“Zorya” available now!

Zorya is now available on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover (casebound). I’ll be getting it into more e-book formats soon. See the Zorya website for purchase links.

This book has been marinating for a long time and was sent to many agents and editors. I’m grateful that self-publishing has gotten to be so much easier and inexpensive for authors, although the real hurdles (as always) are in marketing the book after you publish it. Still, I remember when “self-publishing” meant paying a printer, stacking boxes of books in your garage, and trying to figure out how to get them to the readers and stores.

All it’s cost me (so far) was some time, a few skills, and my computer. That may change now that I’m in the advertising zone. I notice, for example, that book giveaways on Goodreads aren’t free anymore.

I used Kindle Direct Publishing for all three Amazon editions. Paperbacks used to be a separate process on Amazon’s Createspace, and they didn’t have a hardcover option at all until recently, but now all three options are integrated into KDP.

The Kindle version was composed on Microsoft Word, and crunched into Epub3 by Calibre. I used the simple “iPod” cover I had generated in Photoshop for my old Lulu editions. The paper editions were composed in Adobe InDesign CS6 and uploaded as PDF files.

Now, we’ll see.

Zorya ready for publishing

After some years, and a lot of time trying to find a publisher for Zorya (my third book) I’m going to be publishing it myself under my Golden Spider Books imprint.

I’ve done the work on the files to put the book up on Amazon in Kindle, paperback, and hardcover version. I’ve got ISBNs from Golden Spider Books. Kindle Direct Publishing makes it easy to build files for all three options, and I have some experience from doing book files for another small publisher.

At this point, I’m waiting for proof copies from Amazon on the paper versions, and my wife is doing another readthrough on the Kindle version. After that, it’s just about pulling the trigger.

The Zorya website is still under construction, and I hope to have buying links up soon along with more content.

Amazon hardcover edition looking good

I got the first test version of my Amazon hardcover edition of Castle Falcon (discussed in the previous post) and I’m quite happy with it.

Lulu casebound on left, Amazon hardcover on right

It’s thicker than the earlier casebound Lulu version, and about a quarter pound heavier. I used cream paper, which looks better. I can sell it a bit cheaper than the Lulu version, too.

Kindle Direct Publishing adds a hardcover option (and it’s about time)

This week, Kindle Direct Publishing has started offering a hardcover (casebound style) option for their KDP paper publishing.

Up until now, KDP (and before that, Createspace) did not have any kind of hardcover option. I have been making gift and review copies of Castle Falcon using Lulu, which has good results but has been much too expensive for creating books for the regular children’s book market.

Createspace to move book projects over to Kindle Direct Publishing

Just a reminder for anyone publishing using Amazon’s Createspace: they will be automatically moving your Createspace account over to Kindle Direct Publishing in the near future as the two services merge.

More info here:

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GSJULX3WGP36HQ3R

This probably won’t affect me much since it just moves a completed book, but if you are in the middle of the publishing process, pay close attention.

Zorya is out on submission again. Also, I Aten’t Dead.

My last post was over a year ago. I’m not proud of it.

I have been dithering with self-publishing my third book, Zorya. That last post long ago involved the leap of faith needed to purchase the expensive stock image I wanted in order to build a cover image on my own.

I did make that purchase some time later (at least it’s deductable), and I did do some work on a cover. Mostly I procrastinated. My biggest obstacle to self-publishing, other than cover art, is marketing. It’s the thing I’ve seen most self-published authors stumble over, and I am no exception.

This past March, I attended the 2018 SCBWI Golden Gate Conference, which gives attendees the opportunity to submit to agents and publishers also in attendance. They pay special attention to submissions from attendees, and the opportunity was too good to miss.

So I sent several Zorya submissions out after the conference, the latest this evening (she didn’t want to see submissions until after the middle of July.) I have gotten one rejection so far. Some response times are as long as six months (not uncommon with submissions directly to publishers).

So. Here I am.

In other updates, the conventional publication of my second book, Roger Mantis, is proceeding, although the publication date was postponed twice. I’m still okay with the process, even the editing, but it’s an education.

Leap of Faith

When you are dithering over finally self-publishing that finished book, and find out that the cover idea you really like would cost you over five hundred bucks for the proper stock photo license …

Kindle’s Direct Publishing’s new paperback option

Up until now, self-publishers who went with Amazon usually used Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to produce Kindle books, and Createspace to produce paperbacks.

I did this with Castle Falcon, and it worked quite well.

Now Amazon is pushing an option to produce a paperback from the KDP interface, bypassing Createspace.

I’m quite happy with my Createspace edition, and too many of the KDP paperback features fall under the “not yet” category. That, and I never, ever, use the “beta” version of anything. I think it’s likely that Amazon will eventually phase out Createspace in favor of an integrated e-book/paperback KDP, but I’ll deal with that when the time comes.

Switching to a new edition on my book’s Amazon page

After I officially published the new edition of Castle Falcon (under the new Golden Spider Books imprint), there were two paperback editions for sale at Amazon.

With some excellent guidance from Createspace support, I managed to gently ease the old edition off the book’s page at Amazon.

The first step was going to the Createspace production site, and my dashboard there. I opened the old edition up, and went to Channels (under Distribution). There I just unselected all the channels, and the old book went off sale.

A request to Createspace support then “retired” the old edition. Everything on the page survived the switch, and it was basically effortless.

The old edition still survives under the surface: if you click on “all 3 formats” on the book’s Amazon page, the Kindle and new paperback edition come up. Opening a dropdown under “paperback” shows the May 2012 edition, still available as a used book from four vendors. That’s okay by me.

For a short time after the switch, when I did a general title search, the Kindle and old paperback popped up, but that got fixed. Only thing I’m waiting for now is for the preview to update. I’ll keep an eye on the Amazon book page to make sure everything stays sorted out.

Self-publishing: creating your own publishing company

After having had my book Castle Falcon on the market for a few years, I decided it might look a bit better if it had a company as the publisher instead of just me.

Of course, this doesn’t make any real difference in how things get done, but I think that a book gets taken just a bit more seriously if there’s an imprint on the copyright page. Okay, maybe not, but I still thought it would look better.

I’d picked the publishing name a while ago. In Castle Falcon, a major character is Aurachne (yes, I spelled it that way on purpose), the Golden Spider. She loves reading. So the company would be Golden Spider Books.

I whipped up an icon, which was a lot of fun:

The hard part was finding a 3D spider model online that was stylistic enough to not look creepy. As it is, I still had to delete the mandibles.

Then the work part:

Step One was creating the company. How you do this depends a bit on where you live, but here in California, you have to set up a “DBA” (Doing Business As). There’s a form to fill out for your county, and a small fee to pay to get registered. You also have to pay to get an announcement in the business section of your local paper. That’s pretty much it as far as I know, at least to get started.

Step Two was to go to Bowker, where I’d originally purchased my ISBN numbers for my various editions. I was pleased to find out that I could simply transfer my existing ISBN numbers to Golden Spider Books by request, and not have to buy a whole new set.

Step Three was going through my various editions and updating the copyright page and covers to add the new imprint and logo. Since I didn’t have to republish most of them under new ISBNs, this mostly involved updating the interiors for e-books and Lulu editions, and updating the cover image file (Createspace version below) for the latter.

The Createspace edition was a bit more difficult. When I originally published at Createspace, I just ran it through using Createspace as the publisher, where they provide their own ISBN number and add their barcode box to the cover image. Most people do it this way, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

To replace this with my own imprint and ISBN number required me to create an actual new edition, a second Createspace publication. I had no problems with this, updating the interior and cover (including logo and new ISBN barcode). I’m currently waiting on a proof copy of the new version. The only visible difference is the logo on the cover and some copyright text. I also added an “about the author” page at the end.

The real trick will be shoehorning the new Createspace edition into my Amazon setup and still retaining all my links, access to my five hard-won reviews, and other information. Particularly since I probably have to take the first edition off the market. More on this later (I hope).