Experimental. Artificial Intelligence and Audiobooks. Louis Shalako.

The ebook preview feature on Kindle Direct Publishing.

Louis Shalako

Okay. Ladies and gentlemen.

So, I am uploading and publishing A Stranger In Paris, Inspector Gilles Maintenon Mystery #9, by Louis Shalako.

Those will be in multiple ebook formats as well as a couple of different sizes of paperbacks from print on demand publishing sites.

Things have changed in the six years since I last published a book in ebook and paperback.

It’s a bit of a learning curve, I have problems with a cover here and a glitch in the formatting there. A bit of a learning curve. (In other words, fuck, ladies and gentlemen. - ed.)  Like many such learning curves, there are the odd rabbit holes and unexpected opportunities that might be exploited. It is also possible to get side-tracked and confused, to lack focus and lose sight of the ultimate goal, which is to write books and stories, have fun, and if possible, make a bit of eating money...all these publishing platforms have preview features, and KDP revealed one line, Chapter Thirty-Three, that was in a different size and font. I do not want to publish an ebook or paperback with one line in a different size and font, ladies and gentlemen. I did manage to fix that…

We're in the quality control stage.

***

I downloaded 'TotalEbookViewer' and it's not very good. I signed into Nook, looking for Nook for PC. The site directed me to the Microsoft Store, who (or which) does not appear to have it. I had it at one time, maybe I should search my own computer for it. I don't know, it just didn't look very nice and I am checking quality control on a new book.

I also downloaded Kindle, epub and PDF files from Smashwords. The PDF looks good in Kindle Reader for PC. Kobo accepts various formats, unfortunately not PDF. I don't think Kobo has a preview feature for ebook uploads, which is unfortunate. (Turns out they do. - ed.) My POD text looks fine in the Lulu preview. Getting a paperback book cover through there may be a little more challenging, even though I have done a few before. I'm saving KDP for last, as they are the biggie and that is where the greatest sales potential is because of the vast volume of traffic. It is also where you have the greatest competition, which means the readers are swamped for choice.

This is my book on the Lulu POD preview. It looks okay.

***

When publishing, I like to preview every page, and I have provided some pics of what that looks like.

I just converted to an audiobook on Google Play. It sounded surprisingly good for what I take to be AI. I saw that new option when I went to upload my new book. Once I got that done, I went back and had another look.

Here’s the thing. I have one hundred and fifty titles on Google Play, novels, collections and short stories, under five different pen names and in all kinds of genres.

All of that potential...revealed.

All I really hoped for was to finish my twenty-third novel, which took three winters to write and over which I have slaved and sweated and yeah, whatever. All one has to do is to click on a few buttons. All one needs is a fresh ISBN number for each new audiobook. All one needs is to find the original ebook marketing image, which seems to work well enough for an audiobook. All of a sudden, one has doubled the number of products, all of them available for the occasional customer to take a shine to and maybe spend the money.

This is Artificial Intelligence, possibly exploiting me but also a bright, shiny new tool, one that however briefly, can leverage my own productivity.

Those books and stories are already written. They already exist—all I have to do is to pick a voice, set a price, listen to a few short sections, edit some of the front matter, which is repetitive and not necessary.

All I need is a bit of time, a bit of time away from the regular, part-time job and running errands about town.

We'll see what happens with all these audiobooks, ladies and gentlemen...

***

Smashwords has epub downloads in something called ReadAloud, and I did download that (A Stranger In Paris), and I did listen to it. It’s not very good, which is why Google’s voices (and you can choose from several), kind of surprised me. With a long list of titles, I can use a female Aussie voice, for example, on a Constance ‘Dusty’ Miller story and a young American male voice for an Ian W. Cooper story.

It looks like I have my work cut out for me, what with all those ISBNs and cover images crowding my desktop and filling up my file folders.

 

END

 

Poor old Louis is on Google Play along with some pen-names.

See his art on Fine Art America.

Check out this other story here.

 

Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spreading the Nets: Passive Discoverability

And now we sitz and waitz.

Louis Shalako

Here at Shalako Publishing, home of Long Cool One Books and Larga Fresca Uno Libros, our latest project is to get our books and stories uploaded in (or on) a few more online bookstores.

The basic premise is that the whole package has to be free, and the service provider must have their own bookstore. Additional distribution channels are a bonus if we can find ones we don’t have access to already. This all goes to extending the reach and the impact of passive discoverability.

The interface must be easy to use, accept our files, have provision for using our own book covers, and other considerations.

For this experimental addition to our digital publishing machine we will be looking for provision for Canadian and overseas authors to sell ebooks and PODs without withholding tax.

That being said, in some circumstances we may be willing to accept a penalty of thirty percent withholding tax, if we think the website will grow, succeed and eventually be able to provide this service. Any additional sales are significant. We will be looking for maximum flexibility from all platforms, free analytics, site appearance, ease and quickness of problem resolution, questions answered, etc. Assuming we made a hell of a lot of money, which doesn’t seem very likely, at some point in the future it would make sense to do U.S. income tax returns and get a refund.

Hell, if things go really well, I've always wanted to live in the southwestern U.S. anyway. 

I might even immigrate, ladies and gentlemen.

It might take a few days, in terms of the man-hours required to upload a hundred and thirteen titles to some new bookstores and aggregators. This is the sort of work that doesn’t pay off immediately. It pays off in the long run, which is why we say we are playing the long game.

If passive discoverability really does work, then being an early adopter of any platform might pay off at some time down the road. If it doesn’t work, then each and every site will need some degree of promotion.

This is the sort of experiment where a couple of initial sales might impress the author, however it is only over time that we can really get a good idea of which sites work for us and which sites don’t.

So we’ve gotten into Kbuuk, with three titles published so far. Here is Heaven Is Too Far Away, with a cover using a pro marketing image and designed in Microsoft Word.

Each site is of course a bit different in terms of operating details, and each site represents a new learning curve. For example the Kbuuk cover system looks a bit iffy unless I can fiddle around in there a bit and find some adjustment in the cover field. Designing a cover for each site for each book looks like a big job.

In terms of learning curve, Booktango wouldn’t accept Epub at first go, so I simply used a .doc and it went.

However, the Booktango system kept giving me error messages. I find it hard to believe that the original file had many, many hard returns in the middle of the line. The Smashwords system might introduce one hard return as it converts your original .doc file into what is presented as your original file. I say that because I check every book, page by page, using tools like the Amazon Kindle previewer, Nook for PC, Kindle for PC, etc. I also have Adobe Reader, the latest version. When I couldn’t find the original on my PC, I have used the SW original file and that’s when I started finding the odd hard return in the middle of a line.

There is no way that I’m going to spend hours fixing errors introduced by a system that obviously has different requirements. For example in the case of this document, the thing doesn’t seem to like three spaces or even two before the next chapter heading. That’s one reason I think it is an artifact of the systems involved. Also, at this exact moment in time, I’m not prepared to make a table of contents for a dozen novels. All of the short stories and novellas have them, but those books were written and formatted at a later date, when it was a requirement for iTunes distribution through Smashwords. A simple solution is to upload anything that already has a TOC and not worry too much about the novels for now.

Initially, I started off by searching ‘free ebook aggregators’ and similar searches. I began last night. 

What has been accomplished so far?

We're in Bookrix.

I’ve taken a few off of the list, including Booktango, Bookbaby, Fastpencil, Blurb, Indiebound, Lightning Source, (ebooks and PODs) as well as taking a look at Lulu, where simple .pdfs in their store might generate a bit of revenue over the course of time. It's either that or learn how to embed fonts! But we don't need their extended distribution anyways.

We couldn’t find a way to get into Versent, for example, so some of the other links we found were quickly written off.

Just one minor point might put us off. If someone charges $49 to set up each title, then that’s quickly going to run into a lot of money, with virtually no idea of the sales potential is.

If it ain't free, I move on rather quickly these days.

Other than that, I’ve got a handful of titles up on two or three platforms, all for free, and all using the simple tools provided.

As for the question of whether it sells books or not, we won’t know that for a year or two!

END

http://www.bookrix.com/_ebook-louis-shalako-heaven-is-too-far-away/

http://kbuuk.com/kb/book/4316/core-values.shtml

http://kbuuk.com/kb/book/4317/the-case-of-the-curious-killers.shtml

Digital Publishing: Control.

Louis Shalako

One of the great selling points of digital self-publishing is control.

This is one of those dichotomous statements. Which is different from a dichotomous question.

Control can be quite illusory.

On one website, only about half my titles, published through Smashwords, actually appeared. Days or weeks had passed since OverDrive had come on stream as a Smashwords distribution channel.

On another site, Txtr, all of my titles appear. They all have current covers. Recent price changes appear to have gone through within 24 hours. The same is true of iTunes. The covers looked up to date and the price changes went through.

For the OverDrive issue, I contacted SW staff a few days ago, and let them know about the problem. 

They said they would re-ship the titles. Checking a couple of days later, there didn’t seem to be a change. I went back tonight and there is still no change. They might ship in a day or two and they might all go through, so anyone who reads this at a later date may find a significant change.

It might be safe to say that one channel has more control than another. When you click a button, everything works.

Since SW began a few years ago, at least one distribution channel disappeared, (Scroll-motion as I seem to recall), and Sony pulled out at a later date. If I check Diesel Books, I discover that I am listed as Louis Bertrand Shalako. I changed the metadata to Louis Shalako a long time ago. The Louis Shalako page only displays eight titles. Only a few titles appear on the first search, mixed in with other books in other genres. Louis Bertrand Shalako displays seven titles. That’s it. What’s interesting is that they’re all paperbacks. There are no ebooks there at all as far as I can determine. So once again, we have an issue of control. Basically I must contact SW staff and find out what’s going on—because I really don’t know, and without data we really don’t have much control. That’s not to say anything is beyond solution, but it does take time, follow-up and the occasional sort of audit of all your distribution channels. Basically, we go out there and have a look at all of them. One experiment I am currently making is to simply opt a title out of one of the distribution channels. It’s not appearing anyway—so no harm is done. A couple of weeks later, maybe by opting in again, they will appear in their proper state. This sort of bypasses SW staff, and would give me that option, i.e. more control.

As the number of channels grows, the need for the occasional channel-audit increases in proportion.

The fact that there are paperbacks on Diesel is not necessarily a bad thing. Those books suffer all the same pitfalls and tribulations as an ebook.  If your product is produced through Createspace, or Lulu, they also have their distribution channels. The longer those channels get, especially if a reseller has a few channels of their own, the possibility of breakdown increases. This is certainly true in the case of the Louis Bertrand Shalako metadata.

There are other cases.

I am referring specifically to Kobo distribution, whether directly from Kobo or via Smashwords. 

Kobo distributed (at one time, I don’t know if they still do) to Angus and Robertson or somebody like that in Australia. The books never had covers in the whole time they were up there. They are still listed on the website (last time I looked), without covers and listed as ‘unavailable.’ This doesn’t help the reader or the writer at all in terms of passive discoverability—and I am not likely to post or promote such a site because it would just be idiotic, right?

This is not so good for the passive discoverability, speaking specifically about the reader that knows my name and has a Diesel account, or an Angus and Robertson account and just happens to be going through there.

The customer has some other reason to be there—whether they went looking for something else, or they were just browsing. Each transaction or non-transaction is one very specific case.

If you have ever looked for a used car, or a new apartment, at a later date you may kick yourself for not asking enough questions.

Digital publishing is a machine. It has lots and lots of little buttons to peck away at.

Our job is to teach ourselves how to use it effectively.

Control over such a machine takes knowledge, and that’s what modern digital publishing really is all about. It’s all about knowledge.

It’s a big machine, and learning how to use it takes time and study.

It’s fascinating, it really is.

That’s one of many reasons why five years later, I’m still here.

That fascination is another selling point, for one such as I.

END