September 22, 2013

Really awesome thing: The Firebirds is now available on Amazon in print and on Kindle, and it's enrolling in MatchBook. According to Amazon, once it's finished enrolling (which will probably take a few hours, so it'll be active Monday correction: MatchBook will be launched "in the coming weeks" but I'll let you know when it's live) - if you purchase a print copy, you'll be able to buy it for the Kindle at a reduced rate. I'm stoked they've come up with that.

The Firebirds is now available!

Here's a link to the Kindle edition in the Amazon US store. (The print version is in process right now.)

Summary:
Alison Stuart has one chance. She's worked hard all her life, but ten years after high school, she's a single mother doing her best to keep her head above water. When she's backed into a corner, she's given an offer she's been able to refuse before, but not this time. One night, one stranger she will never see again, one payment that will dig her out of the hole she's in—for now. At least, that was how it was supposed to be.

Owen Munsen had everything he wanted: a good job, a beautiful wife, a daughter he loved more than life itself. Then the rug was pulled out from under him, and he was left staring into the darkness, desperate for a way out. One night, one stranger he will never see again, a connection with someone that will let him forget the pain he's in for just a little while. At least, that was how it was supposed to be.

The events set in motion that night have repercussions far beyond what either of them expected.

Excerpt (beginning of Chapter 1):

Firebirds cover choices!

All right. I have four six nine choices for this cover. I have the ability to change fonts/colors of words and layouts; I have less flexibility about art, unless someone finds some free for commercial use or public domain artwork. It is, of course, okay for you to say you don't like any of the covers shown - but I would ask that you at least give me some direction on what would work instead.

Row 1

Row 2

Row 3

Row 4

Row 5


Current votes:
Row 1 left: 3
Row 1 right: 3
Row 2 left: 2
Row 2 right: 0
Row 3 left: 1
Row 3 right: 1
Row 4 left: 0
Row 4 right: 1
Row 5 left: 0

August 11, 2013

Just finished the first novel I'm planning on publishing via both Kindle and Amazon CreateSpace print-on-demand, and sent it out to my beta-readers.

I'm kind of excited about that process, but intimidated by all the choices. Covers, for instance. Cover art feels a lot more important for a print book. And choosing the font, spacing, how the page numbers will be listed, how chapter intros will be formatted... so many choices! I have a feeling it will take an entire weekend to plan and finish. On a positive note, I don't think I need a separate ISBN.

July 24, 2013

I had such plans for this summer. The time has gone by so quickly.

I had an interesting conversation last week, too. The book I'm currently writing... well, so far it's not fitting neatly into the usual genre conventions as I understand them. I'd like to hope it will find an audience, but I'm also wondering how big that audience is.

But then, maybe five people are meant to read it, and maybe those five people will find it.

Writing with the intention of publishing is a little different from writing and then deciding to publish. I know that I will publish what I'm working on right now, if I'm able to complete it to my satisfaction. But I haven't done the thing that scares me. I haven't studied bestsellers on the Amazon charts and broken down the books into a sort of algebraic equation, tried to follow it, and hoped that the end result would be enough money to help me retire in my mid-thirties. There is a difference between art and commercial art. No one's begging me to publish my books. No matter how long I write, I can't shake the feeling that if I were to stop writing, no tears would be shed over it. Oh, my unfinished fanfic series stories might be granted an unofficial ending by other authors, possibly... but otherwise, it's a little comforting to think that I could safely vanish beneath the surface, unmourned.

My mental state might be informing my writing a bit more than I should want, but for this story, I think that probably works.

Once I have it finished, I'll post the beginning, because I think readers will know fairly quickly whether they're interested and will want to read the rest or not.

And now I'm going to try to get a bit more done before I go to bed... although the book I'm currently reading is really absorbing my attention.

Paper?

I need to look into this in a little bit more detail, but I thought I'd check out the interest first.

The series I have listed for sale on Amazon right now (which has just dropped in price! Helpful link!) is for the Kindle only, i.e. electronic book format only. You don't need a Kindle to read the books, but you do need to be able to buy the books from the Amazon store and use a computer/phone to read them. Amazon also has an option called createspace that would allow me to upload the books, and they would be printed on demand for those who ordered them. I believe there is a small setup fee (I think I have to buy an ISBN for each, for instance), and considering the number of ebooks I have sold so far, I'm not sure that the setup fee would be worth the cost, but a part of me does like the idea of the books also existing in physical copies. I know that Amazon apparently doesn't have a Kindle store in every country (which surprises me), so createspace might be a good option for people who can't buy Kindle books or would prefer a print version.

So, if you're interested, let me know in a comment here - whether you're interested in existing books being published that way, or future ones being published that way. Or if you're a Kindle reader who wouldn't take advantage of paper versions being available, let me know that too. :)

June 12, 2013

I made myself a goal before I started this little adventure. After all, goals are good.

I decided that my goal would be to make $20.00 from sales of my books. (That's not the sale price; that's from the royalties on the books themselves.)

The good news is that I am almost there, which is really neat. The books have been available for just under a month. I'm not really expecting them to sell much more unless I do something else; I can't run another free Amazon promotion until the current promotion period is over, which is in August. I was very pleased with the number of downloads from that promotion. But the July 4 weekend is coming up, and I like the idea of having a sale over that weekend. I think making the first three books available for $0.99 each would be pretty awesome.

So if you know someone who might like the books, promotion time! I'm trying to consider possible promotion methods that won't make me feel like a total jerk. Maybe boosting Google presence is a good thing to do... but my instinct tells me not necessarily. Availability on platforms other than the Kindle isn't a bad idea either; I would need to prepare the books before the middle of August, though, because preparing them might take a little while.

Anyway. Something to ponder.

Right now, though, I'm working on one of the Nancy Drew fanfics I've had in progress for a bit... partially because I'm almost finished with the story, and partially because I have the instant gratification of feedback on it, which is very valuable to me.

May 25, 2013

The first ebook in my series is available on Amazon for free this weekend, for Memorial Day. (I suppose that aligning these free days with American holidays is a bit strange, since it's available in every Amazon Kindle store worldwide, but it just seemed most convenient.) I'm happy that I've seen a lot of downloads for it. :)

A link, if you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/Never-Always-Unbroken-Book-ebook/dp/B00CS5G4NC/ref=la_B00CS8Q7RW_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369493808&sr=1-1

I've put up a poll, and it seems that the preference is for me to work on the next book in that series instead of working on something wholly original - yet, anyway. I think that once I figure out how that new idea will go, I might work on both, but I'll focus more on All the Stars Afire.

Happy Memorial Day weekend, regardless! :)

May 15, 2013

I'm fighting the urge to refresh every page I have open about once every 12 seconds. I'll be happy when I've burned all this nervous energy off. More caffeine would probably be a bad idea, right?

Pshhh. Live dangerously!

On a positive note, it looks like the books are available for sale with no problems! :)

Collection post

My Amazon Author Central page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00CS8Q7RW

My Facebook like-able Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Olivia-M-Kelley/548805201832025

I would get a Twitter, but it's all I can do to post to the blasted thing now, and I'll keep my tumblr as it is.

(The books are still being processed, which is great because it means I'm burning off all this nervous energy.)

May 13, 2013

I'm uploading my books onto my Amazon KDP bookshelf right now.

And freaking out.

Things I've discovered:
-Just exporting from Pages into .doc format sucks and doesn't come up right once Amazon translates it. I have to open it in Word once I've exported it, and then save it in .htm format. Even then, Word does a few other minor bizarre things to it. (Maybe I should upgrade my version of Pages; apparently the newer one will export as epub. Mine doesn't.)
-I have always thought a 0.5" indent is too much. It doesn't seem to affect the Kindle preview, but I hate it on the Kindle Fire preview, so I made it 0.25".
-The Kindle Preview app freaks out on my computer and wants to install X11 and all other sorts of fun things happen.

I'm second-guessing everything. Pricing. Covers. My entire life thus far. I'm tempted to ask someone else to push the button for me on it. I finished putting everything in, and at the bottom of the screen I saw a "Save & Publish" button, and... oh God. Oh God.

I'm doing this. I'm going to do this. Yes. I am.

Oh God.

(ETA: I pressed the button. I PRESSED IT. Now I should probably go to sleep... or work on another story.)

(ETA2: Twelve hours after pressing the button, now the status is "Publishing"... which apparently takes another twelve hours. So they might be available for purchase around 1 a.m. Eastern time on May 15.)

covers!

I've been working on covers... and I'd like some feedback. The text is a bit bigger on these than I would design it on a print book, because it still needs to be readable when the cover is a thumbnail. Makes sense. (I went ahead and threw together the cover for the sixth book as well, although I'm still in the process of writing it.) They're in series order.

So... yes? No? Start over with something else? (ETA: I replaced the From This Day On cover; the original was a bedsheet.)

pay as you go

I've been a fanfiction author for quite a while now. Technically since I was a pre-teen, I guess, although I definitely haven't published anything I wrote before the age of probably eighteen or so. (My first story, what I can recall of it—it is lost somewhere in the attic, I think/hope—was hilariously bad. I can't imagine how much it would make me cringe to read it now.) I'm used to being "paid" in comments/feedback, and sometimes on FFN I'm paid with follows/favorites instead of comments, and sometimes on AO3 I'm paid with kudos/bookmarks instead of comments.

And because I love that form of payment so much, I try to reciprocate. If I take the time to read a story, I try to leave a comment, but sometimes it's very hard to know what to say. "That was great!" sounds so trite. "Awesome story!" Again, is there any way to be less original? "You fucking rock!" Hmm. Sounds almost stalker-esque, eh. So I'm sad to say that sometimes I have indeed paid with kudos instead of words.

Professional authors, though, are paid in money instead of comments or verbal appreciation from the readers, generally. But the money doesn't come after the book is read; instead, it comes before. And then, of course, a person might buy another book in the series to show appreciation for that first book, or as a gift to someone else... so in a way, that's appreciation. Kind of.

However, now that I'm thinking about publishing, and possibly getting paid for my work for the first time, I'm falling back on what others have discovered or are saying about digital publishing. But I wonder... if I gave my ebook to someone without asking that person to pay up front, and said, after she (or he? Are men real?) finished reading it, "So, how much would you pay for the experience you just had?" I wonder what would happen. After all, I pay a set amount of money for concert tickets, movie tickets, actual books themselves, and hope to be entertained at least equally. But what is five dollars' worth of entertainment? What about fifty? What about a hundred? What about that concert where I paid for a right-smack-in-front-of-the-stage pit area ticket and was only able to stay for four songs because I became incredibly sick? Bands don't pro-rate, and I'm not exactly saying they should.

And sometimes I pay $10 for a DVD that I think is easily worth $20, because I know how much I love it and how much it will continue to entertain me. (Anchorman? Yep.) On the other hand, no matter how much I enjoy watching Chopped, I still think paying $3 per episode to watch it via iTunes is ridiculous.

What about other people who have been reading my work for free all this time? I'm thinking about offering a coupon to them once I have ebooks available for sale, as a way to show my appreciation. After all, they didn't have to read what I wrote. They still don't. But they have, and I'm very grateful.

April 26, 2013 - counting chickens

Because I like to worry about things well ahead of time (or not at all), I did research today on paying taxes on royalties received from book self-publishing. (It looks like I'll be able to file my taxes using cheap tax prep software the way I always have, which is nice.) Then I did research on metadata. (I'm wondering how many terms or words I can put into metadata - and I wonder how hilarious that's going to get. Does anyone even search Amazon for "painplay"? Is "erotica with plot" even a thing yet, or is that considered "hardcore romance"?)

Now I'm really trying to tell myself not to a) convert the other book I have written, which I talked about in the last post, or b) start on an idea that has suddenly become very exciting. I've figured out how it starts, but I don't know where it will go after that. I think I had better have at least a vague game plan before I start, though, or else I feel it will ramble or get otherwise out of control.

Confession: I don't have much confidence in my own writing abilities, but I do love to write. I also write the kind of things I would like to read. Considering some of the topics I've written about, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Oh, I wish I didn't have a weekend full of non-writing work in front of me.

April 25, 2013

Finished converting five stories into ebook format - practically. Now I'm just waiting on cover art. :D

Also had the idea yesterday to do another one, but I probably wouldn't publish it until the second book in that series was done.

April 19, 2013

I've decided to take a series of stories I've written and publish them via Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing. I'm excited about it! I can't wait until I have them ready to publish. :)