As a writer in this day and age, we all have hundreds of options available for us to run out and get the story out there. You can use Amazon, Lulu, iBooks and the list goes on and on. Which one do you choose? Which will get you the best audience? How do you do formatting?
Okay, I’ll be honest. I’m not going to talk about any of that. I’m no expert. I’m not even a novice. But I’ve got some nifty experiences to share.
So as you may see down the side bar to your right (no, your other right) there are three options for my short story, Circle of Vengeance. They’re conveniently the above three examples. For each of these there has been a drama in one way or another, from fonts to random characters in conversion (I’m looking at you, Amazon).
So I chose the iBookstore first because frankly, loads of people I know have iPads. Even more people have iPhones. If I combined the two, that’s a lot of people to get my story completely free of charge! So I browsed the iBooks Author app for Mac and settled in converting my story. It went super well and I submitted it. Long story short, bam! Self Published. However some fun facts! First, iBooks is on iPhone, the only problem is books created with iBooks Author are iPad and Mac only. Fine, no worries. But there’s more! Only certain templates do landscape or portrait meaning if you turn my book on an iPad, it maintains its orientation. I’ll fix that as soon as I can.
Next I wanted more people to have access to my story, so I rushed out and looked into Lulu.com. Sweet a PDF format for general use! Don’t mind if I do! I uploaded and everything seemingly went well. No bad feedback and when I look at the file, it is as I expected. Easy and decent. Not bad. However it wouldn’t let me convert to ePub. Fine, I figured I could just head to Amazon and get an ePub there. Simple, right?
Wrong! So I’ve submitted and resubmitted my story a few times and tried to get rid of the little “i” beside my name at the very beginning. As it is a ghost, I cannot rid myself of it. Fine. Also, I am stuck putting in a price of ninety nine cents for what they estimate to be twenty seven pages. It sells itself really. *Facepalm* So at least people can read my story on an iPhone now, right? Yes! With the free Kindle app and by paying a dollar for it. I cannot change the price and I have tried to get them to price match both Lulu.com and the iBookstore which are free. They won’t. Curse them I say! Curse them!
Also, embarrassingly enough, I bought my own book through the Kindle store. Strangely enough, my purchase has yet to show up in their sales figures, which makes me wonder how accurate they are. Unless I don’t count because I am the author… who knows really? Technology is awesome… until it makes no sense!
Because I’m in a fantastic mood tonight and back on track with blog posts, I’m going to share a few things with you! If you’ve read any of my posts of interest, you may recognise these details! Anyway, gather ’round for story time with TJ!
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Everyone has to get a first job. Everyone starts somewhere. Some people got a paper route. Others worked for their parents. Maybe they got a job where their friends were working. Maybe they focused on studies as they progressed through high school. Me? Oh, well… I tried really hard to get a job back in my small hometown of Sackville, Nova Scotia. For those of us who grew up there, it felt busy enough and it felt big enough. Now that I’ve seen Rome, London, Paris and Sydney… Sackville? Yeah, more like a rural town. Anyway, I digress.
So jobs were hard to come by and I was stuck in a rut. I handed out resumes and everyone was asking for more experience. How can I get a job to get experience when apparently I need experience to get a job? Seemed like a subtle way of saying no politely. Anyway I went around town and gave out fifty resumes. Finally after weeks of no callbacks, I gave in and phoned in for a favour. One of my friends’ moms worked at the local mall (it has since been replaced by a strip mall) and she said she’d let me know if something came up. February passed by, followed into March and then finally came my call! I had a job! It wasn’t much but it was three days of solid work!
Three days as… The Easter Bunny. I begged and pleaded for anything else. Toilet cleaning. Anything at all. Instead, I decided to give in and not look that gift horse in the mouth. I took the job because hey, ten dollars an hour and free chocolate was as good as it gets at sixteen. I walked that mall like the best damned Easter Bunny you’d ever seen. I did learn some things though. Number one, laugh at yourself… that way if anyone else laughs it simply doesn’t hurt. Number two, all children who like the Easter Bunny are crotch height and manage to hit you like a soccer ball to the groin. Number three, all kids run head first and ninety miles an hour. Finally, I rock blue silk vests.
For the longest time, I left this on my resume. I dropped Burger King (which was the worst work environment I’ve ever had), condensed my stint with Empire Theatres (simply three or so years, ended off at Supervisor) and condensed my stint at EB Games (three years there, ended off as Store Manager). I kept it on there to prove to anyone reading my resume that I had a sense of humour and it always got me at the very least into an interview so people could ask about it. The above photo was taken with an ancient camera phone (Motorola Flip Phone, looked like it had a giant nipple on top… which was the camera).
Today I share it with you, so that you make shake your head and laugh! Maybe you’ll email me to ask if that is really me. Maybe you’ll comment because you’ve never known anyone who has been a holiday mascot (official term) before! Most of all, I share it because it was my rite of passage. It taught me humility and hard work (and toughened up the groin area) and I still carry that boy in the Bunny suit with me today so I never forget how lucky I am to have a job, but also all the great things around me!
Speaking of which, thanks again for sticking around and keeping in touch! This has been an absolute blast and I hope you’ll make the effort to get in touch! I can always use more friends that write!
Sweet. I knew you had something published but I didn’t know it was self published. As soon as I figure out how to download stuff from the iBookstore, I’ll try reading it. I’m a physical copy for reading but there’s so many books my friends recommend that are digital. Dilemma!
Yeah, I headed through the self publishing route to get my name out there while I work on the novel! I think the problem is, free short stories may not be the way to go as I don’t think my story has many, if any, downloads.
Awesome and encouraging post TJ! It’s really cool that you’ve gained such a good perspective after your Easter Bunny experience. Words of wisdom I think we cal all listen to 🙂
Sorry to hear about your e-publishing problems though. I’m definitely no expert either, but an idea just occurred to me. What about also putting Circle of Vengeance up on some of the bigger writing-focused websites, or others that deal with your genre if they exist? Goodreads, for instance, lets you post your work in your profile section, so anyone with a web browser can read it. Not ideal for mobile devices, but still might help you to reach a wider audience.
Being the Easter Bunny definitely gave me a different starting perspective on the whole job thing… although now I get promoted wherever I go! Ah well!
As for Goodreads, between you and me… what the heck is it?! I’ve seen the app, heard about it in passing and seen it around in links and the such… but I haven’t given it the time of day. Do you think it’d be worth it?
Goodreads is a sort of social site for readers. I think the idea is that people can create an online bookshelf to show what they’ve read or are reading – and then share this and reviews, etc with friends.
Being a Luddite and not used to all this newfangled social media stuff (lol, I’ll shake my cane in a minute) I’ve never signed up, but I’ve come across a number of reviews posted there when I’ve been checking out different books.
It seems like quite a large community, so if things like that are your cup of tea, it may be a useful place to get exposure and connect with people who might be interested in your work – particularly if you post your own writing there.
If your book has been published (apparently self-published is fine in many cases too), you can also list it on Goodreads. That way, whether or not you post any of your actual writing online, people can still review/recommend your work.
Anyway, hope all that helps! Good luck and hope you enjoyed NaNoWriMo (I can’t believe the month is nearly over!)
You are truly a hero sir! I’ll have to look into it a bit more as it sounds fantastic! Of course, I’ll so that ASAP as this weekend is making me it’s own personal… umm… female dog. So exhausted!
Thanks for all that info, that is incredible!