RTFM

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I recently read a blog post about an author who screwed up 17, 500 free downloads of her debut novel by publishing to KDP using a .pdf version of her manuscript.

In short, the conversion to a Kindle-friendly version didn’t quite take and she had to scramble big time to salvage the situation, soothing the angry readers who had already downloaded the book and working overtime to make amends by posting an error-free version.

I admire her courage in coming clean about this calamity and admitting that, in restrospect, she should’ve been willing to spend the money to hire an e-book formatter. She was quite clear that she’d paid a price by going cheap, i.e., doing it herself. The post was followed by a (admittedly, small) chorus of support, with one commenter vehemently blaming Amazon for the mixup, while others cited their own troubles uploading their manuscript .pdfs.

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Advice from the Pros: Three Rules On How To %#@%ing Swear

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After participating on a panel with three other authors (Karen Cantwell, Scott Nicholson, and Michael J. Sullivan) recently, the topic of profanity came up. We’d just finished lunch at a family restaurant and it was only later that I wondered what the teenage waiters and nearby patrons thought when one of us said, “The chapter of my first book ended with ‘Fuck!’ and it really turned a lot of people off, so I took it out in the next edition.”

And that was the tame stuff.

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A 90-minute crash course on self-publishing

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This past weekend, I was lucky enough to both organize and participate on an amazing self-publishing panel (though it’s over, see my original announcement for more details). For those of you who couldn’t make it, you  missed a 90-minute, crash course on self-publishing success, failure, resilience, and prediction.

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KDP Newsletter – In other news, water is wet

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As a writer published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program, I receive a digital newsletter from Amazon with the scintillating title Kindle Direct Publishing Newsletter.

The content of the newsletter is fairly bland, including such items as what your payment for borrowed titles will be and the maddening section “Featured KDP Books,” where all I really want to know is how these writers were picked to be featured in the first place. I don’t begrudge these sections too much, since newly published KDP’ers could probably use this information.

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Three Updates

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1. Jerks Begone
Librarything.com seems to have listened to the complaints about the abuse of their Member Giveaway system. In short, two things conspired to taint the giveaway:

  1. There was no an upper limit on copies that authors could give away
  2. The default view of the page ranked books by “copies remaining” in the giveaway. Other filters were available, but no one was going to use them.

Those two issues meant that whoever had the highest number left was given top-billing on the page. Result? Ten million copy giveaways were not unusual in the last few months, as authors tried to “outbid” each other, knowing that–really–they’d never give more than a few dozen copies away.

Well, in a recent giveaway (see below), I noticed that ebook giveaways are limited to 100. Way to go, Librarything! It only took months for you to program NUM =< 100 into your system.

Now, if you could just improve the data entry experience (like not wiping out critical information upon editing the entry, or not listing each and every country with a checkbox next to it when I pick “all countries.” Saying “all countries” is just fine. I’ll know what you meant.).

2. Finding Emma Giveaway
I’m giving away 25 ecopies of my psychological thriller/horror novella, Finding Emma, on Librarything.com. I’m asking for a review in return. Not a bad deal!

The Giveaway goes until October 4. There are already 35 entries for the 25 copies, but selection is a random pick by Librarything, so everyone has a chance!

Enter giveaway at Librarything.com:  http://www.librarything.com/er_list.php?program=giveaway

Finding Emma on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Finding-Emma-ebook/dp/B008O6RB5Y/

Synopsis

“…a masterful blend of suspense and intrigue.”
– Ray, Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer, 5 star review

No one likes Jack. His wife is gone and his neighbors avoid him. He’s a recluse and a creep and that’s just the way he wants it.

But when ten-year old Emma goes missing in the nearby woods, the eyes of his neighbors turn on him in fear and accusation, escalating as the days pass. The answers they–and the reader–get, however, are the last that anyone would suspect…

Finding Emma is a novella of literary horror totalling 17,500 words or about 70 paperback pages.

3. A Reason to Live price reduction
To celebrate the release of Blueblood I’ve reduced the price of A Reason to Live to $2.99 on all sites (check sidebar to the right). Get it while it’s hot! Get it while it’s buttered!