F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction Author

Indie Publishing

Going Indie—What I’ve Learned (So Far)—Part 5

by

Disturbed
Disturbed. On Different Levels. (Disturbed, photo credit: cjmod)

Well, this was kind of disturbing.

I checked my The Uninvited numbers for the first time, since release, and found that through Amazon.com, for the month of June, there are a couple hundred downloads sold for free…when, in fact, they were not supposed to be free. So, I contacted Amazon, and asked. I kinda figured that there must have been a time lag of some kind, and expected that answer back from them. I didn’t get that. What I got were various iterations of the same response, in that what was shown was correct, and that the report time periods are what’s at issue. That I needed to look at and analyze all said info.

Well, I did that before even contacting them.

So…I looked around some more, checked with Smashwords, and, yup, found out on their FAQs, a little line, that reads:  “Please allow anywhere from two days to two weeks for price updates to reflect at retailers (usually it’s about a week or less).” Yeah, I’d read that months ago, that’s why I thought there might have been a delay in changing the price between Smashwords and a retailer.

But…I had another really cool takeaway…

There are several hundred downloads of The Uninvited out there!

How cool! Thanks, folks, free or not, I appreciate your taking a chance on my work! Please, write a review, however short!

Happy writing!

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Going Indie—What I’ve Learned (So Far)—Part 4

by

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

by

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

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.

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.

Related articles

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

by

How to Be Indie
How to Be Indie (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In diving head first into this New Indie World, here’s what I’ve learned, so far:

  1. Writer a killer story. But, you knew that.
  2. Get your work proofed by another! Doesn’t matter how many times it’s been done before, do it AGAIN before going live. I’ve been working on The Uninvited for 12 years…lost track of how many sets of eyes have read it, and I’ve still found issues!
  3. Formatting is king. If you don’t want to do this yourself, hire someone, for Pete’s sake. Lynda Hilburn referred me to A Thirsty Mind’s Pam Headrick. She’s quite reasonable in her rates, and oh-so-easy to work with! I’m a newbie to The New Indie, and she was so danged gracious and helpful. I know she probably aged 5 years dealing with me that past two weeks….
  4. There is a growing list of digital distributors out there! I’m going with Smashwords as my lead, but may also going to go with B&N (which has a weird statement in their contract, about how authors are responsible for all the laws in all the countries in which their works are published—really, B&N, for real?)…unless I go through another, like, Digital2Digital.
  5. There’s never enough time in the day. You can’t do it all. Just do what you can. Find out what you’re best at and focus your efforts there.

Well, that’s all I got for now.

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