New Stuff: My 90-day exclusive with Amazon is going to be ending soon, but I still have 3 days left of free ebook promotion. Therefore, this Friday (the 8th) through Sunday (the 10th) both my books will be available for free, for anyone who hasn't picked up my books during the last couple of times I gave my books out for free.
After years (mostly on and off) of writing and editing, I’ve finally managed to scrounge up enough decent words that I’ve managed to string them together into sentences, paragraphs, and stories. Those stories are now packaged and e-published. Since I don’t want this topic to just be a shill (buy my books!) Let me talk about the processes involved in getting to this point and my thoughts.
First is, in my opinion, the easiest part of all: Come up with an idea. I think that everyone has at least one idea floating around their heads; something that they think would make a good story. Nowadays, for a book, that idea is all that you need – no longer are authors tied to the physical publishing giants if they want their ideas to become something real. Although traditional publishing is still alive and well, there is a big (and growing) market for electronic-only books. All I have to do is type the words on the computer and I can make a product, something that would have been impossible a few short decades ago.
Which brings us to the second part: Writing it down.This is where I’d guess (pulling a number out of my ass) 90% of the ideas that I just talked about die. Why do they die? Because actually sitting down and writing is hard. There are a million other things you could be doing other then writing, and virtually all of them offer a lot more short-term reward. It’s hours and hours of sitting in front of a screen, tapping on the keyboard, trying to turn those ideas into something concrete.
Part three: Editing.I’d wager this kills another segment of pieces: You’ve finally gotten all your thoughts down, hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands of words – now it's time to take those words and make sure that they actually form a coherent story. You’d think that once you’ve put in all that effort to actually write the thing, it should be easy to just make corrections, but it can be a harrowing process. Entire sections of your work might not gel the way that you’d originally intended and end up needing a rewrite, or worse - in the trash.
Part four: More editing (by other people this time.)In any work, I believe that there is a point when you simply can no longer see the faults. You know the story backwards and forwards; you know the motivations, the characters, the places, and the back story. Because of this, your eyes will just jump over faults that someone who is coming at the story cold would point out immediately. For example, perhaps what you thought was an obvious connection between Aggie and Bob turns out to need the knowledge that both Bob and Aggie went to school together, something that you knew (in your head,) but never actually put down in the story.
This part was, by far, the hardest for me, although perhaps not for the reasons you might think. Not because I was ashamed of my writing or afraid of feedback – it was because, unless you’re actually paying them to do it, it’s
really damn hard to get people to read your stuff and give you useful feedback. Oh, sure, your friends and family will take your story; they’ll promise to read it and get it back to you.
“I’d be happy to,” they’ll say, when you tell them that you’d really like their input so that you can publish. That’s right; they’ll look you right in the eye and lie to you. And worse, they’ll act indignant when you start pestering them after the second or third (or
twelfth) week. “No, I still haven’t gotten around to it; I’ll do it next week, promise.”
Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that we desperately need them, I’d tell you to leave them out entirely. However, despite reading through my own stories dozens of times, I’ve still managed to leave words out, mangle spellings (what, you mean it’s
bated breath, not
baited?) and various other corrections that improve my stories which I almost certainly wouldn’t have done on my own.
Part five: Final touches.You need everything in the correct formats, and make sure that everything looks good in that format. Getting chapter headings working can be a hassle – with one of my books, all I needed to do was DOC -> RTF -> MOBI through Calibre and everything pretty much just turned out right. My other book, however, didn’t format cleanly, and as a result I had to go from DOC -> RTF -> EPUB, edit the book through Sigil, and then move that to MOBI with Calibre.
Books need covers – especially e-books, since that cover is pretty much the only thing that most people will glimpse before deciding if they’re going to look any closer. Small things, but they can be time consuming. I spent a day working on the cover art for my two books, tweaking things to where I liked them, then getting some feedback from others (luckily, this feedback is easier, since you can pretty much just shove the picture in someone’s face, and they’ll be able to tell you immediately if they like it or not.) Take all advice with a grain of salt.
Part six: Publication.Actually getting your book into Amazon proved to be a fairly painless process, I’m relieved to say. Just upload all the bits, fill in some forms, set a price and wait for review.
Review times, for me, averaged a couple of hours, then there's a "publishing" window that takes another 6-10 hours. Congratulations! You’re now a published author! You can now obsessively hit the f5 key on your monthly sales report.
Note: I chose Amazon because if you agree to a 90-day exclusive with them, they'll give you perks, like the fact that Prime members can look at the books for free (which makes people that much more likely to actually, you know, download something.) After the 90 days pass I'll probably look into publishing on other platforms.
Finally, on to my books:
A novelette, titled
“Entangled Realities.” It’s a mix of high fantasy, science fiction and contemporary fiction. It’s roughly 10,000 words long, and is available for 99 cents (or free, if you’re an Amazon Prime member.)
A collection of short stories, titled
“Fire and Other Short Stories.” There are 16 pieces, which are mostly a mix of science fiction or fiction with fantastic elements. It weighs in at 28,000 words, and is available for $2.99 (or, again, free through Amazon Prime.)
You can also read the first couple of pages of both pieces without Prime, to see if my writing style agrees with you.
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Topic: On Writing (Read 2252 times)