Tag: Lulu

The Plight Of The Self Publisher

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!

My first job and the most laughable moment of my entire life.
My first job and the most laughable moment of my entire life.

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!

I've Landed! …in the iBookstore!

So after spending one night typing, copying and pasting over my Mac keyboard, I have finally found myself actually submitting a short story (thirty six pages of short) through the iBookstore and seeing it “published” to the masses. By masses, I mean Apple Users. By Apple Users, I mean only those who own an iPad. Well, lesson learned. I’ll work on getting it into more places as the process was interesting enough to learn and simple enough for anyone to complete. 

In case you’re interested in the finished product, click this link and remember… only available for iPad. Not sure if its available for Mac as well, so please if you download it to one of those… let me know!

Currently making some decent headway on the novel of doom… I’d rip the remainder of my hair out, but I’m already bald. There are some definite gaps and some actual moments of decent writing. I originally was worried, but some spans of writing are quality. After reading a bit, I forgot I was supposed to be editing and just kept reading. Hopefully that’s a good sign! Either way, that’ll hopefully be ready for the end of the month, if not then the new year!

Also, it appears my PDF version has gone live as well (Whoo more exposure!) but the ePUB version is broken virtually beyond repair (It took 37 pages and turned it into 1373 pages… I’m definitely not editing that). That link is over here and if you like it, please share it freely. After all, I made it free so I could get more feedback on my writing style (and to see if I have one).

Well, once again, it is past that midnight mark and I am growing tired. Looks like tonight was no time spent on the ole novel of doom, however I did watch Thor (which was awesome) and got my story more audience. All in all? Win! I just have to stay away from eBay… that place eats not only time, but money too! Take care out there, and thank you for your kind support! Also, if there is a format you’d like to see for future (or this) story, let me know!