectively. It ALSO states, by drilling down, how many actual page views you have had (those who have clicked on your book to find out more). As an ex-market-researcher, I really liked all this extra information. If it is available on Amazon, I have not found it. PLEASE REPLY TO THIS POST WITH MORE INFO IF YOU ARE ABLE TO HELP!
Finally, DON'T use the "Unpublish" option in the Smashwords dashboard unless you are intending to remove your book from publication permanently. Instead, use the "Upload New Version" link if you wish to fix the Autovetter errors or update your book's content. Removing your book from publication without good cause can seriously upset some of Smashwords' large partners, possibly damaging your reputation. And one last thing. Never delete your book from the dashboard and upload an updated copy of the same book. Again, you really piss Smashwords off.
But what if you live outside the U.S.A.?
With all this relatively easy stuff, there HAD to be a problem lurking somewhere, and I just found it. Amazon and Smashwords are U.S. companies, therefore they have some weird thing about withholding 30% of your earnings for tax purposes. Therefore, if you don't do something about it, you will be that much poorer. The slightly good news is the U.K. (where I live) has a tax agreement with the U.S. Then, more bad news, as you have to write to the U.S. IRS and tell them about yourself, so they don't deduct tax from you at source. You'll need this form http://www.irs.gov/uac/Form-W-7,-Application-for-IRS-Individual-Taxpayer-Identification-Number sent to America, then another form https://dwtr67e3ikfml.cloudfront.net/forms/itin-request.pdf, then another http://www.irs.gov/uac/Form-W-8BEN,-Certificate-of-Foreign-Status-of-Beneficial-Owner-for-United-States-Tax-Withholding. The last two you send to Smashwords. The last one only, you send to Amazon (plus, maybe another, like the Smashwords letter. I've not don't that yet. The first one you send to the U.S. IRS. To coin an American phrase, Jeez.
OK, so forms are all sent off and my book is online for people to read! Now it's time to sit back in my chair and wait for the money to roll in. Yeah, right...
Sunday, 25 August 2013
Getting someone to read my ebook
So then, I had the book all done, but still no-one had read it. Couldn't ask the wife - she's not into sci-fi. Damn. So I asked a friend who has read Frank Herbert and Isaac Asimov. Perfect - someone who's read some classic sci-fi. And I know what you're thinking - how can I get an honest review? Well, I was not really looking for someone to take my book apart piece by piece - that would be soul-destroying! At this point I should probably say I made a mistake there, as there are lots of great writers' groups on the internet who will give you great feedback for free if you do the same for their book. So don't discount that option by any means. The reason I didn't is that I was happy with the book (right or wrong, but I am HonestAuthor!), so just wanted someone who had read a lot of books to see if he could at least get through it. He did, and gave me some good feedback. The only problem he had was that the ending could have been a bit longer, as the rest of the book, according to him, was fine. I asked him what he would give it as a star rating, and he said four out of five, which was plenty for my ego. Again, I should probably say that I've made a mistake by not letting others review it first, but what the heck. I want to develop as a writer, and this was my best shot, so I'm going to let it lie.
At this point you are probably thinking I've gone mad, but I want to write an honest account of releasing a debut novel, so this is it. You can all learn from my mistakes as we go along. In my opinion the book is still worth buying, and I don't really feel there's anything else I can add to the ending. It says what I want it to say, and it's a satisfying conclusion that doesn't beg the reader to buy the next installment in the series, if I write it. That's just a bit cheeky. So I'm going to release it as-is, as a standalone story.
So then, onto the upload phase.
At this point you are probably thinking I've gone mad, but I want to write an honest account of releasing a debut novel, so this is it. You can all learn from my mistakes as we go along. In my opinion the book is still worth buying, and I don't really feel there's anything else I can add to the ending. It says what I want it to say, and it's a satisfying conclusion that doesn't beg the reader to buy the next installment in the series, if I write it. That's just a bit cheeky. So I'm going to release it as-is, as a standalone story.
So then, onto the upload phase.
Artwork for the book
Guess what - people judge a book by it's cover. After all, with zero people on the entire planet (apart from myself) to recommend it to anyone, how else are you supposed to make a choice? Therefore I was prepared to spend a few hundred quid getting it right. I asked a friend of mine, who works in the publishing business, if he would be prepared to design me a cover, but he did graphic design work, which was not really what I was after. He did, however, recommend the following website to me:
http://www.beehiveillustration.co.uk/
I went onto their site and looked around the Fiction/Teen section, then found an artist with an excellent collection of example works called Janos Jatner. "Great", I thought. "For the three hundred quid my mate told me I could expect to spend, plus a little bit more perhaps, I can get an award-winning cover. Oh, no no no. This artist is great, but you have to spend good money to get a good product.
My first artistic brief after contacting the company was for an epic battle to be portrayed on one of the planets. Janos said he would be able to do that, but at over a grand in price! Wow. I'm not saying he wasn't worth every penny - quite the opposite, in fact, but I just could not justify the cost, so I re-wrote my artistic brief, based on other examples he had submitted.
In the end, I went for a very simple design based on one of the aliens in my book. The reasons were:
1) To get the most bang for my buck, it would have to be relatively easy to draw
2) Having said that, Janos could concentrate on the detail (the expensive bit) on only a small section of the artwork.
If you look at my book cover (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sentry-ebook/dp/B00EN4J95G/), you'll see he did exactly what I asked. The main body of the detail is confined to a relatively small area, but the picture looks very good as a whole. I would thoroughly recommend him to anyone with a small or large budget, as he is obviously very talented and followed the artistic brief incredibly well. I asked him to use his imagination, which he did. I asked him for an alien with canine features, and he did that too.
So, did I give him the correct artistic brief? Only time will tell, as up to this point I have only sold three copies on Amazon.com, and had seven free downloads of a sample from Smashwords.com. Here are a couple of tips I have picked up though:
1) Don't go for a complicated scene. The artwork will have to look good and concise even at low screen resolutions. Many people will not take the time to examine every work in detail when they are buying a book, so it has to catch the reader's eye.
2) Make sure your artwork is of the right dimensions, and of the appropriate format. Here is Amazon's advice for how to submit their artwork: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2J0TRG6OPX0VM
3) When considering the cover, make sure you specify to the artist that he/she leaves enough room for the book's title & your name! What's the point in paying for a masterpiece if you're only going to scribble all over it, so decide how much text you want on the cover, and where, before starting!
4) Bleed. This is what all writers do for their art, but I'm talking about the borders of the cover. Don't forget, you might want it for books of different sizes, so make sure the main body of the work is in the middle, and leave out the less important detail for the edges of the picture. I went for a bleed of 1cm on each side, which I found ample.
5) Make sure it's a high-resolution image you get sent. Mine was of a high enough standard that I was able to cut out a small portion of the background and use it as the book's rear cover. ESSENTIAL MONEY-SAVING TIP if you don't want to pay for two artworks! Oh, and don't forget to check the terms and conditions of the artist, to see if they are OK with that. I did, so there was no problem.
So how much did I pay? £600 for the artwork. Considering the original estimate, and also considering I got exactly what I asked for, I would consider that money well-spent. Now then...what's next, I asked?
http://www.beehiveillustration.co.uk/
I went onto their site and looked around the Fiction/Teen section, then found an artist with an excellent collection of example works called Janos Jatner. "Great", I thought. "For the three hundred quid my mate told me I could expect to spend, plus a little bit more perhaps, I can get an award-winning cover. Oh, no no no. This artist is great, but you have to spend good money to get a good product.
My first artistic brief after contacting the company was for an epic battle to be portrayed on one of the planets. Janos said he would be able to do that, but at over a grand in price! Wow. I'm not saying he wasn't worth every penny - quite the opposite, in fact, but I just could not justify the cost, so I re-wrote my artistic brief, based on other examples he had submitted.
In the end, I went for a very simple design based on one of the aliens in my book. The reasons were:
1) To get the most bang for my buck, it would have to be relatively easy to draw
2) Having said that, Janos could concentrate on the detail (the expensive bit) on only a small section of the artwork.
If you look at my book cover (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sentry-ebook/dp/B00EN4J95G/), you'll see he did exactly what I asked. The main body of the detail is confined to a relatively small area, but the picture looks very good as a whole. I would thoroughly recommend him to anyone with a small or large budget, as he is obviously very talented and followed the artistic brief incredibly well. I asked him to use his imagination, which he did. I asked him for an alien with canine features, and he did that too.
So, did I give him the correct artistic brief? Only time will tell, as up to this point I have only sold three copies on Amazon.com, and had seven free downloads of a sample from Smashwords.com. Here are a couple of tips I have picked up though:
1) Don't go for a complicated scene. The artwork will have to look good and concise even at low screen resolutions. Many people will not take the time to examine every work in detail when they are buying a book, so it has to catch the reader's eye.
2) Make sure your artwork is of the right dimensions, and of the appropriate format. Here is Amazon's advice for how to submit their artwork: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A2J0TRG6OPX0VM
3) When considering the cover, make sure you specify to the artist that he/she leaves enough room for the book's title & your name! What's the point in paying for a masterpiece if you're only going to scribble all over it, so decide how much text you want on the cover, and where, before starting!
4) Bleed. This is what all writers do for their art, but I'm talking about the borders of the cover. Don't forget, you might want it for books of different sizes, so make sure the main body of the work is in the middle, and leave out the less important detail for the edges of the picture. I went for a bleed of 1cm on each side, which I found ample.
5) Make sure it's a high-resolution image you get sent. Mine was of a high enough standard that I was able to cut out a small portion of the background and use it as the book's rear cover. ESSENTIAL MONEY-SAVING TIP if you don't want to pay for two artworks! Oh, and don't forget to check the terms and conditions of the artist, to see if they are OK with that. I did, so there was no problem.
So how much did I pay? £600 for the artwork. Considering the original estimate, and also considering I got exactly what I asked for, I would consider that money well-spent. Now then...what's next, I asked?
Saturday, 24 August 2013
Editing Sentry - should I pay for an editor for my book?
Before I published Sentry, I wanted to make sure it was at least readable. I had (and still have) doubts as to whether it is really the sort of thing people would like to read. Therefore I went online to find one who would be willing to edit it. Oh, there are millions of people. That's the good news. The bad news is, you'll have to pay for every single one of them, with practically no guarantee of quality. If you type in "Edit my ebook" into Google, you'll find all sorts of prices. I reckon it's about $1000 dollars (I live in the UK, by the way) for a 90,000 word novel, but don't quote me on that. I found out (from more googling) that quite often the editors like you to send in a sample copy of your book, so they can work out how much effort they'll have to put into it. If, for example, you are a modern Shakespeare, they might ask less. If, however, you simply bang your knuckles on the keyboard and leave it to someone else to sort out the mess, they will charge a lot more. Oh, and when I say "no guarantee of quality", that's me thinking back to well-respected/high-ranking Amazon authors whose ebooks are incredibly badly formatted or edited (naming no names).
I have also learned that editors read the book as a normal person might, but with much more experience. Therefore, they can locate plot holes, where you said something which doesn't happen/does happen later in the book, for example. They can obviously correct spelling and grammatical errors (you would hope!) and they can even suggest ideas for improving on, or even removing, certain aspects of your book.
Editors can be a very valuable addition to your work, but in both time, but also in money. Here is the latest article I have read about this subject:
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/10/should-you-pay-someone-to-edit-your.html
Should you get an editor? Maybe - probably.
Did I use one? No.
Why? Because I read another web page (I can't find the link now, it was last year!) that said any writer worth their salt shouldn't need one.
Does that mean I should not use one? It depends on you. Do you have the patience to edit a book? (see later in this post!)
Again, why did you not use one, Chris? Because I read millions of other web pages after that one. I read advice on how to edit your own book. Here's what I took from those pages:
So, with all that aside (and three deep breaths taken), what did I actually do to make sure my book was worthy (in my eyes, of course...we'll come to that in another post) of being read by others?
Answer: I read it, and read it, and read it, and then I had a beer. And then I read it some more. In all, I read it through, COMPLETELY THROUGH, from cover to cover, 7 times! Oh my god. It took 9 months. When I was writing it (and under the influence of alcohol on several occasions), I thought I was writing a new Asimov, but, upon sobering up and leaving it for a week, I realised that writing a book and editing a book are two completely different things.
For example, I had said everything I needed to say in the three weeks it took me to write it (see previous post for my "manic episode"), but it was all wrong. For example:
I have also learned that editors read the book as a normal person might, but with much more experience. Therefore, they can locate plot holes, where you said something which doesn't happen/does happen later in the book, for example. They can obviously correct spelling and grammatical errors (you would hope!) and they can even suggest ideas for improving on, or even removing, certain aspects of your book.
Editors can be a very valuable addition to your work, but in both time, but also in money. Here is the latest article I have read about this subject:
http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/10/should-you-pay-someone-to-edit-your.html
Should you get an editor? Maybe - probably.
Did I use one? No.
Why? Because I read another web page (I can't find the link now, it was last year!) that said any writer worth their salt shouldn't need one.
Does that mean I should not use one? It depends on you. Do you have the patience to edit a book? (see later in this post!)
Again, why did you not use one, Chris? Because I read millions of other web pages after that one. I read advice on how to edit your own book. Here's what I took from those pages:
- If a chapter or character does not add to or progress the story, delete it/them.
- If a book takes time to "get going", consider condensing/deleting the first few chapters.
- Don't bang on about what's in your head. No-one likes being lectured. Just tell the story. If the characters want to bang on about something, let them, but be sure to gauge the reaction of the other characters, and don't draw it out too much.
- If you are not good with words, don't write.
So, with all that aside (and three deep breaths taken), what did I actually do to make sure my book was worthy (in my eyes, of course...we'll come to that in another post) of being read by others?
Answer: I read it, and read it, and read it, and then I had a beer. And then I read it some more. In all, I read it through, COMPLETELY THROUGH, from cover to cover, 7 times! Oh my god. It took 9 months. When I was writing it (and under the influence of alcohol on several occasions), I thought I was writing a new Asimov, but, upon sobering up and leaving it for a week, I realised that writing a book and editing a book are two completely different things.
For example, I had said everything I needed to say in the three weeks it took me to write it (see previous post for my "manic episode"), but it was all wrong. For example:
- Characters said things later in the book which they never would have said at the start. I'm all for character progression, but if they have multiple personalities across 250/350 pages, that's just wrong, and unbelievable to the reader.
- Plot holes. They're like Black Holes, but worse. A black hole will destroy a galaxy. A plot hole will destroy a writer's profit. Far worse...
- DON'T TRUST YOUR WORD PROCESSOR! Simply zipping down, looking for nice red underlines, or nice green ones under words or sentences is not enough! For example, how wood a processor know weather this is wright or wrong?
- DON'T TRUST YOUR WORD PROCESSOR! Localizations can sometimes add, or remove, letters you would not use in your native tongue (did you spot the letter in the previous sentence? I'm English - we hardly ever use the letter "z"! TURN THE AUTOCORRECT OFF AND USE A DICTIONARY!
- Capitalisation (Oh my god, my browser just tried to change that "s" to a "z"); indents, paragraphs, chapter titles, sub-headings, it has all got to be addressed!
Having said all that, there might well be a case for an editor. The question is, though, will they charge you more for converting all that lovely formatting to an Amazon eBook, Smashwords or Createspace format!? Food for thought...
At that, I think I might leave the editing post for now. No doubt I'll come back to it when I realise (inevitably) that I've missed something really important out. THAT'S the beauty/secret/difficulty of careful editing!
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