Formatting your Masterpiece for the Kindle

Seeing as I said I’d post this two months ago, I thought it was high time I pulled my finger out and actually did it. Hellos are due to some lovely new followers and also a promise that my blog isn’t usually so slow to update. Usually…

Anyway, you came here to learn how to make your work publishable for the Kindle so let’s get on with it, shall we? Everyone seems to have a slightly different way of doing this and the method I’m about to show you is simply what works for me, cobbled together from information written by other helpful people. I live in the Dark Ages and still use Word 2003, but these instructions remain valid for later versions of Word; you just might have to look a bit harder to find some of the features we’ll be using.

Before I begin I’m assuming your novel is saved as one long Word document and not as individual chapters. If it’s not, I’m afraid you’ll have to open up each chapter and cut and paste the whole thing into one document. Don’t worry, I’ll wait here for you…

If you want to include a table of contents (essential if you also want to publish to Smashwords), now might be a good time to create it. If you haven’t already, you’ll also want to include some sort of copyright notice. I use a standard one which looks like this:

 

Dunraven Road

Copyright 2009 – Caroline Barnard-Smith

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people, or events, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

The right of Caroline Barnard-Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

 

You can add other things to your copyright notice if you’d like. I also include credits for my cover designer and cover art and tag on a link to my website.

The layout of my novels looks something like this: Title page – Copyright notice – Dedication – Contents – NOVEL – Acknowledgements – short author bio (About the Author) – blurbs for my other books (Also Available)

Of course, you can set your work out any way you want to, this is just to give you an idea if you don’t have any clue where to start.

I’ll usually include a short preview of one of my other novels as well, about three chapters. Being able to include things like this is one of the great advantages of e-publishing, so don’t miss the opportunity to introduce people to more of your work while your book is still in their hot little hands.

Okay, now I recommend doing what the Smashwords.com Style Guide refers to as ‘nuking’ your document. It sounds more complicated than it actually is; just highlight your entire document and cut and paste into a blank Notepad file. Then highlight the text in the Notepad file and cut and paste into a new, blank Word file. Doing this means that any crappy or corrupt formatting is erased and hopefully you’ll save yourself a lot of problems further down the road.

Next you’ll want to turn on Show All. Show All is your friend. Either find a button on your tool bar that looks like a backwards ‘P’ (this,  in other words) or hit Ctrl + *. Your manuscript should now look like a maniacal clown scribbled all over it but don’t panic, it’s a good thing. All the backward ‘P’s indicate a place where you pressed Enter (or Return if you’re rocking it old school), while the dots appear every time you hit the space bar. Having Show All turned on is really helpful when you’re trying to achieve a uniform look, with a certain number of spaces beneath each chapter or section heading for instance. Now you can actually count how many Enter marks there are, instead of trying to guess. You’ll also be able to see how many times you’ve left a double space at the end of sentences. This one can be a hard habit to break and I do it myself, but it’s not necessary on the Kindle.

An easy way to get rid of them all in one go is to use Word’s Find and Replace function (Ctrl + F). First get rid of those double spaces by simply tapping the space bar twice in the ‘Find What:’ field and pressing ‘Find Next’. Obviously, it looks like you haven’t entered anything for Word to find, but trust me this works. Next you’ll want to get rid of any errant Tabs, usually found at the beginning of paragraphs. Again, this isn’t necessary on the Kindle and they will play havoc with your beautifully polished formatting. Instead of pressing Tab in the Find What field, this time you need to type ^t. Voila, you have an extra-space-and-Tab free document.

Worried that your document all bleeds together without any Tabs or spaces? You can stop worrying because next we’ll be setting up your paragraphs. Highlight the entire text and go to Format / Paragraph. A box like this will pop up:

Adjust the settings as follows:

Alignment: Left

Indentation -

Left: 0 cm

Right: 0 cm

Special -

First line: 0.5 cm

Spacing -

Before: 0 pt

After: 0 pt

Line spacing: 1.5 lines

These settings are just a guide and can be played around with. I use a first line indentation of 0.5 cm, but this can be made larger if you prefer. Just remember that Kindle won’t display first-line indents greater than 1.5 cm. The spacing can also be played around with depending on your preferences. A spacing of 6 pt before and after paragraphs and single line spacing also looks nice, but be aware that some readers find too much space around their paragraphs distracting.

Now you can manually set the nitty gritty elements. This is the bit that takes time, so get comfortable! All your original formatting will have been lost when you nuked the document, so now you’ll have to go through and replace any pictures and put things that were centred back in the centre (by right clicking the object or paragraph and selecting Paragraph / Alignment: Centered). Likewise, anything that was italicised or in bold will also have to be done again.

There will probably be things in your document that you don’t want to be indented along with the rest of your paragraphs. These could include the title page, any copyright notices, the table of contents or the first line of new sections/chapters. Unfortunately, Kindle won’t recognise a first line indent of 0, but you can trick it by right clicking the object or paragraph in question and selecting Indentation – Special: First line, By: 0.1 cm. This creates such a teeny tiny indentation, the reader won’t notice it.

Last but not least, if you have a table of contents you’ll need to link all those chapter headings up to their respective chapters. To do this, highlight each chapter title throughout the document and go to Insert / Bookmark. You’ll be prompted to give the bookmark a name so just call it something easily identifiable like ‘Chap1’, ‘Chap2’ etc. When you’ve done this, go back to your table of contents; highlight each chapter title in the list and right click. Select Hyperlink and click the Bookmarks button in the box that pops up. Now you can scroll through the list and marry each bookmark up with its respective chapter heading. Simple but repetitive, think of it as a type of meditation.

Finally, save your document as Web Page, Filtered. This will produce a .htm file of your work and a separate folder with any pictures you’ve used in it. Highlight the .htm file and the folder and right click. Select Send to, then select Compressed (zipped) folder. A .zip file will magically appear in the same place where you saved your .htm file. This is what you upload to Kindle Direct Publishing.

With a few tweaks and additions and a quick perusal of their Style Guide, you’ll also be able to upload your newly formatted masterpiece to Smashwords. They will distribute it to Apple’s iBookstore and Barnes & Noble among others, so it’s well worth doing. That’s it; crack open the champagne, you’re a published author.

If anyone knows an easier way of completing any of these steps, or a better way, please feel free to comment!

The Fevered Dream of a Two Toilet Household

I have very good excuses for the recent lack of posting (aren’t they always?) After months of saving and searching, we’ve finally found a new house and are busily preparing to move in. This is both scary and exciting because Mr Smith and I have lived in the same small flat for 8 years now (wow). We’re on the first floor and there’s no balcony so in the summer you either have to travel to park your arse outside or hang your head out of the window like a sad dog when it gets hot (which it does frequently thanks to the floor to ceiling windows). There’s also no parking space which has been a bloody nightmare with the Sprogling in tow, struggling to find a space next to a precinct frequented by the shuffling hordes of the Grey Dawn. I think I’ve actually moaned about my flat here before, this all sounds horribly familiar… Anyway, the rather drawn out point is that I no longer have to moan! I have an actual house! A house with a whole other level – just like entering a new dimension every time you stumble across the stairs; with a downstairs loo (TWO toilets?! madness!) and a yard with a washing line… and a shed godamnit! It’s awesome but it’s kept us busy (the carpets were soaked with the interesting smell of “cat perfume” and the oven had either been recently used to bake mud pies or had never been cleaned since rolling off the assembly line), hence the radio silence.

Hand on heart, I will try to post the long promised guide to formatting a text for Kindle sometime this week, it’s been almost finished in draft form since Christmas… In the meantime, I’m reposting an email sent out by Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. It was sent at the start of the month so I don’t know if any of the information is out of date yet, but if you’re a writer or if you just don’t believe in arbitrary censorship, it’s worth a read.

________________________________________

PAYPAL CENSORSHIP UPDATE
________________________________________

In case you haven’t heard, about two weeks ago, PayPal contacted Smashwords and
gave us a surprise ultimatum: Remove all titles containing bestiality, rape
or incest, otherwise they threatened to deactivate our PayPal account. We engaged
them in discussions and on Monday they gave us a temporary reprieve as we continue
to work in good faith to find a suitable solution.

PayPal tells us that their crackdown is necessary so that they can remain in
compliance with the requirements of the banks and credit card associations (likely
Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, though they didn’t mention them
by name).

Last Friday, I sent the following email to our erotica authors and publishers:
https://www.smashwords.com/press/release/27 Then on Monday, I issued an update,
and announced we would delay enforcement of PayPal’s guidelines so we and PayPal
could continue our discussions: https://www.smashwords.com/press/release/28

THE PROBLEM:

PayPal is asking us to censor legal fiction. Regardless of how one views topics
of rape, bestiality and incest, these topics are pervasive in mainstream fiction.
We believe this crackdown is really targeting erotica writers. This is unfair,
and it marks a slippery slope. We don’t want credit card companies or financial
institutions telling our authors what they can write and what readers can read.
Fiction is fantasy. It’s not real. It’s legal.

THE SOLUTION:

There’s no easy solution. Legally, PayPal and the credit card companies probably
have the right to decide how their services are used. Unfortunately, since they’re
the moneyrunners, they control the oxygen that feeds digital commerce.

Many Smashwords authors have suggested we find a different payment processor.
That’s not a good long term solution, because if credit card companies are behind
this, they’ll eventually force crackdowns elsewhere. PayPal works well for us.
In addition to running all credit card processing at the Smashwords.com store,
PayPal is how we pay all our authors outside the U.S. My conversations with
PayPal are ongoing and have been productive, yet I have no illusion that the
road ahead will be simple, or that the outcome will be favorable.

BUILDING A COALITION OF SUPPORT:

Independent advocacy groups are considering taking on the PayPal censorship case.
I’m supporting the development of this loose-knit coalition of like-minded groups
who believe that censorship of legal fiction should not be allowed. We will grow
the coalition. Each group will have its own voice and tactics I’m working with
them because we share a common cause to protect books from censorship. Earlier
today I had conversations with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), The
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National
Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC). I briefed them on the Smashwords/PayPal
situation, explained the adverse affect this crackdown will have on some of our
authors and customers, and shared my intention to continue working with PayPal
in a positive manner to move the discussion forward.

The EFF blogged about the issue a few days ago: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/02/legal-censorship-paypal-makes-habit-deciding-what-users-can-read
Today, ABFFE and NCAC issued a press release: http://www.scribd.com/doc/83549049/NCAC-ABFFE-Letter-To-PayPal-eBay-re-Ebook-Refusal-2012

I will not be on the streets with torch in hand calling for PayPal’s head, but
I will encourage interested parties to get involved and speak their piece. This
is where you come in…

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern
all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the
ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing
without the (fading) protective patina of a “traditional publisher” to lend them
legitimacy. We indies only have each other.

Several Smashwords authors have contacted me to stress that this censorship affects
women disproportionately. Women write a lot of the erotica, and they’re also
the primary consumers of erotica. They’re also the primary consumers of mainstream
romance, which could also come under threat if PayPal and the credit card companies
were to overly enforce their too-broad and too-nebulous obsenity clauses (I think
this is unlikely, but at the same time, why would dubious consent be okay in
mainstream romance but not okay in erotica? If your write paranormal, can your
were-creatures not get it on with one another, or is that bestiality? The insanity
needs to stop here. These are not questions an author, publisher or distributor
of legal fiction should have to answer.).

All writers and their readers should stand up and voice their opposition to financial
services companies censoring books. Authors should have the freedom to publish
legal fiction, and readers should have the freedom to read what they want.

These corporations need to hear from you. Pick up the phone and call them.
Email them. Start petitions. Sign petitions. Blog your opposition to censorship.
Encourage your readers to do the same. Pass the word among your social networks.
Contact your favorite bloggers and encourage them to follow this story. Contact
your local newspaper and offer to let them interview you so they can hear a local
author’s perspective on this story of international significance. If you have
connections to mainstream media, encourage them to pick up on the story. Encourage
them to call the credit card companies and pose this simple question, “PayPal
says they’re trying to enforce the policies of credit card companies. Why are
you censoring legal fiction?”

Below are links to the companies waiting to hear from you. Click the link and
you’ll find their phone numbers, executive names and postal mailing addresses.
Be polite, respectful and professional, and encourage your friends and followers
to do the same. Let them know you want them out of the business of censoring
legal fiction.

Tell the credit card companies you want them to give PayPal permission to sell
your ebooks without censorship or discrimination. Let them know that PayPal’s
policies are out of step with the major online ebook retailers who already accept
your books as they are. Address your calls, emails (if you can find the email)
and paper letters (yes paper!) to the executives. Post open letters to them
on your blog, then tweet and Facebook hyperlinks to your letters. Force the
credit card companies to join the discussion about censorship. And yes, express
your feelings and opinions to PayPal as well. Don’t scream at them. Ask them
to work on your behalf to protect you and your readers from censorship. Tell
them how their proposed censorship will harm you and your fellow writers.

Visa:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=V+Profile

American Express:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=AXP+Profile

MasterCard:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=MA+Profile

Discover:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=DFS+Profile

Ebay (owns PayPal):

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=ebay+Profile

_________

Starting Sunday, if our email systems can handle it, we will send out an email
to several hundred thousand registered Smashwords members who are opted in to
receive occasional Smashwords service updates. The email will combine Read an
Ebook Week with the censorship call to action. Let’s start a little fire, shall
we?

Thank you for your continuing support of Smashwords. With your help, we can
move mountains.

Best wishes,

Mark

Mark Coker
Founder
Smashwords

http://smashwords.com

blog: http://blog.smashwords.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/markcoker

A Tale of Three Covers

So, my earnings from publishing independently have surpassed my earnings from publishing with a small press. Exciting, right?! Of course, I didn’t have to earn very much to reach this goal (seriously), but it’s quite a personal milestone nonetheless I think it’s helping that I’ve been slowly uploading my back catalogue. You can now buy Dunraven Road (my first dark fantasy novel featuring the indomitable vampire Dylan), A Trio of Devils, a collection of three horror/paranormal short stories (including The Lycanthrope Technician which was awarded the title of Dark Fire Fiction’s Featured Story) and a standalone short called The Lost Fae Realms. In a bid to save some much needed cash, I threw my fear of crappy art skills to the wind and created the covers myself (as you may or may not be able to tell…)

In the sleepy backwater of Dunraven Road, a group of hedonistic friends are trapped in a deadly prison of their own making. When Zach, their enigmatic leader, brings his long term plans to fruition and paves the way for a sadistic vampire cult, their fragile world begins to break apart.

Fuelled by dangerous passions and an insatiable craving for ‘red’, the group must decide whether to succumb to the sweet lure of the abyss, or stand and fight for their very survival.

Amazon Kindle | Smashwords

Devil the First…
Luxuriating beneath the Spanish sun, the most unlikely of vampires plies his trade in awe and seduction; the master of his realm until a fragile human girl appears intent on tearing his comfortable world apart.

Devil the Second…
Tired and bored during her vigil in the lab one night, a lowly technician wonders what it would be like to approach the beast in her care, to feel his immense power pulsing in the skin just beneath her finger tips. One scratch later and she finds herself sweating in her bed, dreaming of flying across the forest floor on sure feet, propelled by the bunched muscles of a colossal animal. Will she be able to return to her ordinary life when she wakes?

Devil the Third…
Marisa, a terrifying vision of beauty and madness, contemplates an eternity of solitude when her only fledging becomes a bitter disappointment who breaks her heart and scatters the last of her sanity.

Three short stories, three deliciously seductive yet ultimately cruel characters from the author of dark fantasy novels Dunraven Road and Jinn Nation.

Amazon Kindle | Smashwords

After a century of sleep Briana wakes up alone, naked, terrified and seared with blue flame. Once she had been part of a great and wise population, known by humans as fairies, elves or angels. They were explained away in folk stories, made tiny and inconsistent. None of the stories grasped their true power, their ultimate purpose.

But that was a lifetime ago. Now the fae have been extinguished, brought down by petty mortal disease as the earth itself sickened and failed. Briana believes her kin are all dead, but another has survived. Amid the filth and desperation of a human tent city her brother Jinx has set himself up as a god, pushing Total World Immersion upon the miserable population. If you can imagine it, you can programme it and actually feel as if you are there. A city, a garden, a vast ship sailing the ocean. Anything is possible. TWI technology has both revolutionised and divided the modern world. Some think TWI is evil. They worry that humanity will never want to venture forth into the real world again, not when the realms of the imagination are so much richer. But Jinx argues that these people have nothing left to venture into. Will Briana join Jinx in what she sees as a betrayal of their own kind and their love of the earth, or will she walk away from her only kin and forge her own path in this terrifying new world?

Amazon Kindle | Smashwords

I was quite proud of my little self, particularly with the Trio of Devils cover because it actually incorporates three different pictures (if there are any graphic designers out there reading this, you’re probably trying not to laugh but this was quite a feat for me!) When I showed them to my digital art loving sister and her digital art dabbling boyfriend however, I was met with raised eyebrows and barely disguised smirks. Apparently The Lost Fae Realms cover is “too busy” and the models on the A Trio of Devils cover look like they’re trying too hard to be “goth”. Sigh. They did like the fonts though…

I stumbled across this a couple of weeks ago, an interactive book cover: Daylight Saving by Edward Hogan

Just try running your mouse over it, it’s strangely hypnotic. It seems like a fairly simple idea but if all ebook covers become interactive, I may have to give up my amateur efforts, dig deep and find a professional designer. I particularly like the “Share” button on the bottom, very clever; although I wonder how it would work with a non-watery themed novel?

Before I go, I just wanted to mention that my novel Jinn Nation is currently part of Patti Roberts’s Christmas Bloggerthon. This is a massive competition spanning three blogs in which you have the chance to win one of 90+ ebooks. From Patti’s website: 3 bloggers will battle it be the first with 100 new followers. Lots of different ebook titles on each blog means – Lots of WINNERS! You’d be crazy not to enter for an opportunity to win!!! New ebook titles and covers coming soon…..Keep and eye out for Author Interviews… Reviews and more on your bloggers site! Find out more and enter.

The Sprogling says... See you next time, puny mortals! Mwahaha!

Art or Business? My Take on the John Locke Method

As you may or may not know, I’m currently halfway through my very first blog tour with my new release, Jinn Nation. As well as being a marketing strategy in and of itself, running the tour and getting people to read my guest posts and enter the giveaways has required a lot of marketing and promotion (ie. a lot of social networking). Although I’ve loved doing this and have met some fantastic people along the way, I’m almost looking forward to next week when the tour’s over and I can get back to what I (hope I) do best: writing (I can’t actually manage both, it’s too hard with a 4-month-old!) This mad marketing has got me thinking about the ‘John Locke method’ of selling e-books, a method I wouldn’t personally adopt because for me it means coming down on the side of writing as business rather than writing as art, and this makes the English Literature graduate in me a sad panda.

Not that the John Locke method doesn’t work of course; it works very, very well. If you don’t already know, John Locke is the first indie author to sell 1 million e-books for the Amazon Kindle, an accolade that was previously only held by bestselling traditionally published authors such as Stieg Larsson, James Patterson and Lee Child. One of his latest projects is a how-to guide to marketing and selling your self-published novel called How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months!; the blueprint for the ‘John Locke method’, which seems to basically comprise of pricing books at $0.99 and utilising Twitter. There’s nothing wrong with that (although I often wonder how people view $0.99 novels, whether or not they think they must be crappy because they’re so cheap; but then John Locke has sold over a million books in just 5 months doing this and I definitely have not), but it was the line “my books may not be great literature, but they certainly don’t suck… I no longer have to prove my books are as good as theirs [traditional publishers]” from the book’s sample that put me off purchasing it.

I can’t help but believe that books shouldn’t be a ‘paint by numbers’ affair, written only to make money. I think they should be loved and sweated over, whether it’s a novel about a vampire dating a high school cheerleader or an opus dealing with the stuff of the soul. I know writers don’t aim to live in poverty and it would be weird if they did. Marketing and promotion will always be necessary if you want people to take notice of your work, I just feel that as an indie author it can be all too easy to find yourself focusing solely on the marketing, hopped up on success stories like John Locke and Amanda Hocking. Before long you’re studying the bestseller lists and adapting your work to copy what is selling instead of being true to your own interests and inspirations. But maybe that’s just me. After all, didn’t Dickens often write just for the money? He wrote his novels in segments to be published in magazines, each one ending on a cliff-hanger, and I’m sure I read somewhere that he wrote A Christmas Carol to make some quick cash for the festive season, little knowing how popular and influential it would become. I suppose Charles Dickens and John Locke might have made good Twitter buddies if they’d lived in the same century.

There’s still time to follow my blog tour if you haven’t been doing it already (and if you have, you rock!) Vampires.com have already kindly posted an interview with me, and later today they’ll be posting my guest blog about why I created my vampire character, Dylan (although to be honest, he snuck into my brain fully formed and demanded to be included in the completely different story I was writing; there wasn’t that much ‘creation’ involved, it was more of a hold-up on his part). There’s also still time to read my interview and enter the giveaway to win an e-copy of Jinn Nation in any format of your choice (I’m not formatist!) over at Oh, for the Hook of a Book!, or head to Donna’s Blog Home to read a guest blog about my inspirations and check out the best review I’ve ever had I’ve also been leaving exclusive excerpts of Jinn Nation all over the web (I know, I really should clean up after myself…) So if you fancy reading a snippet from my novel that isn’t included in the bog standard Kindle sample, have yourself a look at these wonderful blogs:

No Trees Harmed
Donna’s Blog Home
Oh, for the Hook of a Book!

Look out for more giveaways, excerpts and blog posts towards the end of the week!

The New Novel is Unleashed!

I can’t quite believe it but I stuck to my own deadline (there’s a first time for everything) and Jinn Nation is now available to buy for the Amazon Kindle – Amazon UK / Amazon US. It’s also listed at Smashwords where you can get a copy for your Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo and lots of other e-readers.

I haven’t used Smashwords before but I was impressed. It was really easy to upload there and the formatting I had to do wasn’t that bad. I’m planning on writing a blog soon about how I got Jinn Nation ready for publication – how I formatted it and how I got it onto Amazon and Smashwords; so keep an eye out if you’re interested in doing this for yourself. There may also be a future blog about marketing, although that’s something I’m still in the process of doing myself!

So go buy, read, tell me what you think. For a limited time, Jinn Nation will be at the very special price of £0.95 / $0.99, bargain!

The Jinn Are Coming…

Finally, I have a publication date for Jinn Nation! I’m officially setting it for a week’s time – Saturday 2 July, although you’ll probably be able to purchase the Amazon Kindle version a lot sooner. I’m planning to cover the other major ebook readers too, so don’t feel left out if you own a Nook or an iPad. It will also be available as a paperback in the very near future. So if you like novels about sadistic vampires with a vulnerable streak, unhinged psychics and beautiful goddesses with a penchant for megalomania, all set against a global stage, like my Facebook page or follow my Twitter feed to be among the first to know where and how to buy it. You can read an exclusive extract at my website.

Here’s the cover I’ve been so excited about:

This is so much better than anything I could have come up with on my own; I’m so glad that the rather excellent Andy Isaacs agreed to do it for me (my knowledge of graphic design is painfully limited).

As happens with most things I attempt to do within any sort of sensible timeframe, the publication date is a little later than I’d planned. Most days I’ve been working with the Sprogling firmly tucked into one elbow, leaving me with only one hand to type with. I love that she’s a cuddly baby, but the fact that she usually hates to be put down for any length of time does make life interesting. Especially if you desperately need to do the housework or take a shower. She’s also started to smile properly now (she’s 9 weeks old today), so obviously every time she does it, all work has to stop while I marvel at how gorgeous she is.

Proof! (or just an excuse to show off more pictures of my newborn, you decide).

I’ve just realised that I’ve laid all the blame for my own slackness on my child. Shameful. Well, my next project shouldn’t take me so long to finish. I’ve just reacquired the rights to my first novel, Dunraven Road, and I’m planning on republishing it with a shiny new cover and bonus material in the very near future. After that I’ll be continuing to write my new novel – one-handed no less, with a smiling Sprogling curled against my arm

Headlines and Deadlines

I’m still excited about my new venture into indie publishing but I’m also starting to get freaked out by my own self-imposed deadlines (eek). You see, there’s a rather major thing happening right now that I haven’t blogged about yet… I’m expecting my very first Sprogling (i.e. baby) very soon (April soon, in fact!) and although I’d planned to publish Jinn Nation before she arrives, I’m getting scared by the scarce amount of time I seem to have left. Still so much to do! I’ve decided to just chill the hell out and see how it goes. I’m aiming for an early April release (book, not baby! – she’s not due until the 13th ) but if I have to wait until after she’s born, I’ll just approve proofs, update websites and promote in-between nappy changes. They do sleep sometimes, right?…

I realise this all makes me sound a lot less excited than I actually am about the impending Sprogling… I actually can’t wait for her to get here, making my current relationship with the notion of time rather complicated. Sigh.

So what of Jinn Nation? Plans for its publication are definitely progressing, whether or not I have the occasional freak-out to suggest otherwise. The cover is currently in the hands of a very talented designer and I’ve been so excited about the drafts I’ve seen so far – it’s going to be awesome! I’ve also redesigned my website to include the book (feel free to laugh at my meagre excuse for a Jinn Nation cover – it’s just a placeholder until the real thing is ready ) and my first indie effort – The Undead Alliance. I didn’t code a thing this time, which only felt mildly weird! Instead, I signed up with Wix.com where you can build a free Flash website entirely online in a drag and drop stylee. You have to put up with a small banner across the bottom of your webpage (you can pay for a premium package that gets rid of this), but I was really impressed with the amount of effects and features you can use. I had fun anyway Wix also host the pages on their own servers. Go check me out now I’m all Flashy! – www.carolinebarnardsmith.co.uk

I’ve also finally perfected the blurb for Jinn Nation:

In Dunraven Road, Dylan wanted to tear the world down – now he only wants to find his place in it.

Once, the vampire Dylan had feared nothing and no one. He’d rampaged throughout the world on a seemingly never ending quest to fill his eternal years with the finest, most outrageous extravagances; with exquisite, soft-limbed young women and copious amounts of rich, vibrating blood. But life, however full of joy, inevitably changes.

Finding himself alone for the first time in his long unlife, Dylan turns to the preternatural race of savage creatures called the jinn – a path that inevitably leads him to Christa, a strangely childlike woman with the power to control minds and read thoughts. Mutually intrigued by each other, they set out on a blood-soaked road trip that crosses the United States and the Atlantic Ocean; finally leading them beyond the world itself to the mysterious fae kingdoms of the Inbetween.

What do you think? Suitably appetite-whetting? I’ve tried to include more detail than I did in Dunraven Road’s blurb, because I remember being told it didn’t give enough away to make some readers want to buy it. Which sucked, obviously.

I’m hoping to have a sample of the novel up on my website by next week.

Just before I sign off, I have to mention this blog post by indie author Katie Salidas: Self-Publishing & Marketing Advice – What I’ve learned this past year. If, like me, you’re new to all this indie publishing malarkey (or to being published in general), the information in this blog is seriously worth checking out. Invaluable.

I’m off now to complete some more final polishes on Jinn Nation, here’s hoping I’m less freaked out the next time I blog!

The New Californian Gold Rush

I’m so happy to announce that my very first offering for the Amazon Kindle is now live on their site – mostly because formatting it took so bloody long.  It’s my zombie novella, The Undead Alliance.  

Want a blurb?

A new novella from the author of Dunraven Road.

He’s a stinking, undead, rotting carcass with unfortunate brain activity. She’s a human captive, kept alive so that her vital organs can one day help sustain her rotting zombie masters. Romeo and Juliet they ain’t.

Gabriel thought that waking up as a zombie was the end of the world. In fact, a new world was just beginning – a world of dark, creeping horror overseen by a decomposing eccentric in a pirate costume calling himself Captain James.

Five short years later and the dead have risen up to claim the UK. Gabriel finds himself in charge of the North Sector Harvesting Plant, watching the daily influx of the living with a weary eye. Having become increasingly disillusioned with The Undead Alliance and its practices, the arrival of the very human Daisy seems to be his salvation – but who would ever love a zombie? If he wants to convince her he’s more than just the sum of his maggot infested parts, he’ll have to break her out of the harvesting plant and defy everything the Alliance stands for. All of which is easier said than done, especially when he has to deal with the unwanted attentions of Princess – the icy paramour of Captain James himself.

Is Gabriel strong enough to turn against his charismatic yet ultimately evil leader? Or will he watch Daisy die?

I’m getting ahead of myself though, perhaps I should explain how I came to the decision to self-publish (which will henceforth be known as indie publishing, because it sounds sooo much cooler)…

For those of you who’ve been listening to my radio show, you’ll know I’ve been talking about e-publishing and the Kindle in particular, especially since Amazon recorded astronomical Kindle sales over the Christmas period. So many sales in fact, that at one point the Kindle was outselling the latest Harry Potter book. I’ve always been interested in digital publishing, although back in 2008 I was lamenting the fact that “In the early days… ebooks also suffered from the same snobbery used to demean print-on-demand services. If you had to resort to publishing through an ebook publisher, your book wasn’t worth jack.” Well, I think I can safely say that things have now changed. The Kindle and other major ebook readers such as Barnes & Noble’s Nook steadily grew in popularity over the course of last year, meaning of course that ebooks did too – particularly those published by indie authors who unlike the traditional publishers were putting out their work at a decent price. Paranormal romance author and indie publishing’s current heroine Amanda Hocking has sold over 185, 000 books since April 2010. E-publishing has suddenly become interesting.

Now, of course you’ll always be able to find self-published novels of the same calibre as some of the drek that often stinks up the place over at Lulu; but authors such as J.A. Konrath and H.P. Mallory are proof that this is no longer the norm. J.A. Konrath in particular propounds upon the benefits of hiring professional book designers and cover artists. It seems there really is nothing a traditional publisher can do that an author can’t do for themselves. Social networking even makes promotion easier (and cheaper), often bypassing the need for the sort of large scale advertising campaigns employed by the traditional print publishers (campaigns which have become infrequent to non-existent in recent years anyway, giving new authors about as much support as a cheap sports bra).

Perhaps what has really spurred me on to try my hand at indie publishing though is the amount of control you retain; not only over the content of your work, but over the royalties you can accrue. Many authors claim they’re not indie publishing simply because the traditional publishers rejected them, they’re indie publishing because they get a better deal. All of which is starting to make the traditional publishers and agents sweat into their designer suits.

In the wise words of J.A. Konrath:

“This is the California Gold Rush of 1849. Will everyone get rich? No. But damn near everyone who tries will make more money than they would if they try the traditional publishing route.”

Why wouldn’t you mark out a spot and start sifting for gold?

So, The Undead Alliance is my trial run. I’m planning to do similar things with my latest novel, Jinn Nation and I’m excited