Self-Publishing: Amazon KDP vs Smashwords

If you haven't used either of these epublishing platforms, you may be interested to know a little bit more about them, especially if you're a writer planning to publish your own work sometime in the future. Well, luckily for you, I'm guest posting today about both Amazon KDP and Smashwords over at Rach Harrie's blog. Just one more click and you can be there!

Self-Publishing: Amazon KDP vs Smashwords

Cover Reveal for GUARDIAN, Creepy Hollow #1

[Note: this post may contain an excess of exclamation marks.]

Alrighty. Here it is!!!!

So... What do you think?! You're allowed to be honest ;-) Though if you want to say that you hate it, it might be nicer to keep that to yourself! I -- obviously -- am super excited about it!!

Yes, she's meant to have purple eyes and purple in her hair, which I think is super cool. I once died my hair "blackcurrent" (according to the box) but if I was really brave I'd go real purple, like Vi up there (though hers in natural. Yup, you heard me. Natural).

(Something I've never noticed until recently is that not all computer screens are made equal in terms of colour. Yeah, okay, so maybe that's obvious to some of you, I just never had a reason to think about it before! Anyway, on my one screen she looks awesomely brightly purple, and on my other she looks kinda meh-purple-blue :-( )

~ ~ ~

Summary for GUARDIAN:

1. Receive assignment.

2. Save a life.

3. Sleep.

4. Repeat.

Protecting humans from dangerous magical creatures is all in a day’s work for a faerie training to be a guardian. Seventeen-year-old Violet Fairdale knows this better than anyone—she’s about to become the best guardian the Guild has seen in years. That is, until one of her assignments—a human boy who shouldn’t even be able to see her—follows her into the fae realm. Now she’s broken Guild Law, a crime that could lead to her expulsion.

The last thing Vi wants to do is spend any more time with the boy who got her into this mess, but the Guild requires that she return Nate to his home and make him forget everything he’s discovered of the fae realm. Easy, right? But Nate and Vi are about to land themselves in even bigger trouble—and it’ll take all Vi’s training to get them out alive.

Watch the book trailer for the series.

Introducing... Creepy Hollow

I'm Going Indie!

As in independent. On my own.
After much reading around, thinking, and internal debate, I've decided to self-publish a series of novelette-length stories entitled Creepy Hollow.



The Details

• the series name is Creepy Hollow (duh. Guess you figured that out by now!)
• the genre is young adult paranormal fantasy (with some romance, of course!)
• each story will be a novelette in length (I like that word ;-) )
• there is an as yet undetermined number of stories
• they will be published in ebook form
• they will be published at the beginning of each month, starting in March 2012
• here is the Creepy Hollow website, which still needs some content added to it
• here is the Creepy Hollow Facebook page

Something Interesting

When I started blogging a year and a half (approximately) ago, I Googled my name. It was then that I discovered that author Kim Harrison had a paranormal series revolving around a character named Rachel Morgan. I was a little bummed that someone pinched my name (my real, parents-gave-it-to-me-at-birth name) before I could use it! But whatever.

I haven’t yet read the series, so I didn’t realise the following until this week, after I created the Creepy Hollow website. To check that the website is “discoverable”, I Googled it. Amongst the hits I noticed that Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series is also called the Hollows Series.
Bummer! So now we have the Hollows Series about character Rachel Morgan, and the Creepy Hollow series written by author Rachel Morgan! Hmm...

What do you think about that? Is it a good or a bad thing for me? Am I likely to get in any “trouble” over this? I gather from the Goodreads blurb that the series is about witches and vampires (and werewolves?), none of which appear in my series.

Blog Tour

I'm planning a blog tour for the release of the first story (I couldn't do it for every one, of course. That's like a continual blog tour. People would get so sick of me!), but I'll email people individually to ask if they want to be involved in that.

So, there you have it! Watch this space.

Why Self-Publishing Appeals to Me

I've always been a DIY type of person. Not the drilling-holes-and-hammering-nails-and-building-cupboards kind of DIY, but more "craft project" DIY.

For example...

I see a necklace I like and think, I can make that for half the price (beads + fastening bits + really cute little tools + minimal creative skills = whatever necklace you want)






I needed an armband for my iPod and after Googling them online I thought, I can totally do that myself (material shop + super cheap piece of faux leather + amateur sewing skills = DIY iPod armband)




When I was little I made a mini "hardcover" book (as in, the cover was made of thick cardboard and the pages were paper) and actually sewed it together along the spine!


Then I decided I wanted to try to make a book cover so I offered to help out Kittie Howard and, voila (look to the left. Duh) (non-fancy camera + free-for-commercial-use fonts + PowerPoint = clothes for Remy)








So I've come to the conclusion that my DIY nature is the reason self-publishing has been growing on me over the past few months (that and my super-control-freak nature).

Confession: I used to kinda turn my nose up at the idea of self-publishing. I mean, that's what "loser" writers do, right? The ones who aren't able to get the stamp of approval from a "real" publisher.

WRONG! (well, in my humble, control-freak opinion)

More and more people are doing it - and doing it well! Joe Konrath, Amanda Hocking, John Locke... <other names I can't remember right now and don't feel like looking up>... Did you know that THE SHACK was self-published? Did you know that ERAGON was originally self-published? I'm not saying that you're going to end up like these authors. I'm just saying IT'S POSSIBLE to be a respectable self-published author! And the more I think about it, from just about every angle, being in control of my own stories seems like a smart move...

Thoughts? Opinions? Rotten tomatoes you want to throw?

Formatting your eBook for Kindle

I've recently been helping a friend out with formatting her manuscript for conversion to Kindle ebook form. I was very excited to do this, as I've been curious for a while as to how the process works, and from everything I'd read it honestly didn't look too difficult.

I have to admit, though, that it was a little more of a mission than I anticipated. NOT because it is difficult in any way, but because I am finicky about tiny details, and every time I'd done the conversion process and put the file onto my Kindle to check, I'd think something like... actually, that heading right there would look better in caps, or that word between the title name and author name might look more attractive in italics.

So I lost count of the number of times I did the whole save as html / import into Mobipocket Creator / add cover / click Build / plug in Kindle / copy file onto Kindle / open and check ebook process. It was all good though, because I could do it in my sleep now :-) (though why I'd ever need to do that, I can't imagine...)

Formatting a document for Kindle is not that difficult.

The instructions provided on KDP's Simplified Formatting Guide page are pretty easy to follow:
(specific for MS Word 2007)

• DON'T manually indent the first line of each paragraph, but rather use the Home > Paragraph > Indentation > First Line function, so that it's automatic.
• DON'T manually insert page breaks but using multiple returns (the Enter key), but rather use the Insert > Page Break function at the end of each chapter, before you begin a new chapter.
• DON'T copy and paste images into your document, but rather use the Insert > Picture function.
• Save your Word document as a .htm file.
• Open Mobipocket Creator (the software is available for download. Follow the link on the Simplified Formatting Guide page) and follow the last few instructions on the Simplified Formatting Guide page.

There was only one thing I found frustrating: Whenever I had blank lines between lines of writing, for example:

CHAPTER ONE

My First Chapter's Name

My first chapter begins with these lovely words: We all went out for a blah, blah, blah. It was delicious. But just as we were leaving, a great, big blah, blah, blah appeared and we were all, like, terrified!

Those blank lines DID show up when I put the file onto my Kindle device to check it, but they DIDN'T show up on the Kindle Previewer software or the Kindle for PC software. Freakin' annoying! But I eventually figured out the following solution:

• Put the cursor in front of My in My First Chapter's Name and go to Page Layout > Breaks > Section Breaks > Continuous. Do the same in front of the My in My first chapter begins with... And, of course, anywhere else you'd like there to be a blank line.

So. Anyone else done any formatting for ebooks lately? Have you formatted for different platforms? Are some of them more complicated than others? (For example, are Smashwords guidelines more complicated than KDP guidelines?)

A to Z Stories of Life and Death

Fellow blogger and writer, Damyanti, has put together an ebook of bite-sized short stories, many of which were written during the epic A to Z Blogging Challenge.



How do you judge a teacher toying with the sexuality of her teenaged student? A boy who decides to murder his mother? What thoughts rage inside a pedophile serial killer before he shoots himself? These are some of the premises of 26 stories of life and death, based on 26 letters of the alphabet. They question the concepts of beauty, truth, and morality, by revealing the face of the other side.


The book is available at Amazon and Smashwords. Well done, Damyanti!

PS. Isn't the cover super-duper awesome?!

Amazon e-Publishing: A Question

I've been reading quite a lot lately on self-publishing and e-publishing and indie authors... So I was thinking that at some point I'd like to try e-publishing, just to see how it works out.

So now I'm getting excited about my new idea. I go off to Amazon, click on the link that says Self-publish with Us, go to the Kindle Books section, click on Learn More and setup an account for myself.

Easy. Great :-)

Not so great... When it comes to filling in the rest of my account info (the info that is necessary in order for me to be able to publish something) I get asked for my US taxpayer info and my US social security number. Neither of which I have!

So then I get directed to the IRS website to apply for this stuff...

My question to you: Are you a non-US citizen, residing in a non-US country, who has e-published with Amazon before? How much of a mission is it to get this tax number stuff sorted out? What was the process and how long did it take?

(Ok, so that's several questions... Sorry!)