Archive for the ‘Self Publish Progress’ Category

Amazon, Mobipocket…and Nursing?

MY THREE BOOKS ARE UP AND RUNNING!!

Between nursing and diaper changes, I finally got three books ready to sell on Amazon.com and Mobipocket. The 2nd and 3rd books didn’t take very long at all to get on Amazon and Mobipocket; so I guess that once you have one (1) book up and going, everything else takes less than five (5) days. I uploaded my books on a Monday and it was on Amazon by Friday.

HURRAY!!!! Irid and Ruby, Flesh & Heart are on the move!!

So now for the next step–Marketing Online.

I’ve been doing some research and I’ve decided to do New Press Releases at prlog.org and prweb.com. I’m not quite sure how they work, but I figure I would write up a press release and post them anyway. There’s also my college alumni magazine I can post into as well. I’ve already stated my progress on my Facebook as well. I’m sure there’s more out there to do and I’ll research on how to do it. I did take a business course on online businesses, so I’ll go back through my notes on that as well to see the other advertisements I can do.

I’ve added meta tags to my webpage. Meta tags are information inserted in the heading of a web page to tell a browser what your page is all about. It’s more html stuff I learned about in my online business class. Not sure it will help, but decided to see what will happen anyway.

So, once I’ve done with my research on every possible way I can market online, I’ll be posting it here.

And darn! I missed another month (September). I tell ya. Being a parent ain’t no joke. I just don’t have as much time as I use to, to do things. I can see the fun and the not so fun of being a parent, but I’m definitely going to find the time to do what I have always dreamed of doing.

Well…back to nursing. Until next time!!

CreateSpace — Proofs and Posts and Parenthood

Soooooo…. I have to buy my proof everytime I update the pdf file to the website on CreateSpace. Oh well. So far I’ve ordered 3 copies of Irid and 1 copy of Ruby, Flesh & Heart. And hopefully, I only have to order one copy each on my next round. Whenever I get to that…

I thought I posted something in July…oh well. Guess I didn’t. Being that it was my last month with my daughter in my belly, I must have missed it. Also, being that August is the first month of my daughter’s life, I haven’t been able to look at all the proofs I’ve ordered. So, it will be awhile before I can get a final result for my books and get them on Amazon. Such is life.

And as I type…I hear the baby crying (Thank Goodness for my Hubby!!). Parenthood…they say to enjoy everything and that time goes by so fast. But right now, with lack of sleep, nursing every 2-4 hours, barely able to eat and look decent (yep, I look like a hobo Mom right now), time seems to be going so, so, so, so, slow.

Here’s to my adventure into PARENTHOOD!! I can now see why, so far, you want to pull out your hair one minute and can’t help smiling at your offspring the next.

When I can get my time to myself, I’ll be able to get these books going. Here’s to next time…and hopefully soon if not sometime in September.

Publishing Two More Books Adventures…and the future

Hurray! I’m back on for Round 2 for my Books Irid and Ruby, Flesh and Heart.

The book covers are coming along FABULOUSLY, and I’ll put up the beginning and end process/pictures on my next post.

Also, I posted for a new Editor on Guru, and my old Editor saw it and said she was available. So yeah, I want to re-work with her! I had mentioned it to her before, but I wasn’t ready yet since I had to build up on the funds again. So, I just approved the projects to her and off we go!

I forgot about editing my bookcovers and the summary for those, so I re-posted for this other editor to take a look at it. I had liked his profile before my previous editor saw my posting, and he had a nice price, so I wanted to see how he looks at things. Next, I’ll have to contact my Illustrator and let her know that I forgot to get the back edited…duh! She had already done the color for Irid and it looks great! I had a few suggestions on what I wanted to add, so I’m excited about seeing how it will come out. I’ve seen the first draft for Ruby, Flesh and Heart and it looks great! I told my Illustrator that her work was BAD ASS!

My next two more books that are complete that I will need to do are: The 9th Symbol and Jetta. I’ll have to save up again after the current two projects are done, and the next thing would be to get back to writing on all the projects I’ve started but haven’t finished yet: Creations (3rd book Series in The Calling), Death First Rose, Feral Dance, and Elements. I also have the final and last book of The Calling Series that’s in my head that I haven’t even began on.

So, lots to do! Lots to do!

I’m hoping I can do all of this still, because back in December 2008, I found out that miraculously I’m pregnant! Being 37, I had given up on that dream 10+ years ago. I re-married in July 2008, and 4 months later, WHAM! I’m knocked up! 🙂 Funny how life has its way of letting you know when the “right time” is. When I was 12, and even when I was in college, I had stuff all planned out, but life is strange that way. What I had planned and what was actually SUPPOSED to happen was all on a different timeline. But I’m not complaining, not in one least bit. This IS the right time.

I have money, a house, a good husband, and a flexible job where all of my dreams can now come true.

Now to figure out how to change diapers…. Hmmmm….

Goldilocks Issues: Word Press Blog Header Update & Business Cards

BUSINESS CARDS
I went to VistaPrint and made some business cards and some postcards with the image of my book cover on it. It came out very, very well. I like them. I put an image of me on the back of the business card with the words “Thank You.” I saw that on one of my husband’s old business cards, and I thought that was a pretty nice idea.

I got the postcards so I can sign them and send them out to relatives who want me to sign their books, but they live in different states. It just costs a lot to ship books back and forth; so my mom suggested this idea where I can write a nice thingy on a postcard, mail that out, and then whenever I actually see my relative, I’ll sign the book. They can place the postcard in the book in the mean time.

WORD PRESS HEADER

Man! That took forever to just change the header for my blogsite!

STEP 1:
First I tried to make some kind of background image to lay (or is it lie) my book cover on. I took parts of the book’s cover and kept copy/pasting it over and over using the program PAINT (standard in MicroSoft).

I look at several ways of doing this backdrop.

1) I tried recreating the sky, but it just look like plaid.
madebackground

2) Then I tried to just do simply stars that looked random. It was o…k….

madebackgroundstar2

3) Then I just went for plain, but it was just not the right background…
madebackgroundplain2

So none of them would do (I sound like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. LOL!!) None of them looked right with the book cover. So I decided just have plain ole Black.

STEP 2:
So then I went to WordPress on how to update the default theme and its header. Not easy for me at all. I tried replacing the image “kubrickheader.jpg” with my image, but first you had to upload your image. And where might that be? I had no idea. So, I decided to upload it to my Folder: wordpresswp-contentthemesdefault. And I used my Dreamweaver to upload just that file. Well that got it working, but it still had the stupid blue background because my image, I guess, wasn’t big enough. At least I got the “display:none;” to work to get the Title and Subtitle out of the image.

Here’s where I put it in Word Press APPEARANCE > EDITOR > STYLESHEETS CSS.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ h1 {display:none;
@@ font-size: 4em;
@@ text-align: center;
@@ }
@@
@@
@@
@@ Headerimg .description {display:none;
@@ font-size: 1.2em;
@@ text-align: center;
@@ }
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

STEP 3:
But I still couldn’t get that darn blue area out of the way. So I went back to my metamorph_tropicforest theme, took a look at it and decided to change the “header.jpg” name to an image I just created with PAINT.
I renamed the orginal “header.jpg” to STEP 4:
So THEN I had to resize my “header.jpg” to be exactly 791 X 182. I used PAINT using IMAGE >ATTRIBUTES and resized a blank canvas, and then pasted my book cover, which expanded the length, but not the width. I just grabbed a side of my book cover image and on the PAINT bottom corner, it tells you, while you resizing, what size it’s making it. So I made sure it was 182 and then squeezed it to coordinate the image so that it wouldn’t look so stretchy.

FINALLY DONE:
So I uploaded the images and it looks okay. My book cover looks pretty small, but it’s up there. Resizing the images to match existing images that was use in the theme, was much easier than trying to figure out the default theme for me. I had to re-edit the metamorph_tropicforest Stylesheet to take out the title and subtitle that was going over my header like this..
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@@ }
@@ #logo a {display:none;
@@ text-decoration: none;
@@ text-transform: lowercase;
@@ font-style: italic;
@@ font-size: 18px;
@@ color: #ffffff;
@@ }
@@ #logo H2
@@ {display:none;
@@ font-size: 12px;
@@ color: #ffffff;
@@ }
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

So there you have it! I’m done. So, yeah, the book cover is too small, and I couldn’t get it “Just Right” like Goldilocks, but it will do.

Till Next time!!

Book Cover Quotes In! and More Guru for new Editor

I got my quotes back on my book covers, and I’m so glad it’s within the budget.

HURRAY!

So now I need to get an editor (or two) for the next two books: 1) Iridand 2) Ruby, Flesh & Heart. I’m going back to Guru to find another editor since the editor for my first book didn’t respond to my inquiries of continuing a relationship with my other four (4) books that I need edited. So, I’m back to the drawing board and finding another one.

It was a bit overwhelming using Guru the first time and some people can just be all out rude on that site. I understand that people have been mislead and projects not paid, but try to use some common sense or inquiries on the customer before you make judgements. My goodness! So, I’m not looking forward to trying to find another editor on the site. Prices and ranges are out there for my budget, but I’m hoping my word count for these next two books might be a little bit less expensive. Irid and Ruby, Flesh & Heart both have 75,000 words, which makes a total of 150,000 words. That is more words, put together, than my first book which had 130,000 words. But since it’s two books, I’ll be getting more done. We’ll see how much they will amount to.

I decided to put both projects in separately, which might bring the cost down…not sure. It will probably be up. Or may just be the same. I’m not sure if I want to work with two different editors on two different projects. The styles might be different. But then again, I might just find one and ask if they can do the other as well. We’ll see how it goes.

I looked into eLance as well and Googled about the two sites. I just basically got the idea that they were pretty much the same, but for those look to make money, eLance was more expensive, yet better quality of customers, than Guru. I didn’t see much on what customers have to say about the two sites, besides the freelancers saying that customers have posted the same projected on both sites sometimes. So I guess I’ll stick with Guru since that’s where I found two very good freelancers: my editor and my book cover illustrator.

Wish me luck!

New BookCovers!

I’ve been debating on my next step, and of course, Lightning Source has been pushed to the side yet again.
Finally! I got my idea!

idea

TA-DAH!!! I’ve decided to do two more books covers for the money I’ve been saving up since November 2008. I’ve sent in my suggestions for the look I envisioned for each book cover, and I’m now waiting on my designer to get back with me on the quotes. I’m hoping it’s not too much. ::gulp:: Since getting my books edited costs more, I figured I’d get the designs done first and put that on my website to make it look even more professional.

I chose to do two books that are not part of The Calling Series: 1) Iridand 2) Ruby, Flesh & Heart. Those two are my fun books (the one’s I enjoyed writing the most), and I’ll get to the series a bit later–after these two, I’ll go back to the series and work on Jetta next. Besides, the 3rd and 4th books of the series aren’t even completed, and the 4th book hasn’t even been started on….but it’s right here in the noggin.

Since I haven’t been doing much on advertising, my book hasn’t sold on MobiPocket since I’ve put it up there Jan 2009. And Amazon doesn’t show any ranking either of course (that should be under Product Detail), though I did see that the Kindle version is out there but shows “Not Yet Available.” Hmmm. Don’t know what that means. Plus the Kindle version is titled “The Made” and not “The Made: The Calling Series” like the paperback. Don’t know how that happened either. Must be something to do with how CreateSpace and MobiPocket put it up there. Who knows. I’m just glad it’s there. Next time I’ll be a bit more specific with my titles names when I use Mobipocket. I kept changing them around because I didn’t like the format of the html file I uploaded (You can read more of that in 2009! and Mobipocket post).

So anyway….that’s all I have for the month of February. I had to jump on here today to get something in for February, since I’ve been trying to figure out my next steps. I don’t want to miss a month 🙂

Till later…!!

Amazon! Here I am!

Hurray! I’m officially on Amazon!  So cool!

Price? Being self-published, Print-On-Demand, of course, price is high; and the same as on CreateSpace, $19.50, then you have to pay for shipping and handling. But hey, Amazon makes my book look legit.  Hmmm. Legit. That makes me want to sing.

Too legit… Too legit to quit (hey…hey…)
Too legit… Too legit to quit…(hey…)
Too legit… Too legit to quit (too legit…)
Too legit… too legit to quit…

LOL!  Ok. I’m overly happy right now. MC Hammer. Showing my age. Heh. Heh. But that should be the theme song for all of us Self-Publishers.  Takes a lot to do all this work, and putting in all this time, to make one’s dream come true.

I’m still considering Lightning Source. I know. I’m slow. But doing all of this work up til now (designing websites, uploading blog site, creating illustrations for my book, editing book, formatting book, updating website, updating website, updating website, research, research, research, research and more research), I guess I’m taking a little break. ‘Cause there’s a lot more to do!

My book on Amazon can be found here. I have to make sure to keep up with that link though. Never know when it might change or update.

Ok. I wanna go back to singing again. Heh. Heh.

Till Next time…!

Too legit… Too legit to quit (hey…hey…)
Too legit… Too legit to quit…(hey…)
Too legit… Too legit to quit (too legit…)
Too legit… too legit to quit…

toolegittoquit

CreateSpace is Finished! And More on MobiPocket and Amazon

Wow! I’m done!
CreateSpace was really helpful with that big ISBN mistake. PLUS, they put an ISBN barcode on the book themselves, where as with LuLu, I had to place a picture of the ISBN that I got from Tux. Tux’s barcode was a great picture and looked ok, but CreateSpace looked clearer when it printed out. Did I mention about getting a Barcode for free? Yep. It worked great. Now if it scans well, who knows. But my book isn’t in bookstores–just online.

CreateSpace had a message saying that it would take like 3 weeks or something for me to receive the proof of my book. It didn’t take that long at all! I ordered it on Jan 12th, and it came in by Jan 16th. Not bad at all! As for the cost of the proof. See below for my 447 page book. Oh! 448. CreateSpace added an extra page automatically because they need an even number of pages.
————————————————————————
Order Total:
Subtotal: $10.46
Shipping: $6.55
Tax: $0.00
——-
Total: $17.01
————————————————————————

The price is cheaper than Lulu’s but the book itself is much more expensive to by off of their website: $19.50, and then there’s the shipping and handling to go along with it.

Sigh.

But at least it’s done.

CREATESPACE PRINT VS LULU
Actually there wasn’t much different. The front cover of LuLu’s was a bit sharper for my bookcover. So I liked LuLu’s cover better, but you really can’t tell that much of a difference. (Oh yeah. The bookcover issue with CreateSpace. I just sent them the 6×9 pdf file that my book cover designer had create for me and they accepted that. It was great!) CreateSpace didn’t bleed slightly over from the front to the binding like LuLu, and the Title was printed in the middle of the Binder, whereas LuLu’s was more to the left edge and not centered. I think with LuLu that had something to do with my uploading my picture and doing that all myself. Oh well. It’s still decent.

I Like CreateSpace’s interior print. The paper is a bit darker than LuLu’s, but both LuLu and CreateSpace printed my illustrations wonderfully. CreateSpace did send me messages multiple times that the dpi of my interior pictures was 98 and that they suggest 300 dpi. Well, I couldn’t figure out how to change it, and since LuLu’s printed fine, I just said, “What the heck,” and I left it alone. Came out just the same!

My book on CreateSpace can be found here. Now when it shows up on Amazon, should be within 15 business days, is what the site says.

MOBILPOCKET W/ AMAZON
Amazon sent me an email (from digitalrights@amazon.com) to complete a form to allow my ebook to be sold on their site. So that will be the famous Kindle. The bad news is that you either have to fax the form to them or mail it in to Seattle, WA. I don’t have long distance on my phone, but I do have a fax machine, so I had to use 10+10+321 to fax it out which is 20cents per call. And I had to do it twice since my fax machine went haywire the first time. Even then, I’m not sure if my fax worked right to send it to them. My fax report said it went OK. But who knows. That was on Jan 11th. So I scanned the document that I signed and emailed digitalright to let them know that I did fax them the signed form and attached a pdf of the same form to the email. I sent that yesterday Jan 17th, so I’m sure I won’t get a response until one of the work days this week.

WHAT’S NEXT?
Well…since the prices on LuLu and CreateSpace, and I’m thinking even on Amazon when it gets there, is going to be high up there for people to buy my book, I’m thinking of looking into Lightning Source – The Power of One. I haven’t done much research on the company, but I did read that completing all of the criteria for them is a bit hard. But they have great Distribution resources. For Print-On-Demand they have: Ingram, Barnes & Nobles, Baker & Taylor, NACSCORP, and of course Amazon. And there there’s the UK places as well. So that will be 4 more places where my book can be sold besides Amazon.

So, I’m still debating on Lightning Source, but I’ll be sure to let you know of my decision. 🙂

CREATESPACE

CREATESPACE
So now from LuLu to CreateSpace. I created a login and password on CreateSpace

And I’m so glad I went ahead and got a DBA (“Doing Business As”), or in Houston it’s called “Assumed Name” and also opened a bank account with my pen name. With CreateSpace you’re gonna need one, plus your Tax-ID which can also be your Social Security Number, but your Bank Account paperwork will have the Tax-ID information on it.

BIG MISTAKE ON BOOK! CreateSpace sent me a message stating some errors on my book. For some ODD reason, I put in one ISDN number in the inside and a different number on the back cover of the book, the barcode, which was the correct one. I had to go back to BowerLink to find out which ISDN number I had used out of the block of ten that I purchased! I’m so glad CreateSpace caught that!!

Plus they said the resolution for my illustrations wasn’t strong enough. But I had it published on LuLu, so I don’t know what I should do about that. They didn’t say anything about the BookCover format, which I was a bit worried because the template they provide for the BookCover, after converting it to pdf, it had a huge white space around it. I couldn’t get it off. So I left it hoping that it would be ok. The 2nd mistake was that I didn’t upload that cover. I uploaded the book twice. DUH!. So I made the correction suggested (beside the dpi resolution of the pictures), updated the interior of the book with the CORRECT ISBN. Then I had to go back to Mobipocket, deactivate to re-upload of yet another file, and uploaded a new one with the correct ISBN number. I’m thinking CreateSpace might have a problem with the Book Cover. If so, I’ll just send the one I’ve uploaded for LuLu and see if that will work for them.

Sigh!

All in the fun of self-publishing! I tell ya!

COPYRIGHTING

COPYRIGHTING
The same day I did the Mobipocket thingy, I copyrighted my entire book. ELECTRONICALLY!! Before, I had to mail in a diskette and then years later a CD, I’ve copyrighted my writings and the price has gone from $25.00 to $35.00 to $45.00 and now electronically it’s back to $35.00. It was quite easy. I sent the entire .pdf file which included my illustrations and book cover. You just create a login and password on the eCo Online System. They have all the questions you need and I put in my credit card for the charge. All done! My books have all been copyrighted before (I lumped all my stories under one (1) copyright number to save money at the time, and decided to have separate one for each book later on) and, online, it has a Pre-register section and you can put your ID in it just to let them know you’ve done it already. But I did the copyright thing again, just so I can have a 2009 date for my book, to make it officially published for the New Year.

2009! Here it comes!