F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Amazon

Going Indie—What I’ve Learned (So Far)—Part 7

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English: This is the title screen from the ABC...
I Was LOST…But Am Becoming FOUND…. (Photo credit: Lost, Wikipedia)

I don’t mean to be getting ahead of myself, here, but I just have to say that ERO is getting great reviews by those who have read it. It’s not yet selling huge, because of my restricted ability to promote right now, but those who have read it are contacting myself or my wife to tell them how much they like it—okay, love it. Many are even saying it should be a movie.

How cool is that?

The very fact that readers love ERO enough to say they’d like to see it as a movie is highly complimentary, even humbling. They liked the story enough to want to re-experience it again, in another form of expression!

This book has been rejected from traditional editors multiple times, yet (so far), I’ve heard from handfuls of readers about how stunned, “wowed” and impressed they are with the story, how they never saw the ending coming. Sure, someones out there might not like it, can’t please everyone, but so far, all I’ve heard has been complimentary. And these are people from all walks of life, not just SF, action adventure, or military fiction readers. These people come to me, not the other way around. These are the very readers editors and publishers are supposed to be catering to. Small sample? Does it really matter? Any sample is representative of a greater whole.

It’s a bit weird talking about something I wrote in the third person, but it warms my heart that something I’ve written so touches those who have read it. Heck, my Dad is even promoting the novel where he lives. You just can’t beat that!

To this end, I’d like to share parts of an e-mail from an Internet radio talk show host, Paul Neal Rohrer. He’s given me permission to share this. His e-mail blew me away:

“I just finished ERO. (Body shivers!)

Man, I gotta say…you’ll probably think me nuts to say I felt so close to Cherko…this book should be a FILM!

Whew. INTENSE.

I will say that it did not start off to be the type of book I would normally read. I kept with it solely because I knew you and though I felt like I was reading the series, LOST…I kept with it saying to myself…this WILL all make sense. Repeating that thought over and over until around page 160…then I was HOOKED! I breathlessly turned each page…I had all of this morning to finish the last 65 pages. Wow. LOVED IT!

Your mind must be a terrible thing to live with! Radical, powerful and relatable.”

Wow, thanks, Paul!

So, what I’ve learned has actually been a reinforcement of what I already knew: just because a major publisher does not take your work does not mean readers won’t like it. I stuck to my guns and found a way to get my work out there. I persevered. And it is being discovered. It may take some time, but it is out there. Again, thank you, readers, for taking a chance on my work.

Okay, here are some more lessons learned:

  1. I created a checklist of items to keep straight when creating e-books and paperbacks. I’ve attached it to the bottom of this post, since it’s a couple pages.
  2. All you can do is what you can do. I’m sure I’ve said this before, and it sounds stupid, but it’s meant to keep you from going nuts with all the “shoulds” everyone throws out there. You’re one guy or gal. You can’t do everything, especially with everything else you’re doing in life besides the writing and publishing. Just do what you can, and always keeping an eye out for new opportunities.
  3. Check out a previous post I did about PR and promotion…while keeping #3, above, in mind.
  4. Apply to conferences and conventions about presenting your journey. By this I mean, if you have something to say about what you’ve learned on your Indie journey. Talk about what you’ve learned…take some ideas from your blog posts. PowerPoint them and present them at a writer’s conference, the library, or anywhere else there might be a platform for something like this. You might think, yeah, but everyone’s already doing that, and while that is true, perhaps in your area it is not so saturated…and if you know people in your writing community, and they like you, they’ll more likely than not be willing to “book” you (punny…) because they know you and are willing to help you out in your career as a writer. But, in any case, conferences are like magazines…they have to “publish” or fill slots for sessions, and there’s always an audience that hasn’t yet heard what you think has already been done before…or your spin on things and personality are decidedly different and refreshing. Don’t you count yourself out…let them tell you so…or more to the case, let them tell you YES! And when you do this, bring your books! Have them out and used as examples! Have fun with it!

Okay, here’s the checklist I’ve created. Feel free to copy and use! It’s not meant as an explanation of all I do, just as a reminder of what I need to do. When you get in to do this stuff, it all becomes (or should become) more readily apparent…but you actually have to be in there getting ready to release your book. Some of this stuff cannot be “taken back,” like assigning ISBNs.

Prepping ms for content formatter (text):

  1. Convert Word manuscript (ms) to:
    • Time New Roman.
    • Only single spaces, no double spaces.
    • Single-spaced lines, no double spaces.
    • E-book only: No more than 4 lines of spaces (returns) at the tops of any pages.
    • For paperback books, make sure all the line returns to chapter starts are the same.
    • E-book only: Add a space after all ellipses (3 and 4 dots), except w/in quotes, parens, punctuation.
    • Convert all dashes to M-dashes (or N-dashes; just be consistent).
    • Check all chapter and section numbers (1, 2, 3…) are correctly numbered.
    • Check all sub-section spaces/#/***; standardize, check spacing, and center.
  2. Spell check—again!!!
  3. Ensure italicized text are properly italicized (including appropriate punctuation within itals).
  4. E-books: can’t have text “left/right-justified-at-bottom-of-page” kinda thing for ebooks, since can’t have more than four lines “entered” down from the top of pages.
  5. Blurbs from other authors.
  6. Add “Also by F. P. Dorchak” list of books to front matter (front of the book info, before the actual story).
  7. Add family members to Notes/dedication?
  8. Add significant other/others to Notes/dedication. Think.
  9. E-books: add websites and social media links to e-books.
  10. Keep paperback clean with just “About” and website (no #8, above).

Submitting manuscript to Smashwords:

Be sure you’re ready to do this, because once you’re done stepping through their upload dialogs, you’re published.

  1. Select all e-book formats.
  2. Assign ISBN! Do so before submitting to Smashwords!
    • Impacts immediately getting into the Premium catalog.
    • Smashwords ISBNs cannot be used elsewhere.
  3. Opt out of Amazon and Nook distribution on Smashwords’ Channel Manager! Only do this to individually upload files to Amazon and Nook, since they pay royalties much quicker than the Smashwords schedule; if you don’t care about that, you can opt in to Amazon and Nook on Smashwords.
  4. Create any free Coupons through Smashwords to give away free copies.

Submitting ms to Amazon

  1. Add self as contributor.
  2. Try to add cover artist.
  3. Try to add content formatter.
  4. Select 35% royalty.
  5. Select price and set other country prices based on US price.
  6. Select Kindle Direct Publishing “Match Book” selection (readers buy a discounted verson of your Kindle book, if they buy the paperback).

Submitting ms to Nook

  1. Get cover graphic less than 2 MB.
  2. Add self as contributor.
  3. Try to add cover artist.
  4. Try to add content formatter.
  5. Nook automatically ties paperback versions to e-versions, but all titling and names, etc., have to be word-for-word, space-for-space perfectly matching. This presents a problem when using CreateSpace (CS), because CS does not like all-capital titles for their book accounts (e.g., ERO). In order to do all caps, you have to add periods between the letters (e.g., E.R.O.). This is not good, because when you release for publication, Amazon.com keeps those damned periods in the title for retail marketing! The actual title on the book remains your “ERO” title, but the displayed online title with your book, and any search engine hits only respond to the broken up title (i.e., E.R.O.), and not the actual title (i.e., ERO). So, effectively, there are two titles out there, and if people don’t know this, or don’t scroll down the Amazon search page, they won’t see the “E.R.O.” version of the book. I have contacted both CS and Nook about this. CS was nice enough to go in and link the two titles to each other, but you might have to actually contact them to get them to do this, by pointing out a loss of sales with the different titles, if people don’t know to scroll down the pages to find the related search of the other title. B&N/Nook also finally link the two formats together, but this took a long time. Be persistent and nice; some of these people you contact simply are not very smart on the whole process, and I ran into contradictory responses from the different people I contacted.

When do CreateSpace copy:

  1. Get paperback ISBN. Once ISBNs are assigned, they cannot be changed.
    • “Custom” ISBNs can have a “faux” imprint name, like “Wailing Loon.”
    • I’m not an expert on these, but in CreateSpace, the custom ISBNs are also divided into those that are oriented toward retailers and those oriented toward libraries. Make sure you select the right set.
    • Get any offered “Expanded Distribution” offerings if cheap.
  2. Titles: see #5, Submitting to Nook, above.
  3. Add faux imprint to:
    • Copyright page.
    • Spine/cover.
    • Anywhere else needed.
  4. Need any artwork on the interior of the book, the front or back matter?
  5. Add the following to the back matter (rear of the book, after the story): About the Author, website, books/anthologies/etc., again list content formatter and cover artist names and websites.
  6. Cover photo?
  7. Send e-mails/thank you cards to thank contributors, and if they helped enough to justify, free coupons for e-book or actual (signed!) paperbacks.
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Going Indie—What I’ve Learned (So Far)—Part 4

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Escape from Pain
Want to Intrude into the Land of Traditional Publishing? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Uninvited became available on barnesandnoble.com May 23.

This is the last week to get The Uninvited for free, through Smashwords. Starting June 1st, I’ll be charging $3.99. Thanks to everyone for all the downloads!

Okay, some more things I’ve learned along the way, about intruding into the land of the traditional publisher:

  1. This might sound obvious, but clean out your e-mail once in a while! Yeah, it will get overloaded, especially once you start adding all kinds of social media and accounts, etc. Can either do it as you go, or muscle through it all at once, but also remember the “source” email accounts. I.e., if you use one email account that, say, is used to for Outlook, or forwards to other accounts/locations. YOu may clean out Outlook files, but you’d still have Hotmail or Google, or whatever you use accounts to also clear out. I haven’t found a way to do this from Outlook.
  2. The book itself: in your Acknowledgements, Notes, etc., if there’s a family member you want to also include, make sure to make a note to include them beyond your research people you’re thanking. It can be embarrassing. In Indie publishing, you can always update that later, and re-upload. You can mitigate that in the interim by posting a blog thanking them, but sometimes, in all the rewrites, things get lost, and there’s really no one looking out for you, like an editor.
  3. I created a press release, at http://www.prlog.org–took a long time to get “approve” e-mails, so do the account creation early, and boy, it seemed rather intricate in its process and the “user friendliness/ obviousness” of some of the process just wasn’t there, depending where you are, say, when buying “credits” to get additional umphf for your press releases. So, if you want the $49 credit beyond the basic press release, buy it early, when creating your account.
  4. Also regarding PRLog.org, if you don’t get your e-mail verification soon, go back and select for resend. I really wanted to get this out last Friday, and almost blew my desire to send out then, because, even though it said you’d get that email in “a couple minutes,” I never saw it, came back at the end of the day, still never had it, and reselected the resend verification–ended up sending out late in the day, Don’t know if that hurt me, but it was highly annoying….
  5. Sign up for Pinterest: quick, easy, and fun!
  6. Sign up for About.me. Quick and easy, but wonder how useful it is (sorry, About-dot)? That might be the “About.com” stuff you always see in search engines that (IMHO) never seems to add much to my searches, so I always avoid checking out, but, hey, Smashwords recommend them, so I did it.
  7. HARO: not so sure about this. This might be more for nonfiction, but I signed up to see if it’s worth it. Be warned, only do this and subscribe to their emails if you’re really gonna use them!  You’ll get tons, and if you have more than one email account, and forward them, or have any kind of back and forth between emails forwards, this could get very busy in keeping clean. I killed all my subscriptions, but kept the account, because they just didn’t interest me, and they seemed like doubles and triplicates of the same email you got the first time. You’ll probably also get a phone and/or email from their parent company, VOCUS, looking to sell you an Internet marketing plan—not a bad thing, but that’s what that call is about, if you get it.
  8. I tried LinkedIn again, and signed up. Have my reservations about them, because they always send such ANNOYING “come join us” emails!  For each of you out there, you can try this, to shut them off at the get-go: if you don’t want to be contacted to JOIN LinkedIn, see if this link works (I haven’t tried it and if I do, my account gets terminated:  go to http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/426 (guess it doesn’t hyperlink, so copy and paste in your browser). If this doesn’t work (it should) go to LinkedIn and search their Help for “Adding or Removing Your Email from Do Not Contact List,” or get someone who is part of LinkedIn to access this help page to input your email on their “Do Not Contact” list. According to this Help Page, if you enter your info into here, you are blocked from receiving those annoying e-mails. I hope so, Please, do Humanity a favor, and send this to everyone you know, if it works, and please, let me know if it does work! Most in LinkedIn I’ve talked with about this problem didn’t even know those e-mails were “on their behalf.” They’re auto generated. I suspect that when one imports their email contact lists into LinkedIn, that’s how they get the info to auto generate their “invites.” I have not done that, just because of that thought, so I hope no one gets an auto-generated invite from me, but if you do, contact me about its (fpdochak@fodorchak.com). I might get terminated from LinkedIn, because of this, but oh, well. Do note this, however: if you associate your own email address used in YOUR LinkedIn account, your account will be terminated.
  9. Also keep in mind, once yu create all these social media accounts, the trick is also to keep up on them, check in on them once in a while. Hey don’t run themselves, you know! :-] I’m trying to do that, but am still dealing with “collateral issues,” from all this mass-creation, so have not yet been as good as I should be in that respect. Who knows, I might even drop an account or two, depending on how useful that are [not]. But just keep that in mind when “willy-nilly” creating all this stuff….

Okay, that’s the latest, and exhausts my current notes. I really want to consolidate and put out on Slideshare.net, so look for that in the future. I don’t yet even have an account there. Hope I’ve been able to help out on some of the less-obvious tips. I must say, that things have gotten back to much better pace, since I’ve created all this stuff, just as Terry Wright said it would (thanks, Terry).

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Going Indie—What I’ve Learned (So Far)—Part 3

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The Indie learning curve continues!

While I don’t feel as harried as I did the past couple weeks, though there are still things to do and learn and do better next time. And I still have to promote…more. I’m looking forward to it all!

Okay, so, here’s some more learnin’:

  1. Update on the B&N account thing: check your frigging JUNK MAIL. And if you use Outlook, check the frigging JUNK MAIL in your host e-mail account funneling into Outlook.  Sheesh. Yeah, I kept checking the Outlook account, but not the host account. It sat there for almost a week. When had it been approved? The 15th. Same day I requested it. <insert “funny words” here> I went in and updated everything…and it still has to get approval, but this time it says (once book content is uploaded) it could take up to 72 hours. So, hopefully, by Friday, The Uninvited will be available through Nook for $3.99 (still free one more week at Smashwords). Man, lots of “Uninvited” books.
  2. Nook’s cover file:  they limit the image to a maximum of 2 MB. Thanks, Cover Girl, Karen, for getting me that so quickly. :-]
  3. Update on updating the KDP version of Uninvited: yes, that is how it looks when updating—it looks exactly like you’re starting over, but the already uploaded version remains available, and the changes go through smoothly and there’s no reason to have to change your shorts.
  4. Found a great post interview on Susan Brooks’ blog, with Smashwords Marketing Manager, Jim Azevedo (thanks, RMFW loop and Susan for posting this!).
  5. This was kinda cool: Amazon has author pages in other countries (duh), and asks if you’d like to input some author info there. The countries offered were France, Germany, and the UK. This is my US author page. Now, My German ist sehr rusty, et moi Français even more so, which is how international incidents start (my French is non-existent, except for words and phrases like fromage and voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir? And no, I’m not asking the latter. See, that how’s international incidents start…), so I like to use an online translator, like Babylon 10, for extended foreign text beyond memory and my French and German dictionaries. So, well, I didn’t read all the Amazon Terms of Use in French and German (though I did glance at and recognize some words, but that and a quarter’ll get me slapped), so I hope I’m not getting screwed in these countries and the Terms are the same as the US version. Man, even the UK’s version was hard to read. Anyway, I took my main author page, plugged it into Babylon 10, and voila! Insérez la traduction ici! Don’t know about all the dashes in the German one, if I get time, will look into it, but the German one looks, you know, kinda right (dashes notwithstanding). So, if anyone’s fluent in Deutsch und Französische Sprachen, I’ve presented the three versions below.

Thanks, again, for stopping by!

English:

F. P. (Frank) Dorchak grew up in New York State’s Adirondack mountains. He attended Northern Arizona University, in Flagstaff, Arizona, then entered the U.S. Air Force. He performed Combat Crew duties in missile warning and satellite operations, at Cavalier AFS, North Dakota, and was a GPS mission controller and Crew Commander, at Schriever AFB, CO, but has always had a deep interest in the paranormal. Frank writes gritty, realistic paranormal fiction that delves into the supernatural, the unexplained, and the metaphysical.

French:

F.P. (Frank) Dorchak a grandi en montagnes d’Adirondack de l’état de New-York. Il s’est occupé de l’université du nord de l’Arizona, dans la hampe de drapeaux, l’Arizona, puis a présenté l’Armée de l’Air des États-Unis. Il a rempli des fonctions d’équipage de combat dans des opérations d’avertissement et de satellite de missile, au cavalier AFS, le Dakota du Nord, et était un contrôleur de mission de GPS et le commandant d’équipage, chez Schriever AFB, Cie, mais a toujours eu un intérêt profond dans le paranormal. Frank écrit la fiction paranormale graveleuse et réaliste qui fouille dans le surnaturel, l’inexpliqué, et le métaphysique.

German:

F.P. (Frank) Dorchak wuchs in der Adirondack-Bergen des Staat New York heran. Er besuchte Nord-Arizona-Universität, im Fahnenmast, Arizona, dann meldete die US-Luftwaffe an. Er führte Kampf-Mannschaftsaufgaben in den Flugwarnungs- und -satellitenoperationen, am Kavalier AFS, North Dakota durch und war- ein GPS-Auftragkontrolleur und Mannschafts-Kommandant, bei Schriever AFB, Co, aber hat immer ein tiefes Interesse an dem paranormalen gehabt. Frank schreibt kiesige, realistische paranormale Erfindung, die in das übernatürliche forscht, das unerklärte und das metaphysische.

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Going Indie—What I’ve Learned (So Far)—Part 2

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A still from a recent example of light writing
eBookin’: Movin’ at the Speed of Light! (Photo credit: example of light writing; Wikipedia)

I’d like to buy a vowel? Heck, I’d like to buy an hour, Chuck—maybe three?

The Uninvited is now available on Amazon, through the Kindle Select Program, for $3.99.

It’s still available at Smashwords for FREE, so get it while you can—and please, write up and post some reviews! The Uninvited has also gone into the Smashwords Premium Catalog, which gets distributed to major retailers, such as Apple, B&N, Sony, et cet. While I applied for a B&N Nook account, they apparently have to check/approve something, so that hasn’t yet gone through.

Okay, I meant to include much more in my previous post, but the Internet had gone down that day for a spell, and I’d lost my list of things I wanted to include in that post. I’d since found them, since found more things to list, so…I continue:

  1. Don’t have the Internet go out on you when trying to work.
  2. Don’t lose your notes for your blog post.
  3. Tax ID #. From all I’ve gathered, you don’t need one unless you’re creating a COMPANY entity, beyond just using your author name. Now, yes, you can just go and get one, using IRS form SS-4. I know of one person who did this, but you don’t need to, because your SSN is what’s used (and is on your tax form, if you claim your writing as a business). Yes…you can get paranoid about it…but what I’ve read, my experience…is that the IT (info technology) departments at these companies—for all their faults—do take security très seriously and, well, your information is out there in many forms, and the reality of today’s world is that it’s damned hard to keep all your personal info off the Internet. There’s so much out there we don’t really even realize…and the IT departments do their best at keeping it secure. Sigh. There are courses and books written about this stuff.
  4. Create Google Alerts (yeah, actually learned this years ago, but I re-learned it and actually, finally, created some). Go out and create some. Copy sections of text from your works, stick em in there, and if they come up anywhere, the alert with, uh, alert you, and you take it from there, if it’s legit, plagiarism, or a blog post/review. Rock on.
  5. Though Smashwords has lots of great stuff to offer, what I hear from many in the Indie world and am learning myself is to separately upload the epub file to B&N’s Nook (PubIt is going to be phased out over the coming months), and Amazon’s KDP, versus Smashwords. The big advantage is that Smashwords pays royalties quarterly, while the other two do so every 60 days, and they offer other things, like affiliate programs and such I’m still learning about and don’t know enough about posting about, right now. More on these later (I hope).
  6. If going to B&N’s Nook separately, and don’t yet have an account, create one now (read all the fine print), cause they”confirm” your account and get back to you. It isn’t immediate. My formatter, Pam, told me about this weeks ago, but I simply didn’t have the time to adequately read all the fine print and do it.  I just did this Wednesday. Still waiting. See #7.
  7. Nook’s “fine print”: there is a paragraph in there, 4.G. (not LTE…) that states “You are solely responsible for ensuring that your eBook complies with all applicable local laws in all such countries.” How this is any kind of possible, I can’t fathom, but it is a legal positioning for them to absolve them for anything in your book. A CYA clause. I don’t know that it would actually hold up in court, but, hey, it’s there, read it, consider it, be aware of it.
  8. Okay, when I was uploading my novel into Smashwords, I got confused about some of the selections. On the very first page, where you input all your titles, descriptions, cover, etc, there is the bank of selections for file conversions once you upload your properly formatted Word doc file. Select ALL these formats. These are not distribution, but are used for the various downloads you can select upon buying the book. There is a separate page later on down the line—that I had to search for (it wasn’t obvious)—where you opt out of certain distribution channels. It’s called the Smashwords Channel Manager. It is here you make your distro selections. I selected everything BUT Amazon and B&N. On some of the Smashwords pages, there’s a lot of text up front, and (once you’ve loaded your work), when you scroll down, you’ll find selections, so don’t just blow through the pages without scrolling down them. When I first entered Smashwords and was “playing around” in it, I found these same pages, but they also told me I hadn’t yet uploaded a book. After doing so, and went to these very same pages, I found I “suddenly” had selections! A whole new world opened up!
  9. Screw-up #2: I had friends like Terry Wright, offering me all kinds of cool tips and such, and one of these was about ISBNs. BTW, Screw-up #1 was going “live” early. Okay, not a big deal, but hey, it makes for good conversation. ISBNs. So, I did my due diligence, read and studied and got confused and read and studied some more. Thought I had a loose handle on things, enough to know that I wasn’t supposed to use the Smashwords-assigned ISBN anywhere else. So, I input my KDP info, chuggin’ along, and before I know it, I’d found I’d entered my danged Smashword ISBN into KDP! Argggggh! I cried! Yet everything was already submitted and pending approval at KDP. So, quickly not panicking, I search for their “Contact US/Customer Service” selection and told them what happened. This morning I found: a) my book was now available on KDP, and 2) I was told I could just go back in and re-edit—remove—that ISBN (which I did). It was a little unnerving, cause it makes it look like you’re going back to The Beginning, and sets your status back to “In Review,” but that is what seems to be the process. I went back in to check Amazon, and it’s still up for sale, so that must be how it goes.  Basically, I was told it wasn’t a problem, and I’ll elaborate more on ISBNs in a future post, cause, believe me, they deserve it.

So, that’s all for now. This is definitely like drinking from a raging fire hose, but you know what—it’s worth it! It’s much different than when I first published Sleepwalkers, in 2001, and I have to admit, I love the process! Love the control. Yeah, there’s not much time for sleep and relaxing and my wife is wondering when I’ll ever come out of my “cave” (at least in the learning stage), but it’s so much fun getting some work out there again, after so many years (12; but who’s counting). The Uninvited won’t be for everyone, but for some who’ve already read it (the ones who blurbed it), they liked it, so I know some peoples out there are bound to like it. And the support out there from other Indie authors is so…heartfelt. They know what people like me are going through, cause they’ve already been there. It’s not an ego thing—at least not with me. It’s a communicative thing. It’s how we’re wired. Some are wired to jump off cliffs in “bird suits” and fly through needle-like openings in stone, and others write. Other save people’s live as cops, paramedics, or firemen and women. It’s all how we’re wired.

So, thanks, again, for all your support. And thank you, Laura, my sweet and gracious wife, for putting up with me. I know, I’m a pain, I’m driven, me and my “cave” and all that,  but thank you for hanging in there.  Love you.

Related articles

Going Indie—What I've Learned (So Far)—Part 2

by

A still from a recent example of light writing
eBookin’: Movin’ at the Speed of Light! (Photo credit: example of light writing; Wikipedia)

I’d like to buy a vowel? Heck, I’d like to buy an hour, Chuck—maybe three?

The Uninvited is now available on Amazon, through the Kindle Select Program, for $3.99.

It’s still available at Smashwords for FREE, so get it while you can—and please, write up and post some reviews! The Uninvited has also gone into the Smashwords Premium Catalog, which gets distributed to major retailers, such as Apple, B&N, Sony, et cet. While I applied for a B&N Nook account, they apparently have to check/approve something, so that hasn’t yet gone through.

Okay, I meant to include much more in my previous post, but the Internet had gone down that day for a spell, and I’d lost my list of things I wanted to include in that post. I’d since found them, since found more things to list, so…I continue:

  1. Don’t have the Internet go out on you when trying to work.
  2. Don’t lose your notes for your blog post.
  3. Tax ID #. From all I’ve gathered, you don’t need one unless you’re creating a COMPANY entity, beyond just using your author name. Now, yes, you can just go and get one, using IRS form SS-4. I know of one person who did this, but you don’t need to, because your SSN is what’s used (and is on your tax form, if you claim your writing as a business). Yes…you can get paranoid about it…but what I’ve read, my experience…is that the IT (info technology) departments at these companies—for all their faults—do take security très seriously and, well, your information is out there in many forms, and the reality of today’s world is that it’s damned hard to keep all your personal info off the Internet. There’s so much out there we don’t really even realize…and the IT departments do their best at keeping it secure. Sigh. There are courses and books written about this stuff.
  4. Create Google Alerts (yeah, actually learned this years ago, but I re-learned it and actually, finally, created some). Go out and create some. Copy sections of text from your works, stick em in there, and if they come up anywhere, the alert with, uh, alert you, and you take it from there, if it’s legit, plagiarism, or a blog post/review. Rock on.
  5. Though Smashwords has lots of great stuff to offer, what I hear from many in the Indie world and am learning myself is to separately upload the epub file to B&N’s Nook (PubIt is going to be phased out over the coming months), and Amazon’s KDP, versus Smashwords. The big advantage is that Smashwords pays royalties quarterly, while the other two do so every 60 days, and they offer other things, like affiliate programs and such I’m still learning about and don’t know enough about posting about, right now. More on these later (I hope).
  6. If going to B&N’s Nook separately, and don’t yet have an account, create one now (read all the fine print), cause they”confirm” your account and get back to you. It isn’t immediate. My formatter, Pam, told me about this weeks ago, but I simply didn’t have the time to adequately read all the fine print and do it.  I just did this Wednesday. Still waiting. See #7.
  7. Nook’s “fine print”: there is a paragraph in there, 4.G. (not LTE…) that states “You are solely responsible for ensuring that your eBook complies with all applicable local laws in all such countries.” How this is any kind of possible, I can’t fathom, but it is a legal positioning for them to absolve them for anything in your book. A CYA clause. I don’t know that it would actually hold up in court, but, hey, it’s there, read it, consider it, be aware of it.
  8. Okay, when I was uploading my novel into Smashwords, I got confused about some of the selections. On the very first page, where you input all your titles, descriptions, cover, etc, there is the bank of selections for file conversions once you upload your properly formatted Word doc file. Select ALL these formats. These are not distribution, but are used for the various downloads you can select upon buying the book. There is a separate page later on down the line—that I had to search for (it wasn’t obvious)—where you opt out of certain distribution channels. It’s called the Smashwords Channel Manager. It is here you make your distro selections. I selected everything BUT Amazon and B&N. On some of the Smashwords pages, there’s a lot of text up front, and (once you’ve loaded your work), when you scroll down, you’ll find selections, so don’t just blow through the pages without scrolling down them. When I first entered Smashwords and was “playing around” in it, I found these same pages, but they also told me I hadn’t yet uploaded a book. After doing so, and went to these very same pages, I found I “suddenly” had selections! A whole new world opened up!
  9. Screw-up #2: I had friends like Terry Wright, offering me all kinds of cool tips and such, and one of these was about ISBNs. BTW, Screw-up #1 was going “live” early. Okay, not a big deal, but hey, it makes for good conversation. ISBNs. So, I did my due diligence, read and studied and got confused and read and studied some more. Thought I had a loose handle on things, enough to know that I wasn’t supposed to use the Smashwords-assigned ISBN anywhere else. So, I input my KDP info, chuggin’ along, and before I know it, I’d found I’d entered my danged Smashword ISBN into KDP! Argggggh! I cried! Yet everything was already submitted and pending approval at KDP. So, quickly not panicking, I search for their “Contact US/Customer Service” selection and told them what happened. This morning I found: a) my book was now available on KDP, and 2) I was told I could just go back in and re-edit—remove—that ISBN (which I did). It was a little unnerving, cause it makes it look like you’re going back to The Beginning, and sets your status back to “In Review,” but that is what seems to be the process. I went back in to check Amazon, and it’s still up for sale, so that must be how it goes.  Basically, I was told it wasn’t a problem, and I’ll elaborate more on ISBNs in a future post, cause, believe me, they deserve it.

So, that’s all for now. This is definitely like drinking from a raging fire hose, but you know what—it’s worth it! It’s much different than when I first published Sleepwalkers, in 2001, and I have to admit, I love the process! Love the control. Yeah, there’s not much time for sleep and relaxing and my wife is wondering when I’ll ever come out of my “cave” (at least in the learning stage), but it’s so much fun getting some work out there again, after so many years (12; but who’s counting). The Uninvited won’t be for everyone, but for some who’ve already read it (the ones who blurbed it), they liked it, so I know some peoples out there are bound to like it. And the support out there from other Indie authors is so…heartfelt. They know what people like me are going through, cause they’ve already been there. It’s not an ego thing—at least not with me. It’s a communicative thing. It’s how we’re wired. Some are wired to jump off cliffs in “bird suits” and fly through needle-like openings in stone, and others write. Other save people’s live as cops, paramedics, or firemen and women. It’s all how we’re wired.

So, thanks, again, for all your support. And thank you, Laura, my sweet and gracious wife, for putting up with me. I know, I’m a pain, I’m driven, me and my “cave” and all that,  but thank you for hanging in there.  Love you.

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Goin’ Indie

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Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark
Goin’ Indie. (Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark , photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yeah, that’s my steely stare.

Determination.

I’m finally doing it.

Made the decision. Jumping in with both feet and my Bullwhip.

I’m going indie. And by “indie,” I mean e-books and (a little later, maybe earlier) Amazon hardcovers. Not going the route of AuthorHouse anymore. E-books. That’s the route. Check out Nathan Bransford’s post. These things are selling.

I’ve mentioned this once or twice elsewhere, but after the past couple weeks, getting a cover done, interacting with the person who will do my file conversions, going over my manuscripts and talking to those in the indie world, at this year’s PPWC (and this doesn’t even count the years I’ve been thinking about this, kinda watching how e-books “go”…), I’m not waiting another second. It has reinvigorated me, in this whole business of writing. I have four titles (one still needs some work—or might be the title I again try traditionally—but, we’re talking at least into 2014) I can publish, five if you count a Sleepwalkers e-book reissue:

  • The Uninvited. This is my whydunnit supernatural murder mystery about a troubled reporter who stumbles upon a gruesome and inexplicable mass murder in Gulf Coast Florida. This will be my first release. I was originally shooting for the end of May, but since this is my first, is my learning curve, it might actually turn out to be June. But I’m still shooting for May. So, please, stay turned—either way, it won’t be long!
  • ERO. This is my one (so far) science fiction-y, action/adventure novel. It’s about a marooned on-orbit astronaut who tries to reconstruct his life by relying on incomplete memories that place him at the very heart of the UFO conspiracy. This novel is, well, somewhat auto-biographical. It’ll be my next release.
  • Psychic. This is a companion book to Sleepwalkers. Okay, it’s the second in a considered series of three.  There, I said it. It’s actually more of a prequel (but, hey, what is Time, anyway?), and features the origins to the Man With No Name, from Sleepwalkers. I plan at least one more book to this series (it won’t take 12 years, like this one). It’s a supernatural action/adventure about a humble, guilt-ridden hotline psychic who becomes embroiled in the ultimate government conspiracy, involving JFK and remote viewers. Oh, and a really cool teenager.
  • The fourth is one that still needs lots of work, so am not going to give its title just yet, but, it’s about guy who falls in love with…ehhhh…a ghost. Of sorts. Yeah, yeah, I’m know, there have been other books about the topic, but what makes mine unique, I’m not even teasing with, because I still have some runway to ride before taking off. But, it’s not your standard, run-of-the-mill everyday ghost, we’re talking about here, and to tell the truth, I haven’t yet seen a “ghost” like this one.
  • Sleepwalkers. This one depends a lot on if AuthorHouse plans on putting it back into an e-book like they said they would a couple years ago. Haven’t even had time (there’s that word, again) to think about that yet. If can do the e-book to it, I plan on redoing the cover.

Depending on how long all this takes, I’m looking to release one book about every 3 or 4 months until I get all these out, so no real new work for me this year. ERO should come out around September/October time frame, and Psychic, November/December. I plan on pushing the Internet-y promotion as hard as I possibly can (I have some guides, but more on those, later). The Uninvited will be free for about the first three weeks or so, and this is mainly for reviews (this is a standard M.O. among the e-book community). It looks like some sites, like B&N, Amazon, have a way of setting prices (still looking into those), but at places where I can set the price, I’m looking to price it at $2.99, after the free period, but this remains to be seen, once I actually get to the upload part. But, from what I’ve read, e-books tend to sell well between the $2.99 to $5.99 range (and it’s not obvious about going right for the higher price).

So, there it is, that’s my plan. Out into the world at large. I’ll post more as I go, but I’m still cleaning up the manuscript to the The Uninvited, which, depending on a couple other logistical issues, is scheduled to be converted into all the different file formats next month (oooh, it’ll be hot off the author keyboard, like freshly baked cookies!). And while that is being done, I plan on beginning and hitting the promotions.

Look, I’m not pie-in-the-sky, I’ve been around, I’ve tried self-publishing by spending three grand, done and occasionally still do a short story or two, and even got an agent. Still, NYC didn’t think they could make any money off me. But I see and hear where e-books are going. I’m just a guy with voices in my head trying to get my work out there. My work has been termed “thinky,” sometimes jumps genres. But I try to tell stories, to show, perhaps, the way things could be, big What-ifs. I—like most every other writer out there—just like to write. For a while that passion was slowly getting snuffed out…but now I’ve found renewed passion. A new way to go.

A new…What-if.

I hope you’ll join me!

Oh…and I’m an optimist.

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