A Tough Decision.

Take notes, they help you to remember.


c2011 (S)


I am presently in the process of editing my seventh novel, entitled, 'Redemption: An Inspector Maintenon Mystery.'

For whatever reason, I still can't bring myself to submit the thing anywhere or look for an agent. In fact, I've got the thing formatted as an e-book, although I still don't have an ISBN, end matter or a marketing image. And yet the decision would appear to be made!

That's not too serious as I still have novel #4 and novel #6 on hold, in the can and in reserve. They're both science fiction. What relevance that has, I don't know. I'm just saying.

This may seem completely mad, but I haven't even read through the book. It has been divided up into twenty-six chapters, which is better than eighty-seven. While I struggled with the middle of the book, the end seems so glib that I want to take some time in the editing and make sure it is exactly right.

That being said, this one will most likely be out by Christmas. If I have to photograph a basket of eggs, a pair of gloves, a dagger and a single long-stem red rose and call it a marketing image, that's fine with me as it kind of hearkens back to an earlier day of paperbacks and bookstores and imprints long since vanished.

In the absence of any strong leadership or even the faintest clue of what to do next, we'll just have to live with it.

Reading and Research. Experimentation.

4 X 7 template on screen

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


Reading and research are important. Before I go ahead with POD publishing I want to know as much about it as I possibly can. I have located templates for word documents and have been experimenting with a 4x7" template. (Google 'templates Instant Publisher.')

It seems to work fine, as long you paste .txt into it--a .doc brings its own formatting and size with it, apparently.

The initial impression is that I have to use 8-point or it looks like a kid's book.

The really big question is how it will look. What will the final product be? I wish I could visualize it for myself, rather than taking chances with my time and money.

The letters in the pocketbook I am using for reference are certainly less than one-eighth of an inch.

I went into the Wordclay site, which is another free POD publisher. This is a site where you can learn a few things and watch small slide presentations, (two to five slides, only five pages,) and I didn't have to sign up. What struck me is that there appeared to be only three sizes available, the closest to what I want being 5x8.

Ultimately, I don't want a 5x8, however, other reading indicated that some sizes are shall we say, 'more easily profitable in very small print runs.'

That is indeed a consideration: with Lulu or Wordclay, or any other POD/free publisher, you can never really get a discount for volume, as long as customers are essentially ordering one book at a time. I can't honestly say I've read everything in there, but the Terms of Service are long and tedious...but similar to others I have read.

In order to get a discount, you have to order so many books. A cost/price of $10.00 per book drops significantly when you order a hundred or a thousand. Okay, that's obvious. But apparently the 5x8 is more popular...with the publisher? And those guys don't care what's on the page. They're selling ink and paper, in the final analysis.

That ink and paper must have some mark-up, or why do it?

The problems of being an author are entirely my own.

So now I have to calculate the odds of ever placing a big order, and what impression both I and the customer would get from a funny sized book. At a mark-up of a dollar a book, am I really doing this for money?

That 4x7 template works out to 731 pages, so there is something funny going on there too. The story is 104,000 words, as I recall. It's better not to just wing it. I am at least learning what questions to ask.

But that can't be a 731-page book. It can't be.

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?

Soaring.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved



We're holding onto novels like 'TIme-Storm,' for the time being.



My computer doesn’t know the proper spelling of certain words, but I think Microsoft’s spelling and grammar checker will eventually supersede ‘Chicago Style.’

Like flying at night, you have to learn to trust your instruments. I Google words to check spellings when the computer and I disagree.

I have three novels in reserve, two sci-fi, one fantasy. I have a collection of poetry, and probably enough material for two collections of short stories. I want to get more stories published before putting them out. I love foreign language credits. Someone spends eight or ten hours doing it, and that beats selling a story in English for $5.00 or $10.00. I plan to do a first draft of another novel this winter. Provisional title, ‘A Work In Progress.’ Lots of satirical humour in that one.

This afternoon I was re-writing a 15,000 word story, and also kind of dreaming about putting together a collection of short stories. It is a lot of fun, after all; I have the material just lying around. There is some logic in having another title out in time for Christmas. Theoretically, this is my vacation after ten months of hard work.

Right now I have 460+ friends on facebook, some of whom are guys like Mike Resnick, Robert J. Sawyer, Vicki Delany, Douglas B. Smith, and people with anywhere from one to sixty or seventy books. You learn very quickly that there are about fifty million pretty good writers in the English language. I aspire to compete with the best of them. Should I engage in a race for the bottom with the worst of them? I’m better than that. Some of them have awards coming out the wazoo. Resnick has the record in sci-fi. I’m too shy to talk to some of them guys! (So I just listen.)

E-book sales are exploding, with amazing new figures published every month. Probably one in five books sold this year will be an e-book. That trend will continue. It is a tough business, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else right now. My goal is to put out sixty books and a few hundred short stories before I die. (A man has to have a goal, right? — ed. )

Ultimately, it is not really about money. It is about the books, and getting them into the hands of the readers no matter what it takes. Interestingly enough, the e-book readers like Kindle and Kobo are wonderful for the elderly, or for people with arthritis, or Parkinson’s disease, because you don’t have to turn pages and you can magnify the text with the touch of a button. With the new ‘e-ink,’ batteries maintain their charge for a very long time according to published reports.

Hopefully, this is the year of the e-book reader for Christmas. Wouldn’t mind one of them myself.

Anyhow, I will go to my grave feeling a lot better, knowing that I did my best.

Update. Smashwords.

(Author's Note: the story will evolve over time. Also note that the Amazon DTP program seems to accept multiple formats. Smashwords requires a .doc only, and a very clean one with minimal formatting.)


Okay, so my first two uploads to Smashwords failed, and it didn't take a fool to see what was going on, but I did.

If you look at the previous entry, you will note I mentioned converting to a .txt file.

In Mark Coker's Style Guide, available free from Smashwords, he describes 'the nuclear option.'

I have removed pictures, etc. Taken out page numbers, and then converted over to a .txt document. All my paragraph indents are space-bar type indents. My files have been through a number of old computers and crashes, and guess what? It's all here--just read the style guide.

Interestingly enough, the .txt file preserved indents! Argh. Mr. Coker mentions 'find and replace.'

Also the 'change style' button is something I've never used before! (But then I'm compltely self-taught, and this program (Windows 2007) was only installed in July 2010. At the time it boggled my mind to some degree to go from one tool bar to seven or so! Imagine my dismay. Back to the story.)

I've never used 'change style,' before, so I'm getting a bit of a free tutorial in Windows.

A big thumbs-up to Karly for the link to Smashwords, incidentally.

So basically, I'm just going to read a little section of Mr. Coker's book. Then I'm going to minimize it, and open up the file, and keep going. I can flip from one to the other as I go.

Bearing in mind that it's a Saturday night and I'm still doing my homework, you could say I was happy enough...

* * *

...five hours later and I'm still going at it. I started at seven p.m and it will be midnight soon enough. To put it in perspective, I uploaded two books to Amazon in about an hour and a half, and I had never done it before in my life. That included unpublishing and re-publishing a couple of times, just learning the system.

However, I figure by Sunday night or Monday at the latest, I should have two novels submitted and under review by Smashwords. Honestly, when I go to do the second, I don't have to read everything for the very first time, and I can in fact begin my 'smashwords2.doc file anytime now and do some preliminary 'nuking.'

And here's the beauty of it: by learning word-smashing, this is a clean source file for some subsequent e-publishing uploads.

When I go to do my third novel, this will all be easier, and I guess this puts things in better perspective. What I mean is, I could write letters to agents and publishers and make submissions until I was blue in the face.

Ah, but now, all I have to do is to put in one weekend of hard work. And learning is always worthwhile. This will come in handy somewhere else, I just know it! Oddly enough, I am no stranger to hard work...

If I ever get to a convention, I may not go straight for the goodies. I may not head straight for the book vendors, or the writer's panels, or the guys selling rubber masks and light sabres.

I might just plop my ass down beside the nearest publisher-guys and start up a conversation.

Now we have something in common. And I have something to talk about.

I'll have three e-books out on multiple platforms and in mutiple formats by November 1, 2010.

The Great Internet Rush of 2010.

by Louis B. Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


It’s been pretty compelling over the last couple of weeks to see the rush of people self-publishing their works.

In some ways it reminds us of the great Oklahoma land rush of a previous century; or even the California gold rush.

What spurred this sudden flurry of self-publishing was a number of credible reports, in which commentators speculated on the future of the mainstream publishing industry. In light of the burgeoning growth of e-books, and the number and variety of new platforms, at first glance, it looks like traditional publishing may be in trouble. E-book market share is growing by leaps and bounds. At some point the business model reaches a ‘tipping-point,’ where the capitalization of further production is simply gone.

The old-fashioned model had the author submitting a work, and then the editor would send it back. The author would re-write it, and send it in again. This process would go on and on for anything up to a year and a half, maybe even longer. Nowadays, people can write something and post it later that day, on Amazon, or anywhere for that matter. They get up to a 70 % commission or royalty on their work, which is impressive compared to a more usual 10-15 %. If you have your own site, after costs, you get to keep 100 % of the money. That's pretty hard to ignore.

It is not unusual for commentators to blame the industry for its own problems, some of which may have arisen from short-sightedness, or more likely recession-based cash flow problems.

But the sight of all those people staking out their ground and making their claims is nothing if not interesting.

In the gold rushes of history, people who came in a little too late often found the ground was all staked with claims, and so they would sell eggs for four dollars each—this was back in 1849—and some of them did a lot better than the people who just dropped everything and took off on the first available ship.

Preparation is the key to success. Also, a little editing can go a long way.

For that reason, we here at Shalako Publishing would like to reassure readers that our e-books will adhere to the highest literary standards, and will conform to the currently-accepted, standard e-book format.

We will sell no wine before its time. We are in the business of creating enduring works of art.

That sort of thing absolutely cannot be rushed.

-louis