During this time the Digital World of print exploded. I stood on the sidelines, reading, researching and listening. I was never skeptical about it. I know that children growing up today for the most part, will lose that wonderful feeling of turning the pages of a real book. Yet, this too has its positive side, in that so much more information becomes available to the person when they are working on a digital format.
Yet, I was a bit wary of jumping into the "find the agent -- get the publisher" fray again. Having been burned so many times it is difficult to be positive about such things. Then a couple of months ago, one of my short stories, through my agent was bought and published by Istoria Books for publication in ebook format. They put "A Pot Of Gold" in their Lunch Books Series Volume 4 and once again I started paying attention to the digital world. You can see it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005EYTDU0
Which of course got me thinking. Which of course caused a small coal still burning deep inside to write and write to flare up. And as time went on that flare became a small fire. Friends, family and colleagues gently nudged me to enter the world of ebook publishing. I put it aside for as long as I could ignore those inner voices. Then one day I said to myself, "let me just see how difficult or easy this is to do".
For someone used to technology I found Amazon's KDP very intriguing. It had a lot of positive sides, and I felt that it would be a good starting point. So I read their documents (more on those in a later post as their documentation is not complete), but I jumped in. I decided the time had come to enter this world. Too much was languishing on my hard drive. Too many years of writing and writing and writing, were sitting there, with no place to go. Maybe it was all just plain horrible. Maybe it was good. Maybe it was mediocre. And maybe it was excellent. There was no way for me to really know.
I would never have taken this leap if it was the old scam of charging the author to read their work. But this was Amazon and could be trusted and it is totally free. I found all the right reasons in the right environment to go ahead. Yet still, as many of you will say, what if you wait for that agent and the publishing contract? It was and still is a question that each person must answer for themselves. I assumed it would not happen. Manuscripts mailed out languish or are never read on some desk of a publisher or agent. Rejection letters pile up. It wears you down. And even if you do have an agent, that is just part of the battle.
The digital world allows us to a great deal that would have to have been done by professionals just ten years ago. Not only the actual creation of the book, but promotion, marketing, public relations can all be done if you do know how to use and manipulate the electronic byways in the correct way. Of course, the real thing is to write, not to spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and using programs to create ebooks. However, as I realized in the old cliche - you just have to start somewhere.
I knew I would return to "Cobwebs Of The Mind". I actually enjoyed writing this blog. It was fun. People read it. They sent in letters asking why I had stopped. Actually, I had all the puzzle pieces. The question was did I have the strength once again to put them together and implement them correctly.
So I took my collection of short stories, "Ancient Tales, Modern Legends", sans "A Pot Of Gold", as it had just been published, went over it and began the process. To be honest once your book is ready and you know what you are doing, this process should take more than a couple of hours from beginning to end - the end being it is up on Amazon or Smashwords or Google Books. IPad is a different animal but then again you can use Smashwords for it. Running ahead of ourselves at the moment. I took a week, which was mostly an inner psychological fight, "why do it?".
Today the short story collection "Ancient Tales, Modern Legends" is up on Amazon. If anything, I enjoyed the actual process. Yet, as anyone who has been through it will tell you, once you start, there is a great deal more work all the time. For now, I will apply the social networking skills to try and move the book in the Kindle format.
In the next few posts I will share the process with you so that we can combine writing with the necessary and required skills of technology.
If you can afford to, and desire it, get the Kindle version of "Ancient Tales, Modern Legends". I think you will enjoy the read with 12 short stories, in approx. 320 pages (in Kindle format there really are no pages). Please also, pass this information on to others, and if you do leap in and buy it, leave a review. (I think you are required to wait 48 hours after purchase to post a review.)
For someone used to technology I found Amazon's KDP very intriguing. It had a lot of positive sides, and I felt that it would be a good starting point. So I read their documents (more on those in a later post as their documentation is not complete), but I jumped in. I decided the time had come to enter this world. Too much was languishing on my hard drive. Too many years of writing and writing and writing, were sitting there, with no place to go. Maybe it was all just plain horrible. Maybe it was good. Maybe it was mediocre. And maybe it was excellent. There was no way for me to really know.
I would never have taken this leap if it was the old scam of charging the author to read their work. But this was Amazon and could be trusted and it is totally free. I found all the right reasons in the right environment to go ahead. Yet still, as many of you will say, what if you wait for that agent and the publishing contract? It was and still is a question that each person must answer for themselves. I assumed it would not happen. Manuscripts mailed out languish or are never read on some desk of a publisher or agent. Rejection letters pile up. It wears you down. And even if you do have an agent, that is just part of the battle.
The digital world allows us to a great deal that would have to have been done by professionals just ten years ago. Not only the actual creation of the book, but promotion, marketing, public relations can all be done if you do know how to use and manipulate the electronic byways in the correct way. Of course, the real thing is to write, not to spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and using programs to create ebooks. However, as I realized in the old cliche - you just have to start somewhere.
I knew I would return to "Cobwebs Of The Mind". I actually enjoyed writing this blog. It was fun. People read it. They sent in letters asking why I had stopped. Actually, I had all the puzzle pieces. The question was did I have the strength once again to put them together and implement them correctly.
So I took my collection of short stories, "Ancient Tales, Modern Legends", sans "A Pot Of Gold", as it had just been published, went over it and began the process. To be honest once your book is ready and you know what you are doing, this process should take more than a couple of hours from beginning to end - the end being it is up on Amazon or Smashwords or Google Books. IPad is a different animal but then again you can use Smashwords for it. Running ahead of ourselves at the moment. I took a week, which was mostly an inner psychological fight, "why do it?".
Today the short story collection "Ancient Tales, Modern Legends" is up on Amazon. If anything, I enjoyed the actual process. Yet, as anyone who has been through it will tell you, once you start, there is a great deal more work all the time. For now, I will apply the social networking skills to try and move the book in the Kindle format.
In the next few posts I will share the process with you so that we can combine writing with the necessary and required skills of technology.
If you can afford to, and desire it, get the Kindle version of "Ancient Tales, Modern Legends". I think you will enjoy the read with 12 short stories, in approx. 320 pages (in Kindle format there really are no pages). Please also, pass this information on to others, and if you do leap in and buy it, leave a review. (I think you are required to wait 48 hours after purchase to post a review.)
Well I guess this means Cobwebs of the Mind is back. Not such a bad thing. Not such a bad thing at all. :)
Tags:
Tags:
Okay lets go back a few years... alright..dont get snippy..so it is more than just a few years.. sheesh.. Well we have to begin somewhere and since blogs are freeform textual expression, I will be jumping around all over the place. I don't do dates well, and I never carry a palm pilot or diary. So you will have to excuse me if I make a time machine jump back into the deep dark past when my second children's book was published. I was in the midst of a roll. I had finished my first book for children, "The Letter & The Crown" and now they wanted another. I went shopping though, for another publisher, and soon United Synagogue gave an offer, and thus the second, (and last book to be published..sighs) in the Grandfather Owl Series was born, put together and published. They still sell it at Amazon and other such esoteric places! It was fun doing it and writing it. It would be the last children's book of mine to see the light of day in publishing, and I have since stopped doing that genre. Though I will admit from time to time I get a burning urge to return to it.