A Rambling Discourse On Method.

Louis Shalako

Publishing is not rocket science.

When my old computer was dying, and I knew I had to get a new one, it was obvious that there would be a transition, some kind of learning curve, if and when I got a new one.

Everything worthwhile in life has some kind of learning curve. For example, my brand new program has metric for the margins and page sizes, headers and footers. I’m used to measurements in the old English system. In the short term, I fiddle with the measurements when making a print on demand paperback. When I find something that works, I jot it down, even though the measurements for a 250-page POD are irrelevant for a 440-page POD. With my new program, I have published a handful of ebook titles and one or two PODs.

The thing is quick. When I perform an operation, there is no waiting around, no going into the kitchen and setting some eggs on to boil for egg salad sandwiches.

It’s a learning curve, and over time, looking at it often enough, it will become as natural as breathing. 

I won’t even be able to explain it.

My new program wanted me to work in the cloud. The interface was tiny. I was so pissed-off when I saw that, it practically made me sick to my stomach. I was throwing hissy-fits, I kid you not. I was spitting mad. With a remote session with my tech guy, I can now create a document on the desktop and keep it there where the interface is similar but cleaner than the old XP version.

(In a bit of a side-bar, going blind is not a fucking joke.)

It used to take my old machine anything up to thirty seconds or more to open an email.

It took a second to see what it was, and then thirty more seconds to delete it and open up the next one….

Life’s a lot easier, even though there was a bit of a panic session when I went to print something and discovered the machine didn’t want to do it. When I hooked up my printer, the thing went directly online and downloaded the program, so I thought that was it. The disc is in a box somewhere, and it took quite a long time to load on the old machine. But the fact was, I had to hack around a bit to learn that the thing won’t print until ‘OneNote’ (another cloud aspect of this program) had been opened at least once.

You have to sign into your Microsoft account, but then I did that to activate and validate the new software anyways. Short story made longer, now we can print.

And the whole game is like that. You pay as you go and learn as you go, and you can push it as far as you want.

***

As the reader knows, we like conducting experiments. Recently we went on Smashwords and opted out of Kobo distribution for five pen names and something like a hundred titles.

Then we went to Kobo and opened an account. We uploaded the exact same titles to Kobo. We don’t give a shit so much about the royalty rate. But in the entire year last year, we sold a grand total of three books by using the Kobo distribution channel through SW. If you’re not selling any books the royalty rate is irrelevant.

What is important is thinking clearly.

We’ve sold three books this year, in about two weeks. What’s really different is that we can see free books being downloaded. This Kobo channel information is unavailable from SW. It would be nice to know which titles are going for free on Kobo. This way we would know what sort of material to produce more of.

They have to see your book before they can take it for free. For all we knew there was no one looking at our books on the Kobo site—judging by the data provided by SW. Yet we know that’s not true now.

As to whether that was true or not, we simply don’t know based upon zero information, however, we can safely say that we have distributed 480 + free titles through Kobo since the experiment began just a couple of short months ago.

***

Later today, we will take our half-dozen latest titles down from SW on the Kobo distribution channel. The fact that we left them up when publishing simply made our day simpler. We’ll stick them up directly through Kobo. This means that our titles will pop out on the just released page twice, and we will now have more control over prices on each individual platform. We can set a book for free on Kobo, and it won’t affect the price on Barnes & Noble, iTunes, etc.

At some point in the future, if we get bored enough or disappointed enough, we’ll sign up for iTunes, go through the whole ITIN/tax withholding rigmarole, and upload directly to them for greater control over pricing and availability. It is irritating to upload a fresh cover and then on some site or other, discover that they’re still using something from three years ago.

It would be interesting to see what sort of metrics and analytics we can get off that site, and it would also be interesting to fiddle with the site and see if we can move a few more books.

This is no big reflection or criticism of Smashwords, but it is a logical extension of our knowledge and our capabilities.

Other than that, things are going along about as well as expected. At some point in the future, for example when I get the new machine paid down a bit, we can purchase Adobe Photoshop and learn how to use that too.

It’s all part of the constant learning curve that is modern digital publishing.

That is our basic method and our most useful tool: a willingness to experiment, and one would think a willingness to learn the job and to do the work.

END

Digital Publishing, Quality Control.

Like that sullen Alex look.

Quality control is important in digital publishing because very often one person is doing everything themselves. If you haven’t done it too many times, it can be a murky process. More than anything, I want to be fresh and with a rational time slot available. I can upload to Smashwords or Kindle in about ten minutes, but if there is a problem, you don’t want to be running out the door to get a box of diapers or whatever right in the middle of fixing a problem with a book

When uploading to Smashwords, you need a clean .doc file as per the Smashwords Style Guide. As soon as it’s done converting, I download Epub and Kindle versions onto my desktop where I have the desktop Nook and Kindle reading apps. What I am looking for is good formatting. I want to see clean scene breaks, with the blocks of text above and below set at the right distance apart. Generally speaking, if the Kindle version looks good my Epub usually will too, but I flip through both of them right to the end. Then I go back to Smashwords and assign an ISBN, submit the converted file and have some fair degree of assurance that it will make it into the Premium Distribution Calalogue.

You want to read the chapter numbers on that Kindle version—recently I read : Chapter Four, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six…Chapter Seventeen, Chapter Nineteen…this is the time to fix it, right?

You want the right number of chapters!

What you are hoping for is a clean upload. Sooner or later the book will pop out onto the home page as a new release, and this puts a little pressure on the new author to do it right.

Before uploading to Kindle Direct Publishing, I take out the Smashwords standard disclaimer, as I have my own anyway, and Kindle certainly doesn’t require the Smashwords disclaimer!

On Kindle Direct Publishing, there is now spell-check for English-language titles. I always read this report. If you have a lot of made-up words, alien names or planets or whatever, those will always be ‘errors’ to the computer program, so make sure you proofread those for spelling thoroughly.

Fix all the ‘real’ errors and upload a corrected file. Use the digital previewer, and go right through to the end, as this is exactly how your book is going to look in a Kindle device. This is useful in helping an author to sleep at night—one or two reviews have mentioned “well-edited,” and good formatting, et cetera. (They also liked the story.)

I never use Digital Rights Management, as on Smashwords there is no provision for it anyway. If someone wants to pirate the book, they can do it easily enough. Since I give away thousands of books in a year, there’s not much demand for pirated books. I click ‘enable lending,’ and MatchBook since I have PODs.

There was a site once that had a free download of a title that I had been giving away for free. It was an old version, with an old and not very good cover. You can try and find a contact form, or an email address on the site. Generally speaking, they do take it down. If it’s just a ‘cheap ebooks’ site, and if all that is there is an image and buy link going back to Amazon or something don’t worry about it. Hope that they sell a few copies for you, as most likely they have an affiliate account and they’re making a small commission. It is not necessary to thank them.

Be glad someone thought they could make money on the book.

Uploading to Createspace is easy enough. For that I use the ebook file, format it, then save it as TitlePOD or whatever, and if I update a version I’ll put Oct13 or something on the end of the file name.

I wrote a blog post on version control, because after a while you just spawn so many files. In my case I tend to back them up like a squirrel, all over the place. I’m sort of worried the computer will crash, and every so often there is an odd-ball glitch that just locks up a file on me.

Another thing is to e-mail those files to yourself at the end of every working day. For that you need maybe two accounts.

My chapter number is six 12-pt spaces down.

A paperback is obviously formatted differently than an ebook. You can and should have page numbers for example. But also, I put section breaks in for the front matter and end matter, so the page numbers are only in the actual book. If you have a foreword, stuff like a dedication, acknowledgements, that’s front matter too—no page numbers, no headers, etc.

The free cover templates on Createspace are easy to use with a little fiddling around, and like many other self-publishing sites there are professional cover and formatting services available.

Learning to do everything myself keeps the cost down and gives me a bit of power in a sense—now I can write how-to articles and post them on my blog, and it might be helpful to someone else along the line.

Before uploading my next two ebooks and five more POD files, I will proof each file at least one more time, take a look at the covers again, get a marketing image (and maybe a better title for Collection # 4 Dark Satires) and ISBNs, write blurbs for new titles, and stuff all that into a folder on the desktop. For one thing, 

I’ve been thinking of a new image for Core Values. It’s not ready to upload until I have a cover.

The books will be uploaded in order of priority:

Third World > my new science fiction novel > ebook > Smashwrods > Kindle > POD

Collection # 4 > ebook SW > K > POD

Engines of Creation > POD after ebook published around Dec 1. The ebook is already on the platform, it’s just been unpublished after uploading. (That one had a small error which I think has been fixed as well.) 

But the Kindle version is not fixed. That’s why I make lists in the first place.)

Ghost Planet > upload POD file and cover to Createspace as the ebook is already published.

Core Values > POD this book has been out for three years so it’s high time I made the POD, however it’s not my highest priority in uploading. During the POD file creation process, I noticed one error, so after this is done I will go back, fix the .doc file, upload to SW and then upload an .html file, a corrected one, to Kindle.

During the POD process I might have to go back and forth between Createspace and my desktop via tabs to fiddle with marketing images; as often the name and title are off-center a wee bit, and sometimes it can’t be adjusted properly with the free templates that I use.

Once your POD goes live on Createspace, it will be automatically linked to your ebook on Amazon after about a week, but you have to check and if it doesn’t show up, contact them through the form on the site and tell them. On Smashwords you can also link to a print version from the ‘manage links’button on the right side of your book’s page.

Notes: on Kindle, as long as you haven’t completed the second of the two publishing pages, you can quit and the thing will be saved as a draft. You can trouble-shoot and go back later with no harm done. On SW, you can always unpublish and when you come back a few minutes later, uploading begins the conversion and submission process again. Simply do the coversion and proof them puppies one more time.

On Createspace and other platforms there are digital proofers, human review, and in many sites you can download PDFs to your computer and see how your book turned out.

Since it takes about a week for a POD to pop up on Amazon, presumably you could do PODs first and then upload your ebook. As an experiment, I loaded up to Amazon and used their spell-check as it saves me the time of scrolling through fifteen times. Then I fixed the .doc file and published it first on Smashwords. Over time, I have evolved a process, and yet if you haven’t done it in a while, or if you’re nodding off to sleep, it can definitely still be irritating. That’s why I like to have a bit of time—enough time and forsight and it’s just less stressful.

Ebooks and paperbacks of the same title must have different ISBNs, and if you even change the colour of paper, (I read this on Createspace) you will need a new ISBN.

With a Createspace assigned ISBN, (free) they are the publisher of record.

With a Smashwords-assigned ISBN, they are the publisher of record, with your own ISBN, you are the publisher of record.

POD tips: Use mirrored margins, and use the format header and footer feature to raise your header and lower your page numbers away from the text. There is a minimum gutter depending on the number of pages. A wider page margin at the top lowers the top of the text.

You can stop the process and go back to the document in order to fiddle with that. Upload it as many times as necessary to get it as good as you can get it.

As things stand right now, (Friday, October 18,) I have had to ‘nuke’ my new collection Dark Satires, but Third World went through just fine. The collection has stories that go back some years and have been through two or three computers and two or three crashes. So now I upload Dark Satires to Amazon, and this evening I’ll put them up on Createspace as PODs.

After that, I have another several PODs to do, but no more ebooks for a while.

Nuking a File.

To nuke a file, save it as a .txt document. Highlight the whole .txt document and then copy and paste that into a fresh, blank .doc file. Now re-format the thing from scratch, although the .txt saves scene breaks and indents. It will strip out bold, italics, bigger fonts for titles, stuff like that. Comb through the file carefully, and if it takes an hour to redo it, it’s better than releasing a badly-formatted product.

Here’s my new science-fiction novel Third World on Smashwords.

END

More 5 x 8" paperbacks, troubleshooting.

Last night I pushed the button on the 5 x 8' paperback for 'The Case of the Curious Killers.'

Troubleshooting.

For some reason the CreateSpace automatic reviewer kept finding a problem with the formatting. It came at the end of the book, where I had a bio and URL. This was the third section of the book, written and formatted in Word. The bio was too wide, and for some reason every time I saved it, it reverted back to an unacceptable form.

After three or four attempts, I simply deleted the bio and URL. One, there is a URL in the front matter, and two, my bio is on numerous author pages, social networks and on my blog. I'm happy enough reciting it to old people at bus stops and strangers sitting on park benches. So it's not absolutely vital. Over the course of formatting, I learned that a 5 x 8" paperback in the 400-page to 600-page range requires a minimum of 0.875" for a gutter. This was the problem with that section of the book, and for some reason I was unable to fix it.

'Case' came out at 434 pages and retails for $10.99. This would generate two-something on CreateSpace and $1.74 on Amazon. If I sell an e-book of the same title, for $2.99, it generates about two dollars. That's how I set the price. I want to keep it as low as possible, and yet still make a profit. If the volume goes up, I could still reduce the prices and increase revenue. At this stage of the game, it's a good idea not to sell yourself short, and make it so that it's not worth your while or offers no real hope of future success.

That's why any sort of plan, based on knowledge, is so important: otherwise you just flounder or tread water with no direction and not much hope of survival.

Remember the best-seller, 'Swim With the Sharks?'

Sometime today, I'll get an e-mail telling me one of two things, either the book is okay format-wise, or changes are required.It's no big deal. Some of the mystery has been dispelled about the process of creating the physical product known as a book. I also have a POD file ready to go for 'The Shape-Shifters,' but I think that one can wait a couple of weeks or so.

There is a process. Once I click on 'order proof,' it's going to take a week or ten days to see the product. Then I 'approve proof,' and it takes another few days, up to a week, and then the thing magically appears in the Amazon store, linked to my e-books. And, since I have been selling and giving books away on Amazon, this means that while they don't have any ranking as yet, they are presented as if they do as an alternative format, item, or article to purchase. At last report 70 % of book purchases were still in hard form, and the sales of a title are sales of a title. A buck is a buck.

Marketing Images.

My cover for 'Case' was shot with a $100.00 camera, but the image for 'Shape-Shifters' came from Morguefile, and it was clearly shot with much more professional equipment. I'm really looking forward to seeing it. The 'Case' one required further fiddling after an upload or two, as part of the title was in the danger area. The CreateSpace process won't let you go any further until it is acceptable and within tolerance.

I use Nero Photosnap and Paint.NET when creating marketing images. With eleven titles and a few changes to the marketing images over the last couple of years, the limitations become more apparent, but in e-commerce, embossed, gold-coloured fonts lose some of their grocery-store checkout display appeal anyway. It's a learning curve rather than a spending curve.

Write or Procrastinate.

In the meanwhile, what I really ought to do is to open up the file of story ideas and produce some short stories with an eye to submitting them.

Rather than engaging in outright procrastination, I wrote a blog post instead.

Quality Control in Self-Publishing E-Books

Quality control in publishing is extremely important, and there are some nightmarish aspects to it. It really doesn't matter whether it's a print on demand paperback, an e-book or a small print run at a custom printer. Anything involving quality control at this end of the spectrum can be scaled up for a bigger operation. Otherwise the information would hardly be valid.

Yesterday, I decided to publish 'Selected Poems' on Amazon, which is a Kindle version. Their preferred file upload is an html file.

What I did was to get the original file, which is a .doc file for uploading onto the Smashwords platform. Then I changed the front matter, which is only polite to both Amazon and Smashwords, and uploaded the file as a saved html version. There is a process where you fill out all the information for the book, and of course quality control is important--typos are kind of 'verboten,' and that's fine.

After uploading the file, I first checked the book in the preview feature, and things didn't look good. Then I clicked on the 'download file' button and brought a Kindle version (so far unpublished) onto my desktop. Clicking on that, which opens up in a Kindle 'Whispersync' sort of interface, I found that every poem seemed to be set in about three to five spaces from the left-hand margin, and there were no spaces between the end of one poem and the next title, and then no space between the title and the text of the poem.

There are plenty of irritants available to the average writer in the course of a busy day, and this was one of them days! So the thing was parked in 'draft' mode for a while.

Then of course I thought of the versions, all frickin' eight or nine of them available on Smashwords...

We all know the obvious thing to do, right?

Right. I went to Smashwords, and unpublished the thing as a precaution. It's Read An E-Book Week, March 4-12 on Smashwords. The thing is marked for free, and a couple of people have been kind enough to download a book. A few people have sampled the book.

Much to my surprise, the thing looks fine in all formats, bearing in mind once 'unpublished' I can't check out the online viewing options. However, the Kindle version looks very good in my Mobipocket Reader, which I also keep on the desktop. It is a free download, and it has its limitations.

So, either the html upload simply failed on Amazon, in which case I should try again, or it is barely possible that I accidentally uploaded the .doc file, which doesn't seem very likely as I made the html file right on the spot for that sole purpose. That would tend to explain the wonky formatting though.

On the bright side, I guess I have learned quite a bit--for example, the Palm and LRF versions can be read on Mobipocket as well, although they have a strange 'AE' thingy with some curves that look distincly foreign. This is probably an idiosyncracy of Mobipocket Reader, which is only meant to simulate certain devices. It doesn't replace them. I check every page, and for good reason. Mistakes kind of hurt the ego.

The irritation has gone away, and so has the sort of self-flagellation that goes with really pooching it badly...which apparently I didn't do. This is why I always download the Epub and Kindle versions as soon as I publish anything on Smashwords.

As to what exactly the problem is on Amazon, that one falls under the 'trouble-shooting' category.

Having unpublished the book on Smashwords, the product requires re-submission even though it's the same file, and it sets it back in the Premium Distribution Catalog process, but I would rather be sure about it and not have to worry.

Other than the fact it is not published on Amazon, no serious harm has been done and it was probably a valuable exercise.

Just for the record, Smashwords' Meatgrinder and Auto-Vetter do not catch all errors in formatting, and neither do the human reviewers on virtually any platform, although I'm sure most of them are very good, 'statistically speaking.'

In other notes, I have ordered a proof copy of 'Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery' from Createspace and expect it to arrive about March 22. Only after proofing it does Createspace allow the book to be marketed. I will be using the two free distribution channels. You can get three more for about $25.00 but it's not vital at this point in time. The reader's circumstances may be different.

That book is a 6 x 9 paperback, 216 pages, and retailing for $8.99 plus S & H. This same product is marked at $10.99 on Lulu, due to the terms of service and various other factors including their pricing policies.

POD Cover and notes.

Above: A simple book cover using stock CreateSpace options.


So far, I have the interior file pretty much ready to go, but there are still questions and issues regarding this project.

First of all, the best I can do so far is to have page numbers centred at the bottom of each page. I would have preferred right and left, mirrored.

Secondly, because the headers and footers appear to be linked in Microsoft Word, I only have the title at the top of each page, rather than the title on one page and the author name on the other. That doesn't look too professional. When I try fix that, one set of page numbers disappears, either odd or even.

Third, this is going to cost me $25.00 for each title I upload, and after fifteen years on disability, living at about 2/3 of the poverty line, (or $7,000 under, whichever is more clear to the reader,) I don't know how fast I can go on this.

That being said, I might be able to do one a month.

I haven't calculated the retail price of the product yet, but if I set it to earn $2.00 clear profit per sale, I have to sell thirteen books to cover the cost.

Finally, if CreateSpace is anything like the parent company Amazon, they have 'thresholds' authors have to meet before they will cut a cheque, and as a Canadian, it is virtually impossible to open a U.S. bank account without going to the U.S. and doing it in person. And, since I don't have a birth certificate, nor a passport, this brings up other costs, including time spent and administrative delays on the part of the government. It's $25.00 for the birth certificate and $80.00 for the passport. Also, getting a birth certificate involves a 'garantor.' Just who in the hell is going to do that for me is a bit of a mystery at this point, as you can't use relatives and they are asking for 'persons of standing' in the community, i.e. a member of parliament, a judge, a cop, whatever--just the sort of people I hate to ask for anything. The reader's experience may vary.

So I don't know what to think about that, but I'm obviously not going to do this if there is no chance in hell of ever making any money at it--and for reasons unknown Amazon and probably CreateSpace don't deal with PayPal. The threshold for EFT on Amazon is $10.00 accrued in one month, and it's $100.00 for a paper cheque to be issued.

That sounds simple enough, but what is implied there is not. If I'm not mistaken, as I often am, 90 % of the authors on Amazon will never meet that $100.00 threshold, but then U.S. authors can just use their local bank and get Electronic Funds Transfers. If I'm the first guy to figure that one out we'll call it a 'scoop' but I'll bet the company knows that very well. What's really interesting is that they don't use the in-house AmazonPay either. I could speculate as to why this should be so, but I won't. Not yet. It might have something to do with the razor-thin margins and the fact that they are trying to take over the world...right? That's hard to do on a budget. The way I see it, if they take over the world, fine, do a good job of it--and make sure I get my piece of the action.

Tens of thousands of authors around the world will probably never figure that one out, but I like to ask a 'bleep' of a lot of questions, and I guess we'll just leave it at that.

Formatting a POD in Open Office

In between bouts of writing my new novel 'On the Nature of the Gods,' I've been spending a little time working on the POD (print on demand) version of 'Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery.'

If I can get it to work, it will be a 6 x 9 trade paperback of about 230 pages. According to CreateSpace, that opens up the most distribution channels. Sounds simple enough.

It's a little bit frustrating, because while I did it before, with the 4 x 7 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' (see below, right side,) the learning curve is still there. That's because I did that POD at least a year ago, maybe even longer. I also did 'Core Values,' but never published it, as there was a heavy dotted line running through a page in chapter three. I could never get it out without totally reformatting. I lost heart or something at that point.

Those books have mirrored pages with left and right numbering on the bottom of the page. Theroetically, the header can have left and right pages too--author name on one side, title on the other. It's a nice-looking, professional thing, and that's what I want, right?

So far I'm still having trouble getting Open Office to do that with this project. I've read a couple of tutorials and followed up with a few threads attempting to trouble-shoot the problem. Basically, it's difficult if not impossible to do it in Microsoft Word. And if you click and drag a .doc file into Open Office it clashes and maybe you just can't do it.

I still have ideas, not least of which is to read a few more tutorials. Also, somewhere in the back of my mind a voice is saying that I saved the link from the tutorial that I read a year ago, the one that helped me to succeed that time. So I might have a dig through the files for that one.

Then there is always the nuclear option: take the .doc file and save it as a .txt document, and bring it into Open Office that way. Then there's no clash with Word, although the whole file has to be formatted from scratch. Maybe I could have taken better notes last time...

The reason I didn't use CreateSpace's basic template is that it only had ten chapters, and the page numbering is centred, and I couldn't find a way to change it.

When I tried to paste another template at the end of the template, it just wouldn't go, and my book has twenty-seven or so chapters.

One way or another, it might take a couple of weeks to find the time and figure things out, and then there is the whole wraparound cover challenge--just looking at that template makes my head spin for some reason.

There are times when I wish I was in a position to throw a little money at a problem, but I'm not. I don't know about you guys, but I got a funny feeling that's either never going to happen or it is slated by an indifferent fate for some time in the far-off future.

I'm sure I'm capable of re-learning a new trick, and I guess I have nothing better to do. The most serious thing is that I really haven't written anything today.

My new e-book has a deadline of Mar 31, but I just got my new ISBN and things are going okay there. Then, if you really want to get technical, there's the whole question of making money out of all this...

We'll talk about that another day...um, maybe when we have something valid to report.

Thinking Out Loud. Print on Demand Paperbacks.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


My mother asked me on the phone, 'Do you remember where you were a yaer ago?"

"No," I replied. (End of story.)

I am still having trouble figuring out what is happening to my two uploads at Google Books.com. I will let them sit for a day or two and then have another look. If the interface is impenetrable, and if I cannot figure out how to read their minds, I will simply delete the account.

Today I am researching a number of options for 2011.

These include Createspace, Lulu.com, and Lulu e-books. Planet Ebook may have a way to upload. Then there is iUniverse and some others.

For some reason I got hung up on Borders. Maybe it was the US bank account thing, I will try to iron that out.

The basic premise with publishing print on demand paperbacks is that people may be more inclined to purchase one if they get something more tangible than an e-book.

It's like Hollywood movies, people don't have a problem paying for a DVD in a nice package from a store, but often the same people don't see a problem downloading a pirated video for free. Essentially a stream of data seems 'worthless,' and yet they are more than happy to pay for packaging! They have been well-educated by the media, or so it would seem. Lately I noticed that they are shrink-wrapping cucumbers. Next it will be individual green beans or something...for our convenience.

One of the things that strikes me about Createspace is that the approx 5.25 x 7-something inch books are more expensive than the 6 x 9 inch books. That bothers me for some reason. All those old Robert A. Heinlein pulps were that pocketbook size, and Dick Francis, and Alistair Maclean...so that's why I want it too!

What the hell, it's my money and my ego at stake here.

I guess if I go ahead with this, it's better not to go charging in without doing the research. But it would be nice to provide paperbacks one way or another.

That leads to the question of which book to do first, one already published as an e-book, or a new title? It would take a few days maybe, to make a nice Pdf of 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' or whatever format is required for whatever platform.

It would take two months to rewrite and format a new title, perhaps 'Shape-shifters.'

I'll get a little drunk one of these nights and just decide!

In this case, the preview capability of Myebook.com will come in handy. It would be nice if I knew a little more of the jargon.

Other than that, it's not necessary to decide right away. In cases of doubt, I simply revert back to the no-cost option.

By the end of 2011, I will probably have two more titles published, at least one POD paperback to market, and with a little luck and a lot of hard work, I will write at the very least another collection of stories and hopefully, another novel.

Tommorrow I need to take a tape measure, a pen and a notepad and go to a bookstore...okay, so I used to be a carpenter, but I want to look at their prices, and sizes, and things like that. Steal a few ideas for covers...things like that.


UPDATE: These blog entries seem pretty organic, in that they keep growing. Okay, let's follow this through logically: Lulu publishes e-books. So why not upload four e-books to that site? It's another platform, it takes advantage of traffic through their site, and gains visibility and exposure. That follows logically enough on my 'everything for free' business model. And, why not publish POD if it is indeed free 'until you sell?'

Don't go by what I say--I am so often wrong. Read the stuff and make up your own mind. As stated in a previous post, 'what a difference a year will make.'

All of this seems dreadfully important right now. Just 'thinking out loud,' I could live with the cover art in terms of a paperback 'Core Values.' I just happen to have a Pdf which requires some small modifications...huh. Huh. (Huh!)

Well, what do you know?