Nearly six months ago, I decided to publish my first novel. It was an intimidating step to take, not knowing what the response would be like. I chose to publish with Amazon's CreateSpace and Kindle Direct platforms, because I suspected that Amazon would give me the largest distribution. Even though I priced my paperback and Kindle versions as low as I could, ($8.99 and $1.99 respectively), almost all of my "sales" have been from Kindle downloads.... during a free 5-day promotion. In that period of time, a handful of paperbacks have sold, and there have been about 150 Kindle downloads. Four reviews on Amazon.com have done little to tell me whether the book is completely awesome, whether it's absolute rubbish, or whether it's so-so. Without much in the way of feedback, I have decided to make the book permanently free, and discovered Smashwords to be an excellent way to do just that. Smashwords allows me to price my e-book at $0.00, and then does the most amazing thing imaginable by pushing the book out to an incredible distribution channel, including Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iTunes, and more. And users of these other services can now download The Orthogonal Galaxy for free!
And apparently, free may have been the way to go, because my total download count in just three days on Smashwords eclipsed Amazon's number over the last six months combined! It turns out that Amazon's price-matching feature can be used to now lower my official Kindle price from $1.99 to $0.00 as well. Here's how you can help me do that:
1) Point your web browser to the B&N listing.
2) Copy the link from your URL address bar
3) Head over to my Amazon listing and look for "Tell us about a lower price"
4) In the form, click on "Website", paste the link from #2 above, and enter $0.00 for both the price and the shipping cost.
It will be interesting to see if making the novel available for free actually increases the number of people who read and review my book as opposed to those who just download it... simply because it's free! But, over the next six months, I'll be curious to see if enough reviews come in to let me know whether my writing really is "Boring, Unprofessional and Insulting" or if readers really are "looking forward to book 2."
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Looking Forward to 2015
This time of the year, everyone is setting goals. Some are resolving to lose weight. Others are bracing themselves to kick bad habits. Some may be planning on spending more time with family, engaging more in their hobbies and talents, or maybe even reading more books. After having published my first book, I am planning on ramping up my writing this year, just in case someone actually enjoys "The Orthogonal Galaxy" and wants to read more of the series. As a result, I have planned on publishing two works this year.
The first, titled "The Midas Project", will be a novelette of about 70 pages. Effectively a prequel to the Galaxy Series, it is set in an earlier time than "The Orthogonal Galaxy". While it is elaborates on an element of book 1 and has clear elements of science fiction in through futuristic inventions, it is more properly classified as detective fiction.
A second project for the year will be book 2 in the Galaxy Series, which is still an untitled work. It will return to the science fiction roots of the series and will pick up where Book 1 leaves off. A significant plot thread is already written down, but I have at least two other threads to weave through the story which are in early outline form at this point.
Happy New Year!
The first, titled "The Midas Project", will be a novelette of about 70 pages. Effectively a prequel to the Galaxy Series, it is set in an earlier time than "The Orthogonal Galaxy". While it is elaborates on an element of book 1 and has clear elements of science fiction in through futuristic inventions, it is more properly classified as detective fiction.
A second project for the year will be book 2 in the Galaxy Series, which is still an untitled work. It will return to the science fiction roots of the series and will pick up where Book 1 leaves off. A significant plot thread is already written down, but I have at least two other threads to weave through the story which are in early outline form at this point.
Happy New Year!
Kindle Downloads
I have chosen to use the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select service, since it allows me to promote my book through free downloads once every 90 days. My first free book promotion period of five days ended yesterday. There were a total of 143 Kindle Downloads during the period. Interestingly, there was a huge initial spike of downloads on the first day, which dropped off precipitously on day two. After the New Year however, the download count went back up. (Perhaps some folks have a resolution to read more during 2015?)
Anyway, I'm hopeful that I'll get some honest feedback on Amazon and Goodreads to help me hone my writing skills.
Anyway, I'm hopeful that I'll get some honest feedback on Amazon and Goodreads to help me hone my writing skills.
Saturday, November 29, 2014
PUBLISHED: The Orthogonal Galaxy (Galaxy Series, #1)
So, I found it much harder than I thought it would be to push the big "Send" button on CreateSpace for my very first novel. Did I edit sufficiently? What will people think of the story? Is my writing style as bad as I fear it is? Will my characters be likeable or forgettable?
Throwing "The Orthogonal Galaxy" out there for anyone to read is pretty scary, but in the end, I had to remind myself that I didn't do this to get the acclaim of sci-fi readers. The process of writing a novel, enjoying the flow of creativity, and learning tons about astronomy and quantum physics was worth the effort even if the book never got published. The publishing is mainly an opportunity to get the book onto my bookshelf at home, and allow family and friends the opportunity to see my writing hobby for themselves as well.
On this page, I've included links to both Amazon.com, where the book can be acquired in paperback or Kindle versions, and to the Goodreads entry for the book, where any soul brave enough to read a new author's first novel can rate the effort anywhere from 0 to 5 stars, and provide a review that would certainly help me improve in the craft as I venture into the next book of the series.
Throwing "The Orthogonal Galaxy" out there for anyone to read is pretty scary, but in the end, I had to remind myself that I didn't do this to get the acclaim of sci-fi readers. The process of writing a novel, enjoying the flow of creativity, and learning tons about astronomy and quantum physics was worth the effort even if the book never got published. The publishing is mainly an opportunity to get the book onto my bookshelf at home, and allow family and friends the opportunity to see my writing hobby for themselves as well.
On this page, I've included links to both Amazon.com, where the book can be acquired in paperback or Kindle versions, and to the Goodreads entry for the book, where any soul brave enough to read a new author's first novel can rate the effort anywhere from 0 to 5 stars, and provide a review that would certainly help me improve in the craft as I venture into the next book of the series.
Friday, November 28, 2014
CreateSpace
I've decided to publish The Orthogonal Galaxy on CreateSpace, which is Amazon.com's self-publishing subsidiary. CreateSpace has reasonable publishing rates, and a nice wizard that walks you through the complete publishing process. Here are the steps I took to get my first novel published:
1) Write the Book... the most obvious step.
2) Edit the Book. My wife, Suzanne, and I read through it multiple times, and continued to find issues every time. Wanting to keep the costs low, we decided to do this ourselves instead of hiring a professional editor. Hopefully, we caught all of the major typos, grammatical errors, phrasing confusion, and plot inconsistencies to prevent distractions in the final work, but as Suzanne points out, she finds errors even from mainstream publishers who use professional staff editors to ensure a high quality product.
3) Select a Self-Publisher. After much research, I decided on CreateSpace (CS) for its simplicity, low costs, and ease of use. CS doesn't print hard-cover books, so if you're fine with paperback production, CS works great! It also uses Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) if you want your work in eBook media as well.
4) Create a Cover. This was something I just was NOT going to do myself. While it's true that you can't judge a book by its cover, let's face it. If someone browsing on Amazon.com comes across a book with an obviously low-quality cover, they're going to wonder whether the same quality exists on the pages of the book as well. However, I wasn't willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a freelance graphic artist to do the job either. After researching the subject online, I found fiverr, which is an online provider of services costing as little as $5.00. While there are a plethora of graphic artists to choose from on the website, I chose to employ the services of PixelStudio, and splurged for a couple of add-ons that lightened my wallet by $15.75. A very reasonable price for the following professionally-produced book cover:
The package included a full front/back/spline design as well that looked great as well.
5) Format the Text. I found a Microsoft Word template in 6"x9" format that CS can publish to (CS can also do 5x8, but I chose a slightly larger format for a more substantial look and feel.) Here are the things I fussed over to get the interior looking clean and professional, with help from a lot of different blogs and sites that treat the subject of "MS Word Book Formatting":
a) Added front matter. (Title Page, Copyright Page, and Dedication)
b) Broke chapters into sections.
c) Centered chapter headings and page numbers.
d) Fully justified text.
e) Margins (including gutter space for binding).
It took me several times to iterate on the review process on CreateSpace, because every time I would submit a new Word document, I would spot some new problem in the interactive proof review tool.
6) Use the CreateSpace Wizard. CS walks you through the entire process, step by step, and doesn't allow you to jump ahead in the process. That's a good thing, because it ensures that you have all of the details you need early on, before getting too late in the flow only to realize you missed something important earlier.
Presently, I'm in the final stages of the review process, and hope to have The Orthogonal Galaxy published in the next couple of days.
1) Write the Book... the most obvious step.
2) Edit the Book. My wife, Suzanne, and I read through it multiple times, and continued to find issues every time. Wanting to keep the costs low, we decided to do this ourselves instead of hiring a professional editor. Hopefully, we caught all of the major typos, grammatical errors, phrasing confusion, and plot inconsistencies to prevent distractions in the final work, but as Suzanne points out, she finds errors even from mainstream publishers who use professional staff editors to ensure a high quality product.
3) Select a Self-Publisher. After much research, I decided on CreateSpace (CS) for its simplicity, low costs, and ease of use. CS doesn't print hard-cover books, so if you're fine with paperback production, CS works great! It also uses Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) if you want your work in eBook media as well.
4) Create a Cover. This was something I just was NOT going to do myself. While it's true that you can't judge a book by its cover, let's face it. If someone browsing on Amazon.com comes across a book with an obviously low-quality cover, they're going to wonder whether the same quality exists on the pages of the book as well. However, I wasn't willing to spend hundreds of dollars for a freelance graphic artist to do the job either. After researching the subject online, I found fiverr, which is an online provider of services costing as little as $5.00. While there are a plethora of graphic artists to choose from on the website, I chose to employ the services of PixelStudio, and splurged for a couple of add-ons that lightened my wallet by $15.75. A very reasonable price for the following professionally-produced book cover:
The package included a full front/back/spline design as well that looked great as well.
5) Format the Text. I found a Microsoft Word template in 6"x9" format that CS can publish to (CS can also do 5x8, but I chose a slightly larger format for a more substantial look and feel.) Here are the things I fussed over to get the interior looking clean and professional, with help from a lot of different blogs and sites that treat the subject of "MS Word Book Formatting":
a) Added front matter. (Title Page, Copyright Page, and Dedication)
b) Broke chapters into sections.
c) Centered chapter headings and page numbers.
d) Fully justified text.
e) Margins (including gutter space for binding).
It took me several times to iterate on the review process on CreateSpace, because every time I would submit a new Word document, I would spot some new problem in the interactive proof review tool.
6) Use the CreateSpace Wizard. CS walks you through the entire process, step by step, and doesn't allow you to jump ahead in the process. That's a good thing, because it ensures that you have all of the details you need early on, before getting too late in the flow only to realize you missed something important earlier.
Presently, I'm in the final stages of the review process, and hope to have The Orthogonal Galaxy published in the next couple of days.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
My Novel Beginning
Several years ago, I woke up from a very simple dream. An astronomy professor at the California Institute of Technology had just returned from a summer research appointment in Chile, where he has been working at an observatory high in the Andes looking for a parallel Earth in the Milky Way galaxy. He was having a brief conversation with an administrative assistant at the university, who had asked him how the summer research went....
.... and that was it. Nothing more, no additional details, no understanding on why I would have a dream like this. The simplicity of it, along with the setting was so starkly unremarkable, that I couldn't help but ask myself "why did that just happen in my head?!" The fact that it was so simple and so disconnected with anyone or anything in my life, made the whole thing seem so strange.
For the rest of the week, all of my free thinking time was consumed in the silliness of the dream. Ideas flooded into my head that continued to develop, until I recognized that a clear Science Fiction plot was forming. From the one simple seed I began writing an outline for a novel. But, wait... I don't write novels. I'm an engineer, not a writer! And while I love to read, I have no experience or training in writing novels. Nevertheless, I knew that this thing that was growing inside of my head just had to find its way onto paper.
As I began writing, more thoughts came to me, and I realized that I wasn't just writing a novel... I was writing the first book in a five-book series! After a few years, that first book was complete. I decided to self-publish, but as I started researching the process, I took a closer look at my book, and realized that I had over 800 pages (250,000 words!) of material. There was no way I was going to publish such a beast as a first novel. I mean, not even my family would read something that verbose. So, I spent the next couple of years reworking that one book into two, and reworked the first one even more after some feedback from my wife, Suzanne. After a final personal edit, I am now back to doing the research on self-publishing, and hope to publish "The Orthogonal Galaxy" soon, but there is still some work to do.
If you'd like to follow this journey with me, be sure to click the subscribe link below.
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