My digital adventure (Part Two)...

I used Smashwords to prepare my manuscript of Sally Bangle: Unexpected Detective and transform it into a variety of digital formats (epub, mobi, PDF, RTF). The Smashwords Style Guide (free to download and easily read online) is a bit jargony but worth working through as a) these are terms and processes you should probably become familiar with and b) reading this will definitely enable you to get your manuscript ready for digital conversion. Essentially the guide advises you how to strip all the formatting from your manuscript and make it amenable to conversion. When you know what might gum up the works it will help you not stick these formatting things into your future ms. Traditional publishers will probably also be grateful for this. I never appreciated how much work formatting (half of which I don't even do on purpose as I write) must create for publishers.

Once stripped I then went through line by line and double checked for excess carriage returns and spaces as these can cause havoc in digital formats. I am glad my ms was only 36,000 words long. It is tedious work but essential to avoid later problems. And if you do it well you only have to do it once. This is your baby - you want it to be clean and looking its best don't you?? Once you have run that fine tooth comb over it and you have your cover jpeg, ISBN's, and front and back matter you can load that sucker up. You will have to choose the price and how much folk can sample before they buy. I based my decisions on what most other people are doing. Most of these things can be altered easily.

Many folk use only Amazon KDP or KDP Select (KDP Select ties you in to a 3 month exclusive period). There are plenty of discussions online debating the pros and cons of going solely with Amazon versus throwing your net wider. While it might seem smarter to have your e-book distributed to a variety of e-tailers (Smashwords distributes to Apple, Sony, B&N, Kobo and others) Amazon currently has the biggest sales and the exclusivity is rewarded with promotion and allows for occasional free giveaways. I decided to throw my net wide with Smashwords (probably a philosophical decision as much as anything) but chose not to distribute to Amazon via Smashwords and loaded the ms up directly with Amazon (not taking the exclusive option) at the recommendation of a fellow scribe. The manuscript stripped for Smashwords did not need much alteration for loading on Amazon. Do make sure you have customized your front matter accordingly though. Amazon books should say Amazon, Smashwords books should say Smashwords.

You can pay someone else to prepare your manuscript for conversion. There are folk in NZ who do this regularly. At first I thought I would let someone else do it and then I figured I should try doing it at least once myself. That was a good call as it wasn't as complicated as I thought it would be, I saved myself some money and ultimately I think its better that the buck stops with me. Please note folks that both Amazon and Smashwords will allow you to update the ms at any time. If you find an error, a typo or something you've simply just changed your mind about you can fix that puppy up and reload it. Keep saved versions separate and appropriately named so you don't load the wrong one. And avoid interruptions to your books availability. If it stops being available through an e-tailer, even briefly, you can lose reviews, interest and sales momentum and this can be a mission to get back.

Once your e-book is loaded and is approved and available for purchase your attention can turn to letting folk know they can now buy it. You should also be considering whether you can get your e-book reviewed. Is it eligible for any awards or prizes? Are there other options for distribution? Can you get your book into libraries? I think those are questions for my next post - look out for part 3 coming to this blog soon...

My digital adventure...(Part One)

I have been having the most interesting journey with my little e-book Sally Bangle: Unexpected Detective. Interesting because there is no better education in how to make your manuscript into an e-book and into what happens next, than by actually going ahead and doing it. If you want to know more about e-books, if you fancy one day publishing your own work in this way, if the digital book world excites or scares you, then the best thing to do is convert a story and test it all out. So many folk seem afraid of what might happen. What has happened to me is that I now have an e-book title that is totally my responsibility. Whether it fails or thrives is over to me. How it looks and reads is over to me. Any earnings (as per agreements with e-tailers) are over to me. Where it is distributed and how it is priced are my decisions. As some wildly successful selfpubbed e-bookers will tell you, putting your book out as an e-book under your own publishing name does not prevent you from having a traditional publisher come knocking for permission to put it out in print. If a book is good, if it is popular, there will be interest. Of course it is not all sweetness and light. Sales may never happen. There are a ship load of e-books available and no one has the inside running on how to make your book a squealing success. Still I can guarantee you a complete lack of sales for a story languishing in your drawer. The bottom line is the quality of the content should be your biggest concern.

If you have other plans for your novels, try the process out with a short story or novella instead. I must confess I don't think I'd try converting a picture book. Picture books need their pictures. The one picture book of mine that is digital is an app (The House That Went to Sea) and basically has retained its graphic good looks that way. It was converted by a professional. I have no idea what an enhanced e-book looks like and how you would go about making one. But armed with some advice from fellow writer Maureen Crisp and what I'd learned at the Kiwiwrite4kidz e-book workshop last year and carefully following instructions and using a bit of nouse and common sense I have successfully converted two novels. And I know a lot more now than I did before.

So what do you need? There is somewhat of a cookbook recipe feel to this process because first off you need some particular ingredients.

- A manuscript as a computer document (including an awesome title)
- a unique ISBN for each format (e-pub, mobi and PDF are the main ones so far I think) - obtainable from the National Library here in NZ via a very simple online form
- a cover (jpeg ideally I think) - I used a designer for Sally Bangle. I don't have the patience or skill to do it myself but this is definitely an option. The rule of thumb is to avoid looking home made. Think of what appeals to you.
- front matter (copyright phrase, ISBN, dedication, any review highlights, the publisher and edition information)
- back matter (acknowledgements, other titles by you that readers might like to check out, links to your website, blog, etc...)

Step away from the process until you have all this stuff together. Once you go through the process of conversion you will want to load that sucker up for distribution to e-tailers straight away and if you don't have a cover or ISBN especially you will have to stop and wait.

Of course once your book is converted to digital files in the varied formats then the real fun begins. How do you get people to find it, and what's more, buy it. Of course you can stop at this point satisfied with the amazing achievement of actually creating the e-book. And stopping now does not doom you to obscurity. Your book is there on the e-shelf for as long as you leave it there (unlike print books in bricks and mortar bookshops). Laurel resting is not the kiss of death. Come to the marketing and promotion side of things if and when you are ready. However doing nothing is less likely to find you readers, than doing something. I have been slowly feeling my way through this part of the process and done a few interesting things. I'll tell you more about them depending on how effective these are. Some of these things will be effective partly because I already have a publishing history. But I am also thinking that any e-book I create will most likely benefit from further e-books by me. Some of the wonderful book industry friends I have made over the years have been tremendously helpful. But I've also been looking at doing things I've never done before. Getting reviews will be helpful. As with any of these things being polite and professional is still the mantra. They are no less important qualities in the digital world than they have been in the real one.

Sally Bangle: Unexpected Detective

I seem to have published a book: a junior mystery for confident readers aged 8 to 11. Here it is

It is available to buy at Smashwords and at Amazon. Soon it should also be available for Kobo, ipads, at Barnes and Noble and Sony.

This is what it is about:  

Sally Bangle's sea faring dad was lost at sea seven years before. But is he really dead? When Sally is given a school project to research the very strange Professor Angstrom she turns up some interesting information about that fateful sea voyage. What really happened? Is that really the Professor wrapped up in bandages in St Olafs? Sally won't rest until she has figured out the mystery and she drags her best friend, her best friend's chauffer, her brother and the school bully along on a dangerous mission to discover the truth.

If it were a print book it would probably be about 170 pages long. I am rather pleased cos I did it all myself, except for the cover which I had some professional help with. This was my original picture