A Winter's Day in 1939 is now an e-book...

So a while back I said I had a wee sekrit. The wee sekrit can now be revealed cos it's on Amazon where everyone can see it!! My latest title with Scholastic, A Winter's Day in 1939, is now available as an e-book. You can go see it here, or even better, you might like to buy it :) It has had some very nice reviews (you can see some here or here). Yay!!

And I have been reading some interesting things on the net over the last few days - Barry Eisler's take (at Joe Konrath's blog) on the choices available to authors in today's publishing environment. This ruffled a lot of agent and traditional publisher feathers after they took exception to his suggestion that the only real advantage traditional (legacy) publishers could offer authors was print distribution. All very interesting stuff. I am not opposed to legacy publishing, agents, or self publishing although I also think none are perfect either. But there are two things I do to help myself - 1) keep informed and 2) try to avoid casting anyone as the enemy. An adversarial approach in publishing is no good for anyone.

Then Nathan Bransford took a closer look at the state of e-book sales and pointed out that these aren't declining as has been reported elsewhere. I always cast a jaundiced eye over statistics and try understanding the agenda behind their use and the people using them. It's a bit like the man showing off his 14 year old McDonald's hamburger, which doesn't look a day over 24 hours old, and saying this is why we shouldn't eat junk food. Does anybody ever try keeping any conventional food or home food with salt and sugar in it and say we shouldn't eat that? What about oil or dried fruit? I bet I could keep a box of weetbix for 14 years or even a homemade scone. And just because its appearance is little altered doesn't mean it is edible. And frankly if my appearance didn't deteriorate over 14 years I would be pretty happy (just don't check out that painting in the attic....). Just saying.... that 14 year old burger is not a particularly robust experiment.

And finally in my little trilogy of internet surfing I give you another treatise by Sara Sheridan on what author's really earn. This topic is a perennial favourite with me, partly because I feel most folk persist in having a mistaken belief that authors earn a good deal of money. I do not yet reach the median figure Ms Sheridan quotes in her article. In fact not even half that and yet I have had at least one new title out every year for the last three years and I have kept busy with school visits, workshops, public appearances and other events. And of the money I do earn most does not come from the sale of books. If we seem desperate for funding, its because, well, we are. And we are not thumb twiddlers resting on our fat laurels. The authors and illustrators I know are hard-working people, usually reliant on some secondary method of supporting themselves.

We've changed too...

I have noticed something of interest lately. Something that has been happening for a while, something even I have participated in and I wasn't even aware of it (ooo, I do like a good mystery).

The book writing, publishing and book-selling landscape has been under MAJOR renovation for months - well, years really. E-books seem here to stay, bookshops (although fewer in number) seem to be hanging in there too. Neither are as robust or as terminal as either group had hoped/feared/prognosticated (d - all of the above). Print books have a particular set of skills that mean their demise is not as imminent as many suggested. They, unlike records, don't require any specialist, obsolete technology to be bought or utilised. Old ones can work just as well as new ones. They have a fairly long shelf life once bought and taken reasonable care of. They are cheap to run once you have stumped up the purchase price. E-books too are a nifty alternative. Often cheaper then the print alternative here in New Zealand, mind-blowingly easy to obtain and taking up no more room than an idea in your head. They offer a ship-load of convenience and you get easy access to a lightweight and comprehensive library if you want. You get where I am going with this I suspect. To a certain extent the dust is settling and people and books in a wide range of formats are moving forward.

But, no doubt about it, the landscape has changed, irrevocably. For authors it is a different place. There are currently less opportunities to be taken up as a new author by traditional publishers than there used to be, say, ten years ago. New authors are still published but the lists are in fact smaller, and you have to be even more patient and full of a lot of perseverance. Some new independent publishers are stepping up but they are being prudent and taking it slowly. In better news, self-publishing is a world away from what it was ten years ago too.

We don't seem to attend workshops and classes like we used to. Like books, authors now look to electronic alternatives to learn their craft, share and critique, and research how to find agents, and publishers and how to submit. The world wide web is a bottomless pit of information valuable and otherwise but somewhere out there in the ether is exactly what you need to know if you look well, and hard, and long enough. Our communities are now on-line more often than not.

And we have kind of become an invisible community that hangs out and shares information in a virtual way. I spend more time in my inbox and outbox, on facebook and goodreads, then I do face to face. I see readers more often than I do fellow writers, even though I am in touch with other writers and with illustrators everyday. And in so many ways this suits writers who work best in their own little worlds. We are not just isolated because our work is individual. We choose that isolation because that's how the best writing happens. We often talk about finding sanity in our water cooler conversations because isolation can drive you crazy but as lonely as our garrets can be that's where we ultimately want to retreat to. This internet thing actually seems to suit us pretty well. I love seeing my writer and illustrator friends, love chewing the fat, finding out the latest gossip and sharing hot tips. They are the best. But we don't wait for get-togethers to fill each other in on what's happening, and I expect to keep working on information gathering and personal up-skilling on an ongoing basis on my own all the time. Its not just the book writing, publishing and book-selling landscape that's changed. The way we do business is different now too. And how our new needs are met will have to catch up with us...

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.