You can purchase a copy, but I would suggest holding off on that because as soon as I am able I hope to offer a FREE autographed copy giveaway event to promote this! PLEASE STAY TUNED!
If you don't wanna wait, please do buy a copy and I hope you enjoy my story "The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow." If you do purchase, kindly leave a review for the book please and thanks.
Long story short, I decided to just get the contract done with, take a sampling of essays/articles I write on my political blog You Might Notice a Trend, and put it into book form. It's doable: many a newspaper or media columnist collect their works in such a way - Molly Ivins for example - to have available as a collection. Sort of like a Greatest Hits album.
It's a look back at eight years of political madness, a pro-Obama, anti-Republican work that delves into my apostasy and my observations on how Obama - and the nation - endured it all.
I submitted the final proofing two weeks ago. The book has been available on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble's websites since last week. I just got a copy from the publisher this weekend.
There is something incredibly satisfying about holding a physical copy of your book. A tangible sensation of completion, of getting past a finish line. It's different than publishing an ebook, as there's a lack of a trophy of sorts - the printed book - to make that completion feel real.
Just to note, the process from submitting the rough draft to completed physical copy has sped up the last time I did this. Last of the Grapefruit Wars - my short story collection - took a few weeks to go through the editing and proofing process, and then took another two months for print availability (the point of Print-on-Demand is that the book is saved on file and physically printed on an order-by-order basis).
I know some of the people reading this blog may not know about my political ranting blog, but you can check that out, I have the link available above and over on the right menu lists.
Now all I need to do is ask about oh 500,000 people to buy my book. That shouldn't be too hard...
If anyone is trying to find Stories For All Seasons on Amazon right now, I need to let you know that version of the anthology has been pulled.
The local writers' group Writers 4 All Seasons is currently revamping our attempts to publish annual anthology works, and our board has decided to redo Stories in another format that will allow for PRINT versions as well as eBook versions for sale. I've been told that the print and ebook revision will go live soon, hopefully before June, and when that happens I'll make note of it here.
We're also discussing how we need to do more on marketing, which is a key component of self-publishing. Just throwing an ebook out there without push or promotional materials doesn't help. Even I try to market my works - hi there, buy my books! - using online blurbs and printed bookmarks and posters.
As for the next anthology - a planned effort to create a shared universe with overlapping characters and events - that's been put on hold until we finish this revamp and complete some effective marketing steps. We'll see.
Following up with a NaNo project towards completion - adding more to the unfinished story, editing it to something coherent - is the bigger challenge.
There's also other writing projects I've set aside that need attention now - that novella for the superhero 'verse I've created needs a final edit and then publication to Smashwords and Kindle Direct, there's an anthology with my local writers' group that needs a brand new storyline because the one I started is terrible, etc. - that I need to complete before the end of this year, just to clear my slate a litte.
As mentioned in the earlier article, I am at the Florida Writers Association conference for the day, and I learned a few things:
1) the comma is dead, unfortunately. ...I should also include ellipses, sad but true.
2) I was the only one to show up with a comic book character's logo on a t-shirt.
3) there's a lot of things I can do to improve the odds of getting published.
I sat in on the discussions involving the importance of networking, from there a session discussing the many literary magazines out there and the tips on successfully getting published with MAYBE one of them. Maybe.
I participated on a pitch-fest where I made my first effort to pitch a story idea to a rough, heavily-armed group of agents and publishers just waiting for the blood sacrifice, mwha. I intentionally flubbed it because I promised the fellow writer who went ahead of me I would: she was so nervous she was going to get "gonged" - yes, there was a gong and it was used often - that in order to settle her nerves I did so. I wanted to show her it was just a practice pitch - not a real one to worry over - and that you NEEDED to relax and let loose and unclench. Do it without the stress, you know?
I wowed them with the first line anyway: "Aliens." hehe.
...what, you all never watched that bit with the pigeons from Disney's Bolt?
(Update: Yeah. Like that. Snap,)
Past that there was lunch, and a session on how to tell the difference between novella and novel (hint: it's NOT entirely based on word count, but on the focus/complexity of the work).
I sat in on the "Ask An Agent" session to see what the agents themselves suggest about looking for one and how to succeed. For myself, I'm kinda in the self-publishing stage for now. Once I get novels done - FINALLY done - I will do the legwork to get an agent to do the real legwork for a small-to-big market publisher.
The day is finishing up now with a session on how to submit to the FWA-based writing contests and publications, and thence to the dinner hall.
I documented the atrocities with photos.
I tweeted all over the place with #FWA2015 by the by
Talking about getting published to literary magazines
From the Lakeland Writers meetup group, here's Alison Nissen!
The local writers group - Writers 4 All Seasons - tried out a group project this year: collecting our own short stories and publishing them to a themed anthology.
Stories For All Seasons collects each tale in a chronological order - by season, by month - that provides a sense of scenery, of mood, of time and place.
My submission "Where the Snow Is Grey" is towards the end, as it's set around the Christmas holidays. The title itself comes from a mondegreen of sorts: I misheard the first few lines of Tori Amos' "Winter" song and... well... from the title came the story idea.
It's only available as eBook as this is a small writers group and we are but humble wage-slaves unable to afford actual print publishing. Currently it's Amazon Kindle only, but I'll see if we're getting an EPUB variation out as well. Update 8/20: I've been told that our publishing arrangement with Kindle has it so they have exclusive rights for a few months, so we won't see an EPUB version for about six months perhaps.
For myself, this is a new publication release for which I am feeling the usual buzz of "oh yeah I made it". I think for some from the writers' group, this is their first publication of any kind, I think they're through the roof.
Makes me wanna finish those damn novels I'm still tripping over. ;)
If any visitors here want to download the anthology, please do. All I ask is that you leave a review on Amazon, which will help promote the book. And if you like what the other authors wrote, please follow-up and see what else they've got on market. Thank you!
1) I will attempt Camp NaNo this July. I hope to use the effort to finish Ocean Dancers from this past November: I seem to work better with timely updating...
2) My local writers group Writers 4 All Seasons should be getting a project completed soon, so, you know, YAY.
3) Trying to finish a short story in my superhero 'Verse right now. So... shhhhhhhhhhh, I'm busy.
Nightmare Noir opens the casebook of Detective James S. Peckman, taking us into the underbelly of a world where true evil exists. After his wife and daughter dies under supernatural circumstances, Peckman leaves the police force to pursue the monsters most believe exist only in nightmares. Now, Peckman and his partners take the cases that cannot be explained in the world we think we know.
Writer Alex Azar is born and raised in New Jersey. He made the courageous decision to leave the glamorous life of an electrical engineer student behind and concentrate full time on his life long passion of writing. He is now a happily struggling author. This is his first full length publication (so I know what he's going through...).
Release date for Alex's novel is set for April 13, 2015. As part of this exciting new release, Mystery and Horror LLC is promoting a FREE book giveaway through Goodreads! (for those who don't know, Goodreads is dedicated to sharing and promoting books owned and read by thousands of readers, and it's FREE to join. You might notice I've got a window to my Goodreads bookshelf over on the right of the screen...) The giveaway at Goodreads is for the whole month so you've got until April 30th to click on the Enter to Win button at the giveaway page linked above.
Mystery and Horror LCC will offer TWO more FREE book giveaways as well! Just visit M&H LCC's blog site and post a comment on the Midnight Noir page. You can also post a comment here - there's a link somewhere mutter grumble where'd I put it - and that will count towards the publisher's giveaway. Deadline for the blog comment giveaways is also April 30th! Quick update, the drawing might be THIS Sunday, April 5th, so PLEASE get comments in by Saturday if you're interested!
So I finally got around to plugging in my estories "Welcome to Florida" and "Hero Cleanup Protocol" to the Kindle Direct service.
It didn't make sense to not have my estories available in one of the two major ebook formats - Kindle's and EPUB's - but Amazon never got around to accepting Smashwords (in which I first submitted "Hero Cleanup Protocol") and I wasn't certain it was legally okay for me to re-publish a story I had first loaded for Nook ("Welcome to Florida").
Since I own the copyright on both stories, I figure I ought to be able to re-submit to cover Kindle and ensure I can publish in both formats.
Now it's a question of finishing the Christmas story sequel to "Welcome". Hopefully get it reviewed by Tuesday, uploaded by Wednesday... :evil grin:
The only thing I got plugged into NookPress is my short story "Welcome to Florida". Selling that at about .99 a download. So uh... hmm... I got over 10 people to actually buy/read that short story.
I need to login in and double-check the sales info. Make sure there's not an accounting issue.
And yes, I do have to report this 10 bucks to the IRS.
You do not f-ck with the IRS. Even the Joker does not f-ck with the IRS.
P.S. I may have another short story getting anthologized. More later.
UPDATE: Actually, the NookPress service doesn't tally up any sales returns until a minimum of $10 is there. And it's not the full .99 cents from the sale of each copy, so I've actually sold more than just ten... most of the sales were back in 2012 by the looks of the sales chart, just had two sales this year in June, ergo this financial quarter being the line-crossing.
...after all, I'd just moved and needed to give them updated mailing address and phone.
It's just two things:
1) Last time I checked in, XLibris had changed their Author Page login and
2) I realized my book with them, Last of the Grapefruit Wars, was no longer listed as an available ebook on Amazon.com. Having not updated my record, obviously, the whole thing had gone into suspended mode.
So, good news, got the account reactivated, updated my info, and got the Grapefruit Wars back on the ebook list.
Now, if I can get 50,000 people to BUY MY EBOOK...!
(Also found out an account purchase I made years ago that I found myself unable to finish and just ended up losing track of... is back in XLibris' records. Now I HAVE to finish writing a book...!)
This is following the submission "I Must Be Your First" for their Strangely Funny anthology, which has garnered some decent reviews on GoodReads and Amazon.com.
Feeling really good about all that. Now just need to convert that good feeling into getting this damned first novel finished. FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY grrrrrrrrrr. Get me an editor with a shotgun and an egg timer, please...
The editors just sent me a galley to proof, which was awesome I must say... I spotted a glaring grammar goof (say it five times fast!) and asked they change one word to another so it wouldn't be so glaring. Otherwise, everything seemed to be in place.
Some of the other stories in the Strangely Funny anthology look to be well-done, so this is looking to be a great print. Spread the word to people (and libraries) to keep an eye out for it, publication is scheduled for August... um, not sure of the exact date yet but hey when you see me jumping up and down you'll know...
This is a project that's been going on for a good while: Project Gutenberg began in 1971 as an attempt to digitize public domain works - classic literature - for computer-based reading.
Originally the works were mostly done up as plain text (.txt format) as that was the easiest and most accessible. However, with the advent of ebooks / ereader devices that can mimic classic font styles - and with HTML format for ereader apps allowing for graphics/illustrations - more works have been put in more legible, more comfortable reader formats such as PDF, ePub and MOBI.
And as works of public domain - expired copyright, only in the United States however, some nations may not be able to access - these downloads can be had for free. Sure, we're not talking the latest Danielle Steel or Stephen King work here, but we ARE talking about must-reads like Great Expectations, Les Miz, Huck Finn, Machiavelli's The Prince, the Kama... oooh, wait, kids could be reading this...
Anywho. For all ereaders out there, Gutenberg is a great place to expand your e-collection.
People ask me all the time, "How can I be successful?" Well, aside from
the usual stuff, like show up and keep promoting, the one key to success
is to publish a book so good, your reader can't put it down. But to
take it a step beyond that, I would say publish something that has been
edited often, and by someone who knows how to edit a book and isn't
afraid to tell you the things you may not want to hear.
I'd also add "hiring an editor who has a shovel and an egg timer and is unafraid to use either."
After a few months of realizing I needed to edit the story some more to Smashwords' content rules, that I had to follow through to the Premium stage and request an ISBN (which is the ISBN-13 number 9781458089526, I hope), and that I needed to resubmit after all the corrections...
I finally got a cover artist, a friend of a friend of a colleague who knows a guy, fellow by the name of Mike Rooth who does this sort of artwork on a commission basis. A thumbnail copy of the cover is to the side of this paragraph. Once the cover was finalized I completed the Smashwords submission process and finally got the approval about a week ago.
I was only waiting until now to verify that YES the story is for sale.
Because I've already got two purchases yesterday! Ahhhhhhhh, the emotional high of selling your work, it's like a perfect drug...
It's selling for .99 per copy, the cheapest it can go, as it's a short story and not a full novel. The good news is, the overall experience of submitting a work for publication seems relatively simple. As long as I do a better job of planning ahead for cover art, I should get a finished and edited-reviewed draft up and for sale within weeks instead of six months or more with a print book.
The best thing about Smashwords is that, unlike the direct-retailer situation I had with "Welcome To Florida" the story I submitted directly to B&N's PubIt service, what I've submitted through Smashwords is going to show up in other retailers: Not only Barnes&Noble's Nook, but also Sony's Reader, the Kobo, Diesel ebooks, and Apple iBook. Amazon's Kindle doesn't have it yet, but Smashwords is waiting for Kindle to get the conversion upgrade for DRM formatting, so when that happens you Kindle owners can buy a copy!
My trick now: marketing. Hoo boy. So here's the deal, folks. If you can get 49,998 more people to buy a copy of "The Hero Cleanup Protocol", I'll be a very happy librarian person. Thank yew. :-)
...I kind of got the feeling when I called the publisher a few days ago to lower the price of the ebook version of Last of the Grapefruit Wars from $5.99 to $2.99 that I was pulling teeth from a very upset lion.
I think the conflict came from the fact that the publisher is one of those mainstream Print-on-Demand services. Cutting the price in half seems like cutting half the money they'd be getting from selling that book.
Problem is, no one has been buying that many copies of my book (I'd say about two ebook purchases in the last year...) anyway. And I think the price of it at over 5 bucks was part of the problem.
The book itself is pretty small in terms of page count (in ebook version it's under 100 pages): calling it slim is being polite. But nobody is going to be buying a thin volume at over 5 bucks... when there are thicker-page-count novels going for less.
With the advent of direct publishing in ebook format, there is now a glut of self-published authors selling directly to the market. And as they don't have to share (much) with a mainstream publisher with the profits, those authors can set their price any way they see fit. And a lot of them are selling at 2.99 per ebook. So I might as well drop the price of Grapefruit Wars to that level as well.
It makes basic sense. If the demand is low, lower the value on what you have on supply to encourage people shopping for bargains. You just can't go too low to hamper the costs of producing said supply (this is where you get that economics chart of the supply-and-demand X crossing). Considering I paid Xlibris good money to have the short story anthology made available to direct-retail purchases, I think the costs of supply have been covered. Now it's just selling the damn thing (and marketing with Xlibris is another issue altogether)...
Still, I NEED to deal with advertising that ebook and let people know it is for 2.99 now...
