F. P. Dorchak

Speculative Fiction (New Weird) Author

Wailing Loon

Uninvited Blurbs Reinstated to Paperback

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The Uninvited, © 2013, F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design
The Uninvited, © 2013, F. P. Dorchak and Duvall Design

I just received and approved the physical proof of The Uninvited, with the blurbs reinstated to the front matter. This updated version may be immediately purchased at the CreateSpace site, or in about 5-7 days, at Amazon.com and other outlets:

  • Amazon.com: 5-7 Business Days (the original novel is already here, this is just the updated version)
  • Amazon Europe: 5-7 Business Days (the original novel is already here, this is just the updated version)
  • Expanded Distribution channels: 6-8 Weeks (the original novel is already here, this is just the updated version)

Remember, if you’d like an autographed copy, please send me your book(s), with appropriate return postage, to the following address, and I’ll sign them! F. P. Dorchak, P. O. Box 49393, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80949.

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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 6

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Wailing Loon (F. P. Dorchak, Lon Kirschner)
Wailing Loon (F. P. Dorchak, Lon Kirschner)

In my latest indie publishing endeavor, I’d created a trade paperback book in addition to my ERO e-book. I haven’t yet done this for The Uninvited, but plan to in the future. ERO is my “Big Book,” so that’s why I made the extra effort and spent the extra money; I even already have the ISBNs for Uninvited. So, in keeping with documenting my indie publishing adventures, here is my latest installment about learning the ropes, on the ropes:

  1. It’s really fun! That is, if you have most of your ducks in a row and you work with a great team! My team included Pam Headrick and Lon Kirschner, both of whom I’ve written about before, and truly are a great couple of people! It wasn’t like when I create Sleepwalkers, through [then-now-gone] 1st Books, back in 2001. Though it had been fun on my part, I kept finding errors in the gallies that they added, either through fat-fingering or whatever. It was most frustrating.
  2. Create a checklist of what you need to do. I’m in the process of doing this, and had one in progress as I was doing the paperback, but it will save you embarrassment in the future, like forgetting to include someone in your Acknowledgments/Author Notes pages. Now, granted, as an indie author you DO HAVE THE POWER! (Power Ring thrust up into raging storm and lightning) to go back in and make those corrections, but it will cost ya (whatever the minimum $$$/hour rate your formatter/cover artist will charge to do the work…but then you’ll have more than one version of your work out there…so think long and hard before submitting material).
  3. As Pam had forewarned me, there is a lot more interaction between you and your team. A lot. Do you want an extra graphic in the Front Matter (the pages before the actual story, in the front of the book)? I did. Gotta get a graphics person to do it, then submit it to your formatter. Are you done? No, how large do you want it? What placement? And none of this even considers your interaction with your graphics person. At one point there was so much going back-and-forth, that I had to hand Pam and Lon off to each other, so they could just go and “speak their ‘speak'” without me getting in the way and adding yet more time to the whole process.
  4. Consider a faux Imprint. Wailing Loon is my faux imprint. It just adds a nice touch, tells a little about “who you are” and rounds out the professional looking quality of your book. Is it “cheating” by not using the “CreateSpace” logo…maybe, a little, but it gives your work yet more of you own identity, and isn’t that a large part of what Indie publishing is all about?
  5. Title page. Pam had the idea of using a black & white version of the cover. So, sure! We did up a B&W version, and inserted it. See #3, above.
  6. For the Back Matter (if “front matter” is…), I tried to tidy up the rear information, and not give all those “hyperlinks” that e-books live off of. Just basic info about me, and my website.
  7. Pictures and stuff: I don’t really care about having a picture on my books, but in this instance, since I had one of me while in the Air Force during the 80s, and it fit right in with the story of ERO, I thought, what the heck. Adds to the whole “package.”  I also had a faux organizational patch a friend of mine had created for me, so we also used that on the back cover. Consider those kinds of touches for your book.
  8. Post Office box. This I haven’t done yet, but I’m planning on looking into it. It might seem a bit weird to do, but what if you have people asking about sending you a copy of their book for your autograph? Yeah, hadn’t thought of that one, have you? Well, some of us are old school and prefer not to give out that kind of information—especially over any kind of social media, and that a very good thing to not do—so the thing to do is get a Post Office box. More on that, if necessary, as I look into it.
  9. Currently, CreateSpace (CS) has a weird rule: they do not allow all capitals for titles in creating a CS account. So, for ERO, I had to add periods in the title for the CS account, for “E.R.O.” They assured me it would have no affect on the actual title. But they are quite wrong. What it affects…are retailing your “title.” Go do a search for “ERO” in Amazon.com. What did you find? Sure, the Kindle version is there, but the paperback version is not displayed…at least not at the top of the page. If you scroll down, you’ll find related searches (which is a good thing Amazon does, searching on other parts of the main search for additional info), and there “E.R.O.” displays. Additionally, if you have your ebook at Nook (B&N), Nook says it synchs up “any other versions” of the book out there, but they have to be “word-for-word, space-for-space” the same names and titles. And who knows where else and what else this will impact! But, it certainly impacts people looking for your book! A friend of mine did a search for “ERO” and told me she couldn’t find it. The above is the reason why. So, see how easy it is TO LOSE A SALE?! You bet. So, I’ve been in contact with CS and Nook, and while I was nearly brushed off by initially trite and not-reading-all-of-the-e-mail responses, I pushed it, and, last I’ve seen, CS has sent the issue to their tech peeps. I’d asked they reconsider their protocol or rework my title. We’ll see how this goes. I’ve also asked why they do it, but I suspect it might have something to do with “flaming” over social media, or something. I just cannot image what other reason why a company would do something like that.

Okay, I think that about covers it for now. Go, have fun creating your own books!

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ERO—Trade Paperback Now Available!

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ERO (2013, F. P. Dorchak, Don McCall, Lon Kirschner)
ERO (2013, F. P. Dorchak, Don McCall, Lon Kirschner)

Well, the trade paperback edition of ERO has arrived!

The 6 x 9 trade paperback edition of ERO is now available at CreateSpace, courtesy of Wailing Loon. I’m asking $14.99 for it. It hasn’t yet migrated to Amazon.com and other distributors, as of this writing, but do keep checking!

And (I must say…) the complete, full jacket is every bit as stunning as the front cover! It might be the young buck on the back flap, it might be the really cool faux organizational patch…or could it be le très cool Wailing Loon imprint image? Oh, yeah, I hope the story kicks butt, too. Yeah, the story. Anyway, I’m really not sure which is more stunning-er. You be the judge.

The nifty patch above is courtesy of two friends of mine, Don McCall, who created the patch at my request several years ago, and Lon Kirschner, of Kirschner Caroff Graphic Design & Consulting, my cover artist for ERO. I’ve been dying to use this patch and put it out into the public “eye”—ha, pardon the pun!—ever since Don created it (thanks, Don, for that kick-ass patch—there’s a free, autographed book in it for ya)! Lon had to do some “graphic artist wizardry” to use it on the book, but we also had to change some things cause: 1) NRO stole my motto, and b) had to add some extra “pop” for the cover. Oh, yeah, I do plan on going Cafe Press with it. But that will be a little while. My original motto was “Above and Beyond,” in various versions of Latin, but a fellow writer friend pointed out that NRO (the bastards) already had the phrase. Since they’ve been around a little longer, and are, well, scarier than me, I decided not to fight the issue. I changed the motto to “IN TÉNEBRIS,” which is supposed to translate into “Into the darkness.” I used a couple of Internet translators for this and they seemed to agree, so I hope it’s correct. It better be correct. If it isn’t, don’t tell me and allow me to live in my little Fantasy Land….

And then we have…the rest…of the cover:

ERO Paperback (2013, F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)
ERO Paperback (2013, F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)

Yeah, that’s me, 26 years ago. As a captain in the U.S. Air Force.

Where the hell does the time go, maaan?

The Air Force and I parted a long time ago, but I thought the picture germane to use for the cover, since the main character is me—I mean, the main character is in the Air Force, in the same timeframe (and, no, Conspiracy Theorists, do not read anything into that—all the weird shit is made up, period; those who deal in real Weird Shit know this, but I don’t need the added grief of some weird shit mythology building up around me as some kind of weird shit guru, cause I’m not—I’m just a writer trying to get by…writing weird shit…). And Lon was cool enough to incorporate Don’s extraordinary efforts of the ERO patch onto the cover. Thanks, again, man. Ever consider consulting?

So, there it is, my friends and kindly readers, the e-book and trade paperback editions of ERO, a story I began back in 2006, based on a weird idea, and helped along by various individuals, including my ex-agent (who I still can’t thank enough), incredible content formatter, Pam Headrick, incredible Cool Cover Dude, Lon Kirschner, and CreateSpace, Smashwords, B&N, Amazon, and all the other outlets and platforms and people out there and are mentioned in my acknowledgments page. I hope you enjoy the read and, if you do, please, talk, tweet, blog, and whatever the hell out of it. Yes, you can use these images—just, please attribute the appropriate people and/or links to their creation. Then could I also ask of you to post reviews of your read when done? Thanks. I’d greatly appreciate it.

See my website (www.fpdorchak.com) for other books.

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Wailing Loon

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Wailing Loon (F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)
Wailing Loon (F. P. Dorchak and Lon Kirschner)

In my continuing journey as an Indie author, I thought about the creation of the trade paperback for ERO, and asked Lon Kirschner, my Cover Guy, if we could create a “fake imprint” to round out the cover…something instead of “Create Space” that would communicate the kind of writing I do. Basically, “finish” off the whole cover process. Lon enthusiastically said, “sure!” So, I (pardon the pun) floated a couple ideas by him I’d been thinking about, one involved a black lab (in honor of our long-gone dog, MacTavish du Lac) and the other involved a loon. Lon gave some great advice, one of which was that in doing this I should be different, think of something unique, cause “everyone” does a dog. Sage advice, because I did want something unique…something I could brand all my work with, not just ERO. Well, yesterday Lon presented me with his offerings, and, I must say, once again, I am blown away by his work! What he has created is so classy, so professional, it simply belongs on the spine of books!

I chose the loon, because I’ve always loved them…loved their haunting tones…and the way they always bring me back to the Adirondacks of upstate New York, where I grew up. When I hear them, I’m transported to dark and mysterious places…the calm, dark waters of the Adirondacks, also replete with mystery. The Adirondacks are one of the oldest mountain ranges in the world. The image of the loon also lends a calming, end-of-day relaxation, gliding over the glass-like evening-into-night waters…of places largely unfrequented by the masses…causing many to give pause and introspection to not just one’s day, but one’s life.

And then there’s the red eyes.

They’re just such a different bird…that I’ve come to love their symbology so much, I’ve decided to use them as my Indie imprint. Mysterious, haunting, subtle. Stark. Different. All things I hope my work embodies.

So, I hope you enjoy my new brand…and I hope you enjoy my work. The creation of the physical trade paperback (in 6 x 9 format) is coming along nicely, and I hope to have it out soon! But, until then, sit back and enjoy…the haunting wail of the loon….

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