Where I Have Been...And What I Have Done

Okay, I admit it, blogging has taken a back seat to doing what I have been blogging about.

Whew.  I have ALL my books (7) now up and SELLING on Kindle, Nook, and iPad with Kobo in the works.  Kobo is a bit daunting, but we are working on it. 

Kindle was the most seamless and they are grinding out the sales.  Even better, both Kindle and iPad have sent royalties directly to my bank account at at 70% on Kindle (US sales) they add up quickly.

I figure that at this rate (which is growing incrementally), my cash outlay to get the books out there will have been paid back in 3 months or so.  And, unlike many industries, I doubt there is a huge holiday increase because in a sense you are buying for yourself...although Kindle does seem to have a unique idea: letting you buy gift ebooks for friends.

Next mission is to write up all about how to do it and post some of it here and MOST of it in a new book, that is a new ebook to be called: Take Back the Book. 

The Perfect E-mail

I've been so busy preparing books for various e-platforms that I have neglected his blog.  Also, other authors are emailing asking the details of how I am doing this.  I promise I will list the steps on this blog--and in Take Back theBook the book, coming whenever I have the time to write it all up.

In the meantime, I received an uplifting email from someone teaching a class where she recommends my book I Speak for this Child.   At the end of the class, a guy came up to her and agreed that it was a terrific book.  She asked, "Have you read it?"  

He replied, "Only the first chapter.  I downloaded it on my iPad during the class and read it during the break."

 

How's that for instant gratification?

Oh...and preliminary info on the 4 books that are up: they are selling!  No promotion yet.  So, it is starting to work.

No More Pencils...No More BOOKS...

A high school in Florida ditches textbooks for Kindles.  That's right, everybody gets an e-book device free!  No more lugging textbooks or excuses for leaving them in the locker or at home.

Backwards Publishing: Books to Type

Three more novels being uploaded this weekend including my major bestsellers The Midwife, The Midwife’s Advice, and Code Ezra. I will explain how I got to this point shortly, but for now these are books that were published almost pre-computer! In fact, The Midwife was one of the first novels ever written on a word processor (IBM System 6). Since I had no digital version of the edited work, I searched for a way to convert print to type without creating endless typos and requiring word-for-word proofing.

My books are long, take place in foreign locales, and I did not want to undertake anything that would drive me insane.

I was told retyping the book would cost about $2000 per book, then there would be conversion costs to the various e-book formats. My next thought was to outsource the project for typing, but I worried about the proofing problem. It took about 10 minutes of Googling to find some likely outsourcing companies. They swore that the latest in Optical Character Reader technology (OCR) would work out fine and that they would do the proofing. I sent PDF files of sample pages with complex formatting. One of the company’s work was more accurate and their price more reasonable.

This is the one I am using. Ask for details.

This is not as seamless a process as I dreamed about, but also not particularly onerous either.

Details will follow and I will name names.

First Book Now iPublished on Amazon, iPad

Done! First book is up and running on both Amazon Kindle and Apple iPad (iBookstore). I Speak For This Child: True Stories of a Child Advocate is still widely used for Guardian ad Litem (CASA) training and I wanted it out there first.

I was able to update it with what happened to all the children featured in the book, add a new chapter that my publisher cut for space reasons, include an interview with the author, a guide for book clubs, an author bio. In many ways it is vastly improved. Plus, I can continue to update it.

I have one book ready to upload, one being converted to the e-book formats, and another just sent out for converting. I cannot believe that the spell checker on Code Ezra found so many spelling errors in the original hardcover book! Didn’t the publisher check those typos? Or was the copyeditor or…ah…the author supposed to have found them all?

Again, mistakes can be fixed forever. Is that a promise or a curse?

The Oberon Kindle Cover

Although there are more practical e-book covers, like the one with the embedded light, I find my Oberon so beautiful, so tactile and satisfying.

From Tall Ship to Cruise Ship

At first it was rare to see a Kindle sighting--sort of like a Prius sighting when I first got mine 6 years ago. (That early adopter thing again.) There would be that knowing nod and polite questions about what someone was reading. (With the Prius their nods would be followed by mpg inquiries.) Tips would be passed back and forth. We were cognoscenti. Since I live in a rural area, I really only saw Kindles when I traveled. Another one on an airplane was normal at first, then in the past year I started to see many—with flyers comparing Kindle 1s, 2s, and the jumbo DXs. I haven’t yet seen a Kindle 3 in the wild or even a Nook or Sony e-reader but iPads are sprouting everywhere.

In June were on the maiden voyage of the Norwegian Cruise Lines’s gargantuan cruise ship EPIC from Southampton to New York. Most passengers understood we were the guinea pigs for this jumbo liner and patiently waited in queues to board, get information, for shows, and more. No problem. Everyone whipped out their e-readers which led to more comparisons, and yes, impromptu discussion on books. We showed off and praised various jackets—with Oberon’s stunning tooled leather designs winning my vote (and one was my next purchase.) One woman had a Kindle 2 and just had bought an iPad so her daughter could get through her summer reading list. On a foggy afternoon, I toured some of the indoor lounges and was heartened by the number of readers, with about half using e-readers. Of course, this was an affluent crowd who liked to be the first to sail on a ship so it was likely they also were in the early adopter cohort. It was an international crowd—although I never met anyone besides an American with an e-reader. However the Brits and Canadians were very curious and delighted to learn that they could get one too.

Certainly they were an influential bunch who I would expect would broaden the e-reader base. In any case, it was lovely to see so many avid readers in one sailing off into the sunset—literally.