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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publishers Anonymous: my name is John.

Louis Shalako

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

My name is John, and I have a problem.

I am a binge publisher.

It began innocently enough.

I was a social publisher at first. That’s how it starts. At parties, maybe once or twice a year, with a few friends.

It’s insidious. It’s seductive. You get sucked in over time.

You, know, where we’d sit around in our friend’s basement apartment, with their parents thumping around up above, and experimenting with words, and poems, and writing stuff, and ultimately, yes: publishing.

Even now, I don’t consider myself a publishaholic. There may be some level of denial there, but the truth is that I have a problem and that’s why I’m here tonight.

Every so often, it’s like I just can’t stand it any more. It’s like I’ve been on the wagon long enough and it’s time to dive overboard and wallow in it.

My habit.

The monkey on this old back, ladies and gentlemen.

And I’m tired, and I want to go home.

As if you could ever really go back there again, eh?

Oh, yeah, eh. This time I’ve got a whole shit-load of stuff. The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue was published exclusively on Kindle Select Program. After ninety days, I get her back. Then she must be published on Smashwords, OmniLit, Google Books and Google Play, and then it will go into all of those distribution channels. That one is already published in 4 x 7” and 5 x 8” in Createspace and Lulu paperbacks, which doesn’t conflict with the terms of Kindle Select.

My new mystery novel, The Architect of His Own Destruction, will be done in the next few days. I’m not going with Kindle Select on that one. I want the book in all stores, using all distribution platforms, by Christmas. There is some time lag when using Smashwords, and it takes time to filter through. They don’t have real time automatic shipping and distribution as there is an internal human review process. Simply put, they ship on Thursdays, and you need to have it in and vetted on time. The stores at the other end have their own internal time lags.

It's my bag, ladies and gentlemen. It's what I do.

Between the five pen-names I have, there are six more books published either exclusively on Kindle (without actually being enrolled in Select) or coming out of Select in the next two or three months. What that means is that I get to publish six books over all of those other stores/platforms. The most time-consuming is OmniLit, where they don’t have a grinder-process, and you have to upload multiple file formats…sorry, I forgot myself for a moment there.

It was getting so bad, I had to make a list. Seriously.

I just published a couple of horror short stories, and knowing me, it’s like I’m fricking rummaging around in drawers and closets, trying to see if I got something worth selling. I’m wracking my brains trying to remember somebody, anybody that might owe me money. Where can I borrow seven or eight bucks for a marketing image? Who can I talk into giving me a lift to take them beer empties back? Do I have few rolls of nickels or even pennies in the back of a drawer?

Never know, might as well have a look.

'Cause I know damn well there's more stuff I could publish.

There has to be. It didn't all just dry up and blow away now, did it?

Right?

That’s just how it is, sometimes, ladies and gentlemen. You’re desperate, and you’ll do almost anything short of looking for work in order to get a fix…you know what I’m talking about.

You been there too.

Right?

So that’s why I came out this evening.

Maybe some kind of twelve-step program can help me. I mean, seriously, when I first started out, a couple of books, a story or two a year were enough to keep me going. But it’s getting bad lately, it really is. There’s never enough to satisfy me any more, and it’s like a real bad craving.

It’s all you think about from the time you wake up in the morning to the time you go to bed. You see it in your dreams…and you drool just a little bit.

I don’t know, ladies and gentlemen. I might have waited too long and left it too late.

The odds are that I am incorrigible, and that no matter how hard I try, I can never be saved.

Which is kind of sad, when you think about it.

END

Publishing System Revamp; Tooth-to-Tail Ratio.

The old front matter.

Louis Shalako

“Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone.” > Ayn Rand.

***

Here at Shalako Publishing and Long Cool One Books we’re sixteen days into a massive revamp of our publishing system.

While many of the changes are behind the scenes or otherwise invisible to readers, (metadata or changes in formatting for example), there are a number of new cover images and we have refreshed or otherwise breathed new life into half a dozen older ones. We’ve punched up the blurbs a bit and just tried to think things through with the clarity of twenty-twenty hindsight.

Not always a pleasant experience, but sometimes a good thing to do.

Setting aside an entire month might have seemed excessive to begin with, but that might turn out to be simple wisdom.

<A brief report ensues.>

We found two or three missing titles on Amazon, we found half a dozen missing titles on OmniLit, and probably the same number on Google Books. We even found one or two that had never been published on Smashwords.

Simply by trying to get the maximum number of titles up on (or in) the maximum number of stores, we’ve probably added a few horsepower to our publishing machine.

Thinking in terms of passive discoverability, the more titles in more places means, theoretically at least, more sales.

This whole rebuild is geared to passive discoverability.

It’s massive-passive, a phrase I just coined.

New front matter with internal navigation.

We have upgraded and enhanced the front matter in all titles. It’s nicer-looking, it’s easier to read. It’s a better product. We have upgraded virtually all cover images, although there are one or two that I for one would like to find a better image for.

Until that happens, we’re stuck with the one we got.

In terms of front matter, I was frankly shocked when looking at something I had personally formatted back in 2010 when the world was still young and I was just setting out.

The new layout is much better.

The strange thing was, the book probably made it into the Smashwords Premium Distribution Catalogue and consequently, that would be why I never thought about it again.

But it’s a good idea to schedule another rebuild, or at least another quality control audit, for sometime in the future.

After working at this for a solid month, I reckon it will be time to move on.

We went over the blogs and the websites to ensure that all images are current. Moreover, we took another look at the buy links. If a platform isn’t a big seller, love or loyalty should not be enough to induce us to link to them all the time.

In terms of passive discoverability, it makes more sense to lead readers to an iTunes as opposed to someplace where I might have sold three books in the last twelve months. Let’s say I’m only selling three books a month on iTunes. A good point, but why not try to make it four a month, as opposed to four a year?

Bear in mind that you’re sending the exact same amount of traffic to either store…why not make it a more effective store?

All of this is cumulative over time. It builds on itself, (or at least it’s supposed to, and it seems like it is sometimes) but all of that was being hampered by unprofessional presentation.

What the hell, eh? There is a learning curve to everything, and I did not come from any sort of literary or publishing background. It was all learned the hard way, from the ground up.

Looking back, I guess that kind of shows, especially in the early works.

I have no real regrets about that, ladies and gentlemen.

I just wanted to see how it worked or something. But if it really is a machine, then there is nothing that I can’t learn about it or understand about it.

It doesn’t work by magic after all.

I guess that’s one good reason to take it all apart.

When I put it all back together, it will run better and be a little more efficient.

***

A customer that follows a link to your book on any given store is more likely to be presented with one of your books in the future. The customer is more likely to have an account, and to buy books, on the bigger and more famous platforms.

Those bigger platforms have more browsing customers who might see the ‘the last customer who looked at this book also looked at this book’ and (insert your name here) comes up as a suggestion. I even found a link on my website leading to the now-defunct Sony Ereader store.

That’s simply unnecessary, and useless to a prospective reader.

The point is that iTunes has a zillion times the traffic compared to some other outlets.

The even bigger point is that one or two of my books had never sold a copy, for example on Amazon. When I looked at them this time around in the previewer, the font size in them was like thirty-six point. It should be twelve, and they had the old front matter as well. It probably looked fine on Smashwords when I downloaded epub and Kindle versions, and so I just loaded it up on Amazon. But there would be a reason why that book never sold. Any customer who previewed it would just move on.

Passive discoverability doesn’t work for a badly-formatted book, or one with a bad cover. Giving away large numbers of bad books doesn’t help much either.

Also, there were issues with the tags, and the categories, in fact one book had no tags at all entered on Amazon.

One title had the last letter left off the author’s name…the list goes on. Some were listed with the author as publisher, some said Shalako Publishing and others said Long Cool One Books…

The list goes on.

If it takes another fifteen days to finish all this, that is an investment of time and effort that might have a surprisingly long tooth-to-tail ratio.

There's something to be said for peace of mind as well.

We can only speculate as to tooth-to-tail ratio.

Because I got to be honest about one thing, all of the little screw-ups undoubtedly had a long tooth-to-tail ratio in the negative sense..I mean, really long.

Also on the list for this revamp would be getting fourteen or so titles on Createspace into the last free distribution channel and out into the big catalogues. There’s some time involved there.

Also, wouldn’t it be nice to clean up some of these folders on the old PC. I could get rid of a bajillion duplicate files and make things easier to find. Also, when you do make a correction or revision, it would sure be nice to be able to quickly pick the most recent one to work on…rather than something from four years ago. I know I’ve made that blunder somewhere along the way.

Other than that, writing a quick little blog post sure was a nice break from what could be sheer misery if one was in the wrong frame of mind about it.

So far we’re doing fair to middlin’ with the mental challenges.

Yup. As it is, I have ‘thorough’ inked with a ball-point on the back of my left hand, and ‘patience’ on the back of my right.

What’s kind of interesting is that I started off as just some guy who wanted to learn how to write.

All of this other stuff is the result of setting off down that trail over thirty years ago, if you can believe it.

***

So what does all this have to do with Ayn Rand?

Not much, I guess.

Sorry about that.

***

I suppose that’s almost too much information, and that will have to do for now anyways, ladies and gentlemen.

End

P.S.:

Here is my Author Spotlight on Lulu, where clearly Redemption needs a new cover and my original Case of the Curious Killers 4 x 7" POD is looking tired as well. I can't publish Heaven Is Too Far Away because it's 966 pages and the limit for a 4 x 7" POD on Lulu is 740 as I recall.

That involved resizing 5 x 8" POD files and using a resized .jpg. Simple enough, but finding the files took some time.

Word Count: You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do

"You gotta do what you gotta do, Baby."

by Louis Shalako

Word count is important because it shows whether you are working or not.

I like having ideas. When I get an idea, I write the story.

***

So how do you create a word count, big or small, for better or worse?

Allow me a bit of a brag.

So far in 2014 I have written eight stories and I have another 2,000 down on the next one. It’s only January fifteenth.

Those eight stories are at least 25,000 words and probably more. One of the stories was 4,300 words, and the shortest was still about 1,650. I’m writing science-fiction, erotic romance and even a spooky adventure snuck in there.

I’ve got two more story ideas. I create the file, name it and leave it on my desk-top. When I get a story done I submit it, (or post it on my blog) and at some point I stick it in a folder. I don’t always submit them right away. Right now I have three or four un-submitted stories, which have never appeared anywhere before. I don’t quite know what to do with them.

I’ve got four new ones under submission plus a handful of previous stories under review by pro, semi-pro or at least ‘pay’ markets.

In the past, I have sold the odd story.

I make no other claims.

Every so often I do give one away, for exposure. If nothing else, I can tweet about it, and post it on Facebook.

The story I am working on now will be worked on tomorrow. I reckon I can finish it up tomorrow. Why not? And then there are the next two stories. Got nothing better to do…

What I need more than anything is ideas.

When I run out of ideas, there are plenty of administrative things to do, but nothing is as satisfying as actually working with a story from beginning to end.

That’s what really does it for me.

I guess that’s why I’m here.

***

So in other words we work at it. It really is that simple.

We make the time. The actual writing is probably only good for two to four hours a day.

I have written two blog posts, (now three) one of which has been published, (now two) although the other needs a bit of work.  That one’s about Control.

I have formatted a new 5,000 word story for publication, complete with front and end matter, designed a book cover (marketing image) for it, got an ISBN number, written the blurb, etc.

In order to get the marketing image, I had to shop for it and then make ‘the cover’ using a simple paint program.

For the last little while, I’ve been uploading books to Google Play and Google Books. I do one or two a day as time permits.

One of my pen-names has a nice story coming out very soon. It will be published to Smashwords and all of their distribution channels, Kindle and OmniLit. Uploading a book can take ten or fifteen minutes. Everything takes a certain amount of time.

Other than that, I try to keep busy.

That’s how I get my word count.

I wouldn’t say it was easy,

I wouldn’t say it was hard.

You gotta do what you gotta do.

END

The Proliferation of Independent Publishing Platforms.

5 x 8" Createspace POD needs title moved to the right.

by Louis Shalako

The number of publishing platforms continues to proliferate, even since I last researched this story under another pen-name. More on that in a minute.

A while back I signed up for Kobo Writing Life. I have only a couple of ebooks there. I’ve never really promoted it and probably haven’t sold a single book. 

It’s an experiment, and those books are also on Amazon. Those books I promote in some small ways. I can compare results of promotion versus non-promotion, also there is the theory of having your books in as many bookstores as possible. This works online as well as in the real world.

I also signed up for OmniLit a while back. I couldn’t get in past the section where you put your Canadian and U.S. tax ID, mostly because my Microsoft Internet Explorer browser simply wouldn’t do it properly. Google Chrome seems to have fixed that, and I’m all signed up. All I have to do is to click on the confirmation email and begin learning the system. That’s under a new publisher name, so what book or books I will actually load up there is still a mystery.

But it might be worthwhile to see what I have in romance or erotica, whatever categories they have over there. I can publish all five authors under the new publisher name—that’s using your head and thinking ahead.

Now, if you’re publishing on Smashwords and Kobo, you can unclick the Kobo distribution channel on your Smashwords dashboard, or you end up with a conflict, a double entry on your one author page.

Smashwords was recently named the number one ebook distributor in the world or something like that.

Pretty much everybody knows all about Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.

So if you sign up with some platform that has or is acquiring access to a distribution system, making deals with iBooks, Nook, Kobo, Sony, etc, then you have to decide if you even want to put up a book on different platforms. If you can get your book into a lot of channels, putting up a book in a unique new platform is still a good idea, the question is can you keep the book out of streams where it already exists. 

The platform might still represent one new, stand-alone store.

If nothing else, you can still get your books in that one new store—it’s a question of putting in the time.

Some of these new platforms have an upfront cost, $99.00 looks about standard for the low-level service.

As far as formatting goes, typing in metadata, handling the upload etc, that’s probably a fair price if you can’t do it yourself, have no idea what that means and aren’t interested in learning it yourself. You might have a daytime job, right? In which case free publishing might not be your top priority, although it is one of mine.

That being said, there are some free services, although the two-week free trial (on any platform) is pointless from my point of view because it’s just a come-on and you’re never going to see any results in that amount of time anyway.

Tablo: $99.00 service.

BookTango: says here that it’s free. Royalty system.

EBookLit: converts from DOCX files, says it’s free.

BookBaby: $99.00

Vook: ebooks and PODs. Paid service.

PressBooks: various plans available, trial offer.

Draft2Digital: claims no up-front costs, no risk, royalty split based on price categories. See, this one I might check out later.

Kobo Writing Life: no results as of yet on my own experiment, but it was easy enough to use and I do have books published separately from Amazon and Smashwords there.

ReadMill: claims you can interact with readers right in the margins of your book. (Now closed. -- ed.)

WidBook: another site where you can write onsite, totally mobile from anywhere in the world, and interact with readers, build or find an audience, etc.

Rhovit: looks like about ten bucks a month. Distribution platform for books, comics, film, etc.

Libboo: claims to use audience measurement algorithms to help authors ‘tune’ their works.

Authorgraph: allows personalized messages in ebooks, signed copies, etc.

Lelivro: another publishing platform, this is the author landing page.

WattPad: you can write directly on WattPad, click on folks who might follow you back and read your stories. I upload the first two chapters of books as excerpts, and I usually get quite a few reads, which is useful information to an author.

EBookPartnership: has a pricing page.

Nook Press: free to use, books appear in the Nook Store.

iTunes: sell your content. Since they have a Canadian store or a foreign platform, you might be able to avoid the withholding tax. I haven’t checked this one out yet.

Sony Publisher Portal: publish direct through Sony system.

Infiniti: publish in hardcover and ebooks. Ebooks $349.00.

With careful key-word search, you can find dozens of soft and hardcover print on demand book publishers, some of whom are or soon will be offering ebook conversions. The proliferation of platforms in this market is undeniable.

VistaPrint: calendars. POD.

How to sell ebooks on eBay.

There are places to publish your photographs, art prints, CDs, books and films, (for example on Createspace.) Other free POD places include Lulu, and there are dozens of others, most of which are on a paid service basis.

Before I publish anything on any platform, I want to know if they have provision for Canadian or overseas authors to avoid paying the standard U.S. withholding tax of 30 percent. (That's why I'm not on Nook Press.) Can I publish for free? How do I get paid? Do I control my prices? (On Kobo the minimum price is $1.99 and you can’t set it to free.) Are there additional distribution channels and should I take advantage of them, if they are free and if they go places I’m not already represented on? How does everything actually work?

Bearing in mind I have five pen-names, a load of titles and more coming, the time consideration comes into play—how much time is this going to take, and is there any real chance of some rational payment?

It’s only a matter of time before there are more free publishing platforms, ones with good services and good business plans, with multiple distribution channels and access to some new stores that I haven’t even heard of yet.

We’ll keep our ears out and see what we can pick up.

 END