Deadline is today

There's still time to enter the Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers Yearling Contest for a first young adult novel. But be advised, there's not much time left. Your entry must be postmarked by midnight tonight, December 31, 2010. If you'd like to enter it, here's the LINK with all the scoop.

Good luck!

The 2011 Kindle Giveaway

As you may know, I have published an eBook on Amazon and, more recently, also uploaded it to Smashwords. It's selling a few copies so far. Nothing great. But I'm quite appreciative to those who ponied up the 99 cents for a copy. And I'm also grateful to the trio who took the time to write a review.

When I woke up this morning an idea popped into my head. (No, not to stop by IHOP before going to work, although that doesn't sound like a bad idea right now.) It was a different idea, and one that I thought might be beneficial in getting more copies of my book out there and more reviews.

I decided to give away a brand new Kindle. Wow! What a great idea, I thought. And I figured I could select the winner from a random drawing from reviews on my book. It seemed like a really good idea. However, I got to thinking that in order for anyone to write a review on my book, they would have to purchase it. That didn't seem right, even though the price was only 99 cents. (Amazon won't let me price it for free.) So, I'm going back to the drawing board and trying to come up with another idea that would get a Kindle into the mix and help add some reviews to my Amazon listing.

If you have any ideas, let me know.

Smashwords

I spent a little time this evening uploading Scary Night Music to Smashwords. I decided to add them to the distribution channels because they add some value to the distribution chain. Amazon only converts your book to the .mobi format which is what their Kindle reader uses. Smashwords takes it a few steps further and converts to .mobi as well as the required formats for the iPad, the Sony reader and the Nook, as well as most other eReaders on the market today. They also distribute the eBook to Apple iBooks, Amazon, and Barnes&Noble. So i seemed like a good option since it was free and they even furnished an ISBN at no charge.

It required a little digital manipulation of the file formatting, but it wasn't too time consuming. If you'd like to take a look at the page they furnish, HERE it is. If you'd like to add Smashwords to your potential distribution list for eBooks, it's relatively painless. If you have any questions I can help with, let me know.

Formatting Your Kindle eBook

Many writers are publishing their work as eBooks today as well as POD books. Self-publishing is becoming a popular option as publishers and agents become ever more selective in the works they agree to represent and publish. It's what's happening today, and it's likely to continue for some time.

If you’re planning on publishing your novel or nonfiction How-To-Book as an eBook and selling it through Amazon, here’s a brief primer on some very basic things you need to know in order to give the published eBook the professional appearance it needs to have. This is not an advanced narrative on .html coding, but just a few pointers that most beginners need to know. If nothing else, it will provide you a good starting point for avoiding most of the common problems.

The following information is written with the presumption that you’re using Microsoft Word as your text editor. If you’re using something else, you’ll have to translate these instructions into the language of that software. So let’s begin.

First of all, you don’t need to include a bunch of returns to get your curser down to the top of the next page when you have a new chapter starting. Instead, after the period in the final sentence of your chapter, hit one return. Then go to the top tool bar and select INSERT > BREAK > PAGE BREAK. That should force the chapter heading to the top of the following page when it’s viewed on an e-reader.

The next item, and one that a lot of authors have issue with, involves paragraph indents. If you’ve created your document using tabs for your indents, don’t remove them. You can format the document to create the indents you need. Following is the simplest and quickest way to accomplish this, but it’s going to involve a little clean up at the end.

STEP ONE: Go to EDIT > SELECT ALL. Obviously, that’s going to highlight everything in the document. But doing it this way is much faster than doing one paragraph at a time. Now that we have everything selected, we need to let the software know what we want it to do with the paragraph indents.

STEP TWO: Go to FORMAT > PARAGRAPH. This will open a new window with several options. You’ll need to specify the choices you want. The top item is ALIGNMENT. Make sure it’s set to LEFT. The next section is the indentation. The first window asks for a value. Don’t enter anything in this area. To the right of that box is a dropdown menu. Click the arrow and select FIRST LINE. When you do that, the default value that should pop up in the next window is .5”. That’s it. Just make certain you’ve addressed those four areas and Click OK.

At this point, you’ll need to go back through your document and adjust anything that shouldn’t be indented. Some of these areas might include chapter headings, copy that you want centered (which will still be centered, but it will be moved to the right of center by a half inch. You’ll also need to check your first and second pages, which typically contain the title, the copyright, the ISBN data, etc.

The next thing you’ll need to do is take check the indents. You may discover that some of your paragraphs are indented twice the amount you need. Word will typically ignore those tabs since you’ve formatted the paragraph, but sometimes it will lose its mind and give you a double indent. Just take them out if you see any.

Next comes page numbers. If you’ve inserted them, you need to remove them. Since the Kindle screen is a different size than an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, which is typically what most writers set their default page size at, you have no idea where the pages are going to break, so we don’t need a page number appearing in the middle of the screen. Just delete them. Also delete any headers or footers you’ve got on your Word document.

Finally, when you’re ready to save, save your file as a .doc document so you can modify it later if necessary. Also save it as an .htm file. And when you save it, check the box that says, “Save only display information into html.”

Upload your .htm file to Amazon. After uploading, take a moment to review the preview that it offers. If you see anything wrong, go back to the Word document and make adjustments. Or, if you really can’t figure it out, leave a comment below and I’m certain someone will be able to answer it. If not, there are a lot of experts on the internet who can provide answers to specific questions. If you want the whole scoop on Kindle Formatting, here's a great book that covers everything. (No, I didn't write it. Darn it.)

Illustrate your own book

In addition to being a writer, I'm also an artist. And I don't want artists or illustrators who read this post to think I'm trying to encourage others to bypass their services. Not at all. But if you're a writer and you're on a tight budget for production, here's an option that might fit the bill until you can afford to enlist the help of a professional illustrator. Take a look at this:

The image on the left is a a sketch I created from a photograph of my granddaughter. You might notice the resemblance to the girl on the cover of Scary Night Music. (Coincidence? Not hardly.) You can click that link to see an actual photo of the cover model and check the resemblance.

This software is from a company called Akvis. They have a complete line of art and photo manipulation software. The software I used for this example can be downloaded for free (trial version) for either Mac or PC platform.

There are a lot of variables you can change that will allow you to create the type of illustrations you're wanting to put into your published book.

Now that I've experimented with it, I need to do some more photos for the interior pages and then transform them into line drawings. After that, I'll need to import them into the Word document and upload them to Amazon again. Whew. What a lot of work. And what a lot of fun.

Here's another example.

If you'd like to give it a try yourself, here's the LINK to the site where you can download it. Be creative and enjoy yourself with this one.

I'm also embedding a video from YouTube that has some basic instruction (which I should have watched PRIOR TO experimenting.) I'll embed that video at the bottom.

Meanwhile, if you've found another program that works for you, let us know. Just leave a comment below.

Branding yourself and your product

We're going to stray from the beaten path and wander into a totally different area today. On this journey, we're going to discuss something we haven't talked about before:

Marketing yourself and your products.

Obviously, marketing is a huge subject and way too large to cover in one session. So, we're going to drill down a little and pick out one particular area of interest to discuss, i.e., branding.

Is it important to brand yourself or your products? That's like asking if it's important to have a period at the end of a sentence. Everything you do in your marketing program should be related to the image you're trying to create. But before doing anything, and perhaps having to undo it later, you need to decide what that image is, or will be.

The image you create may be centered around your main character (Harry Potter) or yourself as the creator of that character or work (Stephen King). Keep in mind that everything you do, every email, every Facebook post, every Tweet, every query, everything, is a reflection of your image or your brand. Keep in mind that, as your visibility grows, more and more people are watching and listening to what you say and do. Make sure your actions and words reflect the image you're trying to create.

When you begin thinking about creating your brand, there are three things you need to consider first in order to produce something that will be memorable. Image retention is a product of words and graphics. And repetition. If you decide to produce a logo, keep those things in mind, and use that visual image at every opportunity. We could do a very lengthy post here on image creation and how the words, letters, typeface, arrangement, color, etc., all play a part in the feeling or mood that image creates. But this isn't the place for that much information. At least not today.

Let's continue and define the three primary elements required to create a unique brand or image. These are not the visual elements involved, but the base elements and essential parts that need to be included in the initial creation stage.

HONEST: First, the image or brand you create must be honest. It must be aligned with your beliefs about who you are or who your characters are.

MEANINGFUL: The brand or vision you create for yourself or your work must be relevant to the targeted customer, the reader of your works. If not, they will have difficulty relating and sales will not be as high as they could be if you build a bridge to connect.

DIFFERENT: There must be something uncommon, something significantly different between your image and all the others that are out there competing for attention. In business this is sometimes referred to as the USP or the Unique Selling Proposition.

So there you have a basic narrative on branding. It isn't a high-tech or an in-depth study by any means. But it may be enough to get you started in the right direction. As always, if you'd like to leave a comment on the subject, please feel free to do so. I like knowing there's someone out there reading this.

Random House Contest

If you write for the young adult market, and if you're unpublished, here's a contest you may wish to enter. It's the Delacorte Press Contest for a First Young Adult Novel. I'm not certain how they're affiliated, but Random House is involved somehow in the mix.

I'm providing a LINK HERE to give you the details. You will have to submit your contest entry by snail mail, along with a SASE. (Remember the old days when we did it that way for every submission? If you're not old enough to remember that, we don't want to hear it.)

I will mention there's a $1,500 cash prize and a $7,500 advance against royalties. There is a maximum of two entries allowed. And, you only have until the end of the year to submit. You entry must be postmarked by December 31, 2010 to be eligible.

Bestseller List!

The Case of the Scary Night Music was uploaded yesterday to Amazon.com for distribution as an e-book. One reader found a typo and notified me, which I've fixed but haven't been able to upload the corrected file yet.

The book is currently on the Amazon Bestseller List. It's presently occupying the 37,174th place. That sounds pretty low on the list to me, so I'm sending out a shout out for help in getting it up a little higher. We don't have to shoot for the stratosphere or anything, but maybe get somewhere close to number 2? I'd even be happy with the number 3 position. I wish I could have made it a freebie, but Amazon wouldn't allow that. So, it's up to you.

If you have an e-book you've written and published, leave us a comment and a link to it. Also, tell us a little bit about the story, like the readers it's aimed at.

UPDATE! IT'S HERE.

HERE'S THE LINK.
IT ACTUALLY GOT PUBLISHED ON HER BIRTHDAY!
HOW COOL IS THAT?

SCARY NIGHT MUSIC

Uploaded... but...

Well, as a first-time e-booker, I'm still waiting. I reckon it takes some time for the uploaded files to get through the "review" process. Whatever that means. I uploaded my first attempt at ebook publishing last night. I'm still waiting for it to appear on Amazon.

I was hoping the ebook would be available today, since today is the birthday of the cover model, upon whom this story was based. (My granddaughter, if you didn't know.)

So, we wait. We twiddle our thumbs and check the status every few minutes with high hope in our hearts that it will appear. I wanted to make it free for all my readers and fellow writers, but Amazon automatically makes it 99 cents if you don't select a price. So, that was the only option.

As soon as it's available, I'll try to let all you dear readers know on this site, on Facebook, Twitter, Absolute Write, and Goodreads. And a big and sincere thank you to all who have expressed an interest in it.