Tag Archives: self publishers

Cover designer wanted…

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Publicity

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I am looking for a cover designer to do a cover for a freebie give away story linked to an upcoming anthology release I am involved in. There are details about what is being looked for on here:

http://areteus.livejournal.com/238703.html

Before you click this, however, a few caveats:

 – Yes, this is unpaid. It is an ebook we are giving away for free. This is the authors of the anthology not the publisher doing this (we are basically self pubbing this). Though I am personally offering a very, very small fee of ‘the price of a drink’, either in person or sent via paypal.

 – There is, however, a chance that you will get your work noticed which may potentially lead to more, better paid work. Full credit is given and there are a few people at least (the authors for a start) who will sing your praises to the high heavens.

 

A busy few days in blogging land…

20 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by in Musings, Reviews

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This is what my study looks like at the moment...

I’ve not posted here much since the end of Vampire Month (apologies for that, I’ve been distracted) and you were probably expecting a post linked to the AW Blog Chain here about now as I was signed up for it this month. However, I opted out last week for personal reasons. I do intend to do next month’s blog chain, however, so look out for that in May…

In the meantime, I have been a busy bunny on the reviewing front. School Easter holidays provided me with plenty of time for reading and writing so I managed to clear some books off the big pile of ‘books to be reviewed’.

First up we have Watson’s Afghan Adventure, another MX Publishing offer set in the Sherlock Holmes universe:

http://www.cultbritannia.co.uk/2012/04/18/book-review-watsons-afghan-adventure/

This follows the exploits of Dr Watson during his pre-Holmes days in the army. Please excuse the missing ‘of’ in the first sentence…

Secondly, I have also reviewed Wake up, volume one of the City of Roses series:

http://www.epublishabook.com/2012/04/20/book-review/#axzz1sZN6l3ZI

A strange and mystical story of faerie courts in modern urban cities, somewhat akin to Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Finally, not a review but a commentary on a photograph:

http://newsfromthespiritworld.com/2012/04/18/ghostly-pics-the-raynham-hall-ghost/

Here I talk about another famous ghost photograph – the Raynham Hall ghost, also known as the Brown Lady – another of the shots labelled as one of the ’10 greatest ghost photos ever’ in numerous blog posts.

There is a lot more to come because the ‘big pile of books to be reviewed’ is a very big ‘big pile of books to be reviewed’ and there are a lot more ghost photos out there…

 

[Vampire Month] You’re only given one shot by Jason Petty

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by in Guest posts

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For his Vampire month blog post, Jason has decided to post about his reasons for choosing self publication as his method of getting his work out there…

“You’re Only Given One Shot…”

                Thanks for having me on! I think your readers might enjoy a quick recap of how I got to where I am. Sick and tired of condescending rejection letters, I decided to self-publish. It amazed me how rude agents thought they could be toward me and how offended they got when I’d reply with similar tact. I was just tired of the mess and sick of eating crow from my family.

                So I started looking for a good self-publishing house. Step one, as you will find, is not getting scammed. I looked around for a place that let me keep the copyright and had good prices. I found Lulu and was happy with them at first. But then their customer service was kidnapped by Somali pirates or something. With the new management traipsing about, “fixing” everything that made the service remotely usable, I left. Finally my wife found Createspace and we were back in business.

                So now I had 25 copies and a $100 hole in my wallet. Since my family had bought most of my previous orders I knew I’d have to find real fans now. And so began the legwork. I hit every shop and book store I could find knowing full well that most of them weren’t going to give me shelf space. I didn’t even bother with big chain stores: they only stock stuff corporate sends them.

                I hit used book stores, coffee shops, local produce shops, campus newsstands…any place that looked like they might carry pages with ink on them. After talking to dozens of places I finally got two stores interested. One of them was so snooty I finally gave up dealing with them, the other still orders books from time to time.

                So I had venues selling my wares! I was in! I felt like the big dog! I WAS the big dog! I made the front page of the paper (narrowly beating out a story about a dog that caught a quail) and that helped some, too. And then it all came down. Everyone who gave half a crap had bought it, read it, and moved on.

                So I decided to do an audio book. I was reading through it and realized something: the book sucked. I couldn’t read it and keep a straight face. I was embarrassed, depressed and ready to give up writing. I couldn’t, though. This was my only job and is still my primary bread winning effort. But I couldn’t stand behind a product I didn’t believe in.

                So I did the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I pulled the book from shelves so I could sort out some of the overly descriptive crap. About half way through I realized I didn’t want to read any more of it. It just went on and on and on! I worked on one chapter for two weeks because I couldn’t find the give a damn to fix the dead plot. It was over. I knew it. It was time to stop kicking this horse, get the shovel and give it a proper burial.

                I was literally about to cry one night when I pounded my fist on the desk and just said “Ugh! If only she’d have CALLED instead of showing up on the door step I could skip this and…GREAT SCOTT! THAT’S IT!”

                That simple tweak changed everything! And I mean everything! That moment made the whole ugly thing worth it. That “little tweak” was no small venture and I knew it. I’d have to change the entire second half of the book, throw out two of my favorite scenes and rework some motives. Say goodbye to 60 thousand words. When I had sat down earlier that month I’d planned to change a few things, edit some of the descriptions and make what I had read better, like buffing the paint and hitting it with a coat of wax. This wasn’t just a wax job anymore. It was major surgery. It was like gutting the thing to the chassis, replacing the old and busted engine with a race motor and reinforcing the entire car to hold up to the abusive new motor. And you know what? It worked like a charm. Those sixty thousand worthless, boring words I disparaged over deleting? They were replaced with 80 thousand fast-moving, exciting words.

                What I had before was a boring book about two characters with no clear motives with a good ending and final plot twist. What I have now is a murder mystery thriller with Grindhouse leanings and paranormal twist starring two characters that almost everyone has a strong feeling for. The only gripe I really get is that I need an editor. I have that now and the spelling mistakes will be fixed by early April. And right now, even with the typos, repeated words and all of it, people tell me over and over again that they can’t put it down! That’s a book I can stand behind!

                With my new-found confidence I’ve gone at it like I’m, killing snakes! Sales are up! Fan count is up and generally climbing! I’m back on the road, and with much style, I might add. So if you want to be an author my advice is simple. Step away from your book for three months, then read it aloud. When you hate it (and you will) make a backup, tear it down, build it up and go for broke.

Look around on facebook till you find a page that reviews books like yours. Concentrate on finding one that favors books with similar plots, characters, events, etc., but is willing to give a bad review to a bad book. Don’t worry about a bad review. If you’ve done your homework and read up on their page and your book is good, that threat evaporates. Pick that first reviewer strategically and watch the fans come tumbling in! Make sure you have it available for the Kindle and Nook and you’ll be shocked how well you do. I sure was.

                You only get one shot, so aim well!

                                Jason Petty

Reflections on Self Publication

10 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by in Reviews

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There is apparently a war going on in the writing world between ‘traditional publishers’ and ‘self publishers’. A lot of bad blood is being spilled, a lot of blogs are being written about how one way or the other is ‘the only right way’ and there seems to be intense polarisation between those who support ‘ye olde fashioned way of publishing such as how our forefathers have been doing it since ye time of Caxton’ and ‘the hip new thang which has become possible cos we has the internets and stuff now’.

I am not going to delve too deeply into the arguments for and against self publishing, I am not even going to talk about the apparent evils of traditional publishers or how it is possible to make millions of dollars by publishing your own book (if you happen to get lucky and have a good product to start with and do a lot of work…). Those arguments have been done to death and people are still flogging them, despite the fact no one seems set to change their positions. Instead, I am going to reflect upon my own opinions of self publishing based on my experiences as both a reader and a writer.

I’ve always been a bit of a self publishing sceptic. To my mind, a book is not properly published unless it has been judged by someone with some expertise to be worth publishing and then given a thorough editing and cleaning and polishing before being dressed up in its prettiest marketing clothes to walk about in the public eye for purchase. Editors at publishing houses act as a filter – picking out the wheat of good literature from the chaff that makes up the majority of their slush pile. If you get past an editor then you have passed some form of test or maybe a rite of passage which proves you worthy to call yourself a Writer rather than someone who merely writes. With this mindset in place, I’ve therefore been somewhat derogatory of self published works. They’ve not passed the test, they’ve not had to convince an editor or an agent that their work is worthy. All they’ve done is rattle off a few thousand words, done some formatting and either sent it to Lulu to be printed or uploaded it to Createspace. Logically, therefore, this prejudice implies that all self published works will be badly written and not worth buying.

And this is where my brain goes ‘hang on, you’re being prejudiced’. This is where that argument falls down because I am indeed being prejudiced by assuming that everything in one category has the same characteristics – a major failure in logic. I don’t like being prejudiced. I am not sure anyone does and I really hate my brain when it points out these nasty little truths to me. More to the point, my prejudice was based entirely on circumstantial evidence with not one whit of actual evidence to back up my claim. You see, because I had the strong belief that ALL self published books were badly written and badly edited I religiously avoided actually reading any. Obviously, this sort of hypocrisy cannot stand!

So, I was quite pleased to be able to do reviews for the ePublishing a Book site. Because the site is quite self publishing focused they want reviews of self published books for preference and so I have been forced into reading and commenting on some self published books. I faced this task with a high degree of trepidation, not knowing what I would find in the darkest depths of hell that I imagined existed in the self publishing world.

I posted a request for authors with self published novels to contact me and tell me where I could get hold of their books for review and I got a lot of replies. So many that, at the rate of 2 reviews a month which I am obliged to do, I am not going to be short of things to read and review for a long time. I’ve read a few of these books now and written the review for one of them (which is due to be posted tomorrow – watch this space for details) – and I have come to a conclusion about self published books:

Some of them are actually not at all bad and some of them are even rather good.

I suppose I should not have been surprised at this revelation. After all, there are a lot of good writers out there and not all of them make it through the publishing filter. This may be because one of the flaws in the filter is that it doesn’t necessarily take out only those books that are really badly written. Quite often it takes out books which are very well written and merely don’t fit with current marketing projections. However, I was surprised which is why I felt it necessary to write this blog post to atone for my previously snobbish nature about self publishing.

Ok, here is the caveat… one of the books I read and reviewed and really liked was actually a previously published author who had recovered the rights to the book and decided to push out a reprint by themselves. This, of course, is one area where self publishing is potentially useful with publishers rarely wanting to touch reprints but you could argue that this might have skewed my subjective assessment of the books I read. I accept that and as a scientist I take it into account and will continue to collect data and testing the hypotheses until one of them breaks. However, given that all of the books I read so far have been enjoyable and I’ve seen no really terrible ones, I am going to read the rest of the ones I have on my list with an open mind and hopefully enjoy them without the trepidation that comes from expecting them to be awful.