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Tag Archives: Self-publishing

Frustrations with KDP Paperback…

09 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Oren Litwin in Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

kdp, Kindle, Self-publishing

UPDATE: And of course,  Amazon tech-support responded within hours of this post going up! It turns out that the problem was with their backend not working nicely with Apple’s PDF generator, Quartz. I had to re-export to PDF using Adobe’s PDF Pack service (at the low, low price of $9.99 for the month, grumble grumble), and then it worked fine. Today I learned…

———

Almost three weeks ago, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe was launched on the Kindle Store. The original plan was to offer the paperback edition along with the ebook; unfortunately, I’ve been running into some problems submitting the files to KDP, which persist until today.

For whatever reason, when I launch the Previewer tool in the title setup process, it hangs for several hours (!) and then tells me that there was an unknown error with the interior files. Amazon’s tech support, which is usually pretty responsive, has been quite slow with its responses this time.

Which is all very annoying. I know several people who prefer paperback books to electronic, and would love to get the anthology into their hands.  Many reviewers also require a hardcopy version, and won’t look at electronic files. Some indie writers stick to Kindle digital,  and given what we’re now going through I can certainly see why; but still, the lack of a paperback option is holding us back.

The PDF file I’ve been submitting is generated by Scrivener 2.  Publishers like Ingram Spark require more professional formatting, but at least in the old days of CreateSpace any old PDF would do. Does anybody know if that has changed? Amazon’s FAQs were rather vague.

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The Odds Are Against Us—An Anthology of Military Fiction

21 Tuesday Feb 2017

Posted by Oren Litwin in Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

anthology, edited anthology, fiction, Kickstarter, military fiction, publishing, request for submissions, Self-publishing, short stories, short story, short story anthology

Last month, I put out a request for submissions for an anthology of short military fiction. Now, the time has come. The first three authors have been selected, and the Kickstarter project is live!

We’re still accepting story submissions until April 1. The more money gets raised, the more that chosen authors will be paid, and the more stories we can publish. Join me to make this a reality!soldiers-2b

Audience-Driven Book Writing?

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by Oren Litwin in Writing

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

crowdfunding, Self-publishing, writing, writing contest

I’ve been fascinated for a while by the promise of crowdfunding campaigns to help democratize the world of writing and publishing. For example, many enterprising authors and editors have used Kickstarter to pre-sell their books, reducing the financial risk of self-publishing and possibly attracting a wider audience in the process. Thus, authors whose work might be too quirky for “traditional” publishers have the chance to make their own case to the global readership.

This might be a mere subspecies of the general category of self-publishing, except for one thing: the audience members are not just consumers of the final product, but in a real sense make that product possible in the first place. That changes the dynamic considerably, and it also suggests further possibilities.

If you are an author, you generally have three broad strategies to follow:

  1. Write your own unique masterpiece without regard to whether it will sell. Desperately try to attract the attention of publishers (or, if self-publishing, readers) after the fact.
  2. Formulaically copy whatever hot trend people are buying (sparkly vampires, werewolves, dystopian-cute young-adult, et cetera) and pitch it to a niche publisher (or if self-publishing, niche audience) after the fact.
  3. Weave together existing popular tropes, possibly across genres, to make something familiar yet new. Pitch it to an appreciative niche audience (or if you are lucky, a publisher), after the fact.

(Why do I say “after the fact”? Funny you should ask…)

On the other hand, if you are a reader, you generally have one basic strategy, with two variants:

  • Find an author who has already written something you like, and buy it.
  • Find an author who has already written something you like, and pre-order the next thing.

(Why do I say “already”? Funny you should ask…)

Readers are basically helpless to the whim of the authors; they can only buy what has already been written. Yet many authors are desperate to write things that readers will buy, without necessarily knowing what those will be or how to find out.

On a related point, for authors to be successful in the self-publishing business, they have to be sufficiently competent writers, and be exceptional marketers. If you hate marketing, your only alternative is to try and get a book deal with traditional publishers; and even then, much of the onus of marketing your book is on you. (Admittedly, you do avoid the technical work of laying out and printing the book, or paying someone else to do it.)

I think there is another possibility that crowdfunding has afforded us. Consider the following scenario:

Alice likes the idea of, say, werewolf romance novels in space, but can’t find any to read and does not want to write them herself. She does, however, want to bring “Werewolves in Space” into existence. So she launches a Kickstarter project to fund, not the publication of an already written book, but a Request for Proposal (or a writing contest, if you prefer) for a third-party author to write such a book to her specifications.

One can already pay writers directly to write books to order, on sites like Guru.com or Freelancer; but since in that case a single individual is paying the whole cost, such books are typically written cheaply and are of poor quality. Here, with a Kickstarter, Alice can find other werewolf-in-space fans who like her idea, and are willing to contribute their own money until the total prize is worthwhile for good authors to consider. If Alice manages to raise, say, $10,000, that might catch the attention of skilled author Bob Bodiceripper, who could then submit a proposal. If accepted, he would then write the exact book that Alice and her fellow werewolf fans wanted, but could never find.

Everybody wins. Fans can order the books they want to read, authors can write to known specifications, more books are written and paid for, and more authors get read. And this would not displace the existing channels for writing and selling books either; it would represent a true broadening of the market.

Yes, many fans might pay for embarrassing dreck. But they do that anyway, and letting readers directly influence the types of books that get written may well open the door to new and exciting possibilities that no one can imagine today.

The Princess, the Dragon, and the Baker: A Chanuka Fairy Tale

19 Monday Aug 2013

Posted by Oren Litwin in Self-Promotion, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

chanuka, Fairy tale, Fantasy, fiction, Hanukka, Judaism, new book, Self-publishing, short story

[What follows is the text of an illustrated children’s book, now available on Kindle and in hardback. The artwork from my artist collaborators is absolutely stunning! Check it out!]

Once, long ago in a faraway land, there was a wise princess who lived in a magical castle. The princess commanded a large fearsome dragon, who was strong enough to do all sorts of work that people needed. If the people needed fish, the princess would tell her dragon to carry a giant net to the ocean and fish there. If the people needed a new road, the princess would have her dragon melt rocks with his fiery breath and pave the road with them. And the people were happy, because their princess took care of them.

But the dragon was not happy. Not only was he doing all the work, but he was always hungry, because the princess wouldn’t let him eat people. Imagine you were a dragon, and you were surrounded by happy people all the time, and you couldn’t even eat one of them! So the dragon was very sore at the princess, and dreamed of a day when he could break free of her control.

At last, his chance came. The dragon used a powerful magic spell to send the princess into a deep sleep, and hid her away in her castle. Then he flew out into the land, and ate dozens of sheep and cattle and even a few people. And the people were afraid, because their princess was gone and could no longer take care of them, and because the dragon’s hunger was insatiable.

Many heroes ventured into the castle to save the princess, but none of them ever returned. The people lost hope that they would ever have their princess back. But one man had not lost hope. Yet he was no great warrior, but a simple baker named Chanoch. And he had a plan.

One day, Chanoch came up the road to the castle, carrying a big heavy backpack, and cautiously crept inside. He found the main hall covered by thick darkness; he couldn’t even see the great throne where the princess sat, but he knew in his heart that she was there. Looking around the edges of the darkness, he saw four great oil lamps on the left side of the room, and four more on the right.

“If I light those,” he said, “I’ll be able to see the princess. Maybe then I’ll know what to do.”

But scarcely had he taken out his flint and tinder to light a torch, when the room rumbled as the dragon swooped down from the roof and landed on the floor with a thud. “Oh no you don’t!” he cried with a mighty roar. “I suffer a terrible hunger, and the princess would never let me satisfy it. So as long as the hunger remains, the princess will stay my prisoner!”

Oddly enough, this was just what Chanoch had expected. “Good sir dragon,” he said kindly, “of course I don’t want you to go hungry. But have you ever tried eating something other than people?”

The dragon paused and cocked his head. Normally, the heroes just went straight to the stabby stabby, and then he ate them. Chanoch’s politeness was unusual. “Well,” he said, “the princess fed me nothing but lettuce and tofu. It was all so bland. I needed something more. I needed to eat people!”

“I can understand that,” Chanoch said. “But what if there were a food that was better than people?”

“Like what?” the dragon asked, curious.

For answer, Chanoch took out mixing bowls, a frying pan, and ingredients from his backpack: flour, water, sugar, eggs, and oil. He mixed dough, formed it into round balls, and put them into the pan with a little bit of oil. “Could you do the honors?” he said to the dragon.

The dragon was skeptical, but he breathed a short puff of fire onto the pan, frying the dough balls in the oil. Chanoch nodded in satisfaction and held one of the dough balls out to the dragon.

“What is it?” the dragon asked.

“It’s called a donut,” Chanoch replied.

“Hmm,” the dragon said. He snaked out his big head and snagged the donut with his long thin tongue, chomping on it with his giant pointy teeth. “Not bad,” he said, surprised. “Nice and soft on the outside, and sweet and chewy on the inside. Kind of like people.” But he hesitated. “It’s still not as good as really eating people,” he said. “There’s something missing.”

“Tell me,” Chanoch said, “and I’ll try to fix it.”

“Well,” the dragon said, concentrating on the taste, “when I eat people there’s a gooeyness to it. The donut is too dry on the inside.”

Chanoch smiled. “Easy enough.” He took out a jar of strawberry jelly and a large syringe. Sticking the syringe into the center of a new donut, he squirted jelly inside, and sealed the hole with a little dough. He held it out to the dragon. “Try it now,” he said.

The dragon ate the jelly donut, chewing slowly, little globs of jelly dripping onto his scaly lip until he licked them up. “Hey, this is good,” he said. “Even better than before.” But still he hesitated. “It’s close, but it’s still not quite the same.”

“Well, you’re right about that,” Chanoch agreed. “Fried donuts aren’t people, even if you put jelly in them. But I’ll tell you how you can make them even better than people.”

“Better? Really?” The dragon blinked his great shining eyes.

“All you have to do,” Chanoch said, “is say ‘thank you’ before you eat them.”

The dragon laughed, smoke trailing from his mouth. “That’s silly! How could saying ‘thank you’ make food taste better?”

Chanoch smiled. “Because saying thank you shows that you appreciate the food. Here, try it.” He held out another jelly donut.

“I still think it’s silly,” the dragon said, “but all right.” He snaked his head forward again, but before grabbing the donut, he said, “Thank you for this donut.” Then he chewed and swallowed. As he did, the dragon’s face glowed with delight. “Wow!” he said. “You were right! This is so much better than people.”

“So does that mean you’ll free the princess?” Chanoch said.

The dragon licked his lips, fidgeting. “Do you think the princess will let me eat these jelly donuts? Or will she make me go back to tofu?”

“If you say thank you for them, I’m sure the princess won’t mind,” Chanoch said. “And I promise you’ll get all the jelly donuts you need.”

“All right then,” the dragon said. “I sealed the princess with a word of power. When you light the lamps, you’ll be able to read it. Just speak it aloud, and she’ll wake up.”

So Chanoch lit the eight lamps, and their light drove away the darkness in the throne room. Just as he knew she would be, the princess was seated on her throne, fast asleep. Hovering in front of her was a glowing word, written in the air. Chanoch spoke it aloud, and it dissolved. The princess woke up.

“Sufgan!” she said. “You’ve been a very naughty dragon!”

“I know,” the dragon said sheepishly. “But it’s okay now, because Chanoch is going to give me jelly donuts to eat instead of people.”

“That sounds better, Sufgan,” the princess said. “Just as long as you’re sorry, and you never do it again.”

So everyone was happy. The princess was awake again and could take care of the people once more. This time Sufgan the dragon got to eat jelly donuts, so he didn’t mind working. And he always said thank you to Chanoch.

The people were glad that their princess had been returned to them, so much so that they made a holiday in Chanoch’s honor, which they called Chanuka. They even forgave Sufgan the dragon, and called his jelly donuts Sufganiot. Even today, we eat sufganiot on Chanuka to commemorate when the princess and the dragon started working together again.

So now, dear readers, have a happy Chanuka. And remember that when your own dragon get hungry, it’s better to eat jelly donuts than to eat people. And don’t forget to say thank you!

[If you liked the story, check it out in lavishly illustrated Kindle or hardback!]

My First Kindle E-Book is Submitted

26 Friday Apr 2013

Posted by Oren Litwin in Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

congress, crowdfunding, government, gun control, gun rights, Guns, NaNoWriMo, national novel writing month, politics, prison reform, Self-publishing, writing

Minutes ago, I just pushed the magic button.

Yes, it’s not that impressive. Anyone can publish anything on Kindle, no matter how bad the prose is or the plot is, and most self-published books die in obscurity.

But still.

I am now selling my writing to the entire world. That’s a strange feeling. An awesome feeling. I am so grateful for the modern world we live in and all that it allows us to do.

From here, everything depends on marketing (however you wish to define that). The writing was only the first step. To actually succeed at selling my work, I need to let people know it exists. And there will be plenty of time for that in the next few weeks.

And if you want to know when The Best Congress Money Can Buy is available for purchase, please subscribe to this blog and you’ll find out soon!

But for now, while Amazon is chugging away at its internal review and my listing is not yet propagated to the website, I can sit back and savor it.

This is really happening. I wrote something that will soon go live on Amazon.com.

It’s an incredible thing.

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