One Author's Decision to E-Publish

Please welcome Geraldine Evans as my guest today at Suspense Novelist. When Geraldine sent me the photo of her work area, she explained that it's downstairs in the living room as it's warmer and nearer the kettle for tea.

Geraldine Evans has been writing since her twenties, though only began to get novels published halfway through her thirties. As well as her popular Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series, she has a second crime series, Casey & Catt and has also had published an historical, a romance and articles on a variety of subjects, including, Historical Biography, Writing, Astrology, Palmistry and other New Age subjects. She has also written a dramatization of Dead Before Morning, the first book in her Rafferty series.

She is a Londoner, but now lives in Norfolk England where she moved, with her husband George, in 2000.

Deadly Reunion is her eighteenth novel and fourteenth in the humorous Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series. She is currently working on the next in the series.




My epublishing Experiences
By
Geraldine Evans, author of the Rafferty & Llewellyn and Casey & Catt crime series

It’s not so long (latter quarter of 2010) since I had my first ebook publishing experience, so it’s still fresh in my mind. It took a while to bring me round to the idea, but it was the members of Yahoo Group MurderMustAdvertise whose emails about it that convinced me I could do it. And they were right. So far, I’ve published two ebooks, both crime novels, my out-of-print debut Dead Before Morning and its follow-up, Down Among the Dead Men, both part of my humorous, fourteen-strong, Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series. I’m no longer a technological virgin when it comes to ebooks. Is it time to lose your techie cherry? Go on. You’ll be glad you did. The MMA group will hold your hand every step of the way. Ask whatever questions you like on the list. No one will think you’re stupid if there’s something (everything, in my case!) that you don’t understand.

The first thing to do is to make sure you have got back your rights from your publisher if it’s a book that has already been published once. This shouldn’t be too difficult if it was published some years ago, as you’ll want to be able to offer it to the widest readership possible. But this can sometimes take a little while so start a few months before you intend to go the epublishing route. That done, it’s all systems go!

You might have your backlist on old Amstrad or other out dated discs. Don’t worry as these can be converted and put on CD or the converted docs sent to you via email. I used a firm called Luxsoft in Cornwall in the UK for the conversion. Each disc conversion cost me £5 plus post and packing (sorry, I don’t know how much that is in Dollars, but it’s not much), but if you go online, you’ll soon find firms who offer a similar service in your country. And even if you don’t, the old floppies aren’t going to cost you that much to post to the UK. You don’t even have to pay for the postage for their return if you prefer not to as the conversions can be sent to you by email. Once you have your converted files you’ll have a little bit of work to do to tidy them up as the conversion can alter formats and so on. In my experience, the conversion is very good and there isn’t a lot of cleaning up to do so don’t worry about that side of things.





Next, you’ll have to decide whether you’re going to go the epublishing route on your own or employ a specialist. If you think you’re brave enough or know enough, go to this Amazon address (wouldn’t you know it – they’ve changed the name. It’s now called KDP for Kindle Direct Publishing, but the DTP address will get you there just the same) and follow the instructions on the site. For the rest of you, feel free to find your own expert to get your work ready for kindle, iPad, nook, sobo, etc, but I’m more than happy to recommend Kimberly Hitchens (hitch at Q dot com), who made the experience painless for me. She’s a hard taskmaster, don’t get me wrong; she wanted me to proofread three times! Hell, my hardback publisher only expects one proofread. We compromised on two. To be honest, by this time, what with proofing the Amstrad conversion as well, I was getting sick of the sight of my blasted book. But do take great care when you proofread. The book is representing you and if you’re slapdash with your paragraphing, line-spacing, etc, readers might be put off and less inclined to read your next. Just because it’s ‘only’ an ebook is no reason to lower your standards. I have to say that I’ve read a few ebooks where the author hadn’t taken the required amount of trouble and it really put me off. And these were authors I had previously respected as being total professionals.

Anyway, before you start with Kimberly or some other expert, you’ll need to download Mozilla Firefox, plus their epub software, which is what your expert will use both to work with you and to prepare your work for epublishing. Don’t worry, they’re both free.

Your expert will not only prepare your work for publishing to kindle, they should also prepare it for publishing to other ebook publishing formats, Mine was prepared for kindle, iPad, iPhone, nook, sobo, iBookstore, android and several others whose names escape me. Kimberly also has a deal with an American firm called InGrooves, whereby they will not only put your book up on an amazing number of ebook sites, they will also supply you with an ISBN. And all for $50 or thereabouts.

To finish your book off and give it that professional polish, you’ll want to choose a cover. Admittedly, this part is not essential, but I think it’s worth the extra time and money. This is the fun part. You can go for a more expensive graphic artist or you can go the cheap route. I did the latter. Kimberly Hitchens knew a student who liked to eat occasionally and he designed both my covers. Take a look at them and see what you think. I’m pleased with my covers. I think they’re quite striking. But it’s up to you. Each cover cost me $75 and I paid for everything via Paypal. It’s easy enough to set up an account; just go to Paypal and follow the instructions.

Once you have your proofreading done and your cover chosen, you’ll need to upload the book to kindle and decide on a price. Most people on the MMA list seem to agree that $2.99 is the most effective price: not too low to make potential buyers think your product is going to be low quality, but not expensive enough to make people put their credit card back in their wallet. Its reasonably simple to complete amazon’s form on their DTP site, but if you have problems, don’t hesitate to ask your expert’s advice. When it comes to uploading to sites other than kindle, I chickened out and got Kimberly to do it for me. Hey, who says you’ve got to be brave all the time?! It’s not as if it cost me any more money to have Kimberly do it. When you’re uploading to amazon, make sure you opt for the 70% royalty option. From what I’ve read about this, there seems no reason to opt for the lower percentage and every reason not to. But don’t forget, whatever you decide on, be it the price or the royalty percentage, you can always go back in and change things at a later date.

Altogether, taking the original disc conversion into account, I suppose it took me around three or four weeks to get my first ebook up on kindle et al. And Kimberly’s services cost me $100. Altogether, including the artwork, disc conversion and InGrooves’ work and provision of the ISBN, it cost me less than $230. Pretty good value, I thought. I’m not selling in huge numbers, but they’re steady and require no more work from me, so I regard them as a bonus. I’m waiting to see if my sales figures rise during and after this blog tour. I’ll post on my blog either way.

Don’t forget, once your book’s up, to check out your ebook’s sales position. Just type 'novelrank' into the search bar and click on Sales Rank Tracking for Author Sales on Amazon. But before you do this, you need to get your book’s amazon URL. So go to amazon, get on your book’s page on the site and copy the URL at the top, this can then be pasted into amazon’s Sales Rank site which will bring up your book. Click on this and your sales and ranking will come up on screen.

As for me, would I epub again? You bet. I found epublishing a blast. Why not give it a try? What have you got to lose? Your backlist’s probably earning you nothing if you’re a midlister like me. Your out-of-print books could be bringing you in an income again and they’ll be given a new lease of life. Maybe you will be, too.



LINK TO MY PAGE WITH THE BLOG TOUR DATES

Deadly Reunion
A Rafferty & Llewellyn crime novel by Geraldine Evans
Publication: 24 February 2011 (UK) 1 June 2011 (US)




Detective Inspector Joe Rafferty is barely back from his honeymoon before he has two unpleasant surprises. Not only has he another murder investigation - a poisoning courtesy of a school reunion, he also has four new lodgers, courtesy of his Ma, Kitty Rafferty. Ma is organising her own reunion and since getting on the Internet, the number of Rafferty and Kelly family attendees has grown, like Topsy. In his murder investigation, Rafferty has to go back in time to learn of all the likely motives of the victim's fellow reunees. But it is only when he is reconciled to his unwanted lodgers, that Rafferty finds the answers to his most important questions.

Links:
amazon.com

amazon.co.uk

ebooks on amazon.com

Geraldine Evans’s website

Geraldine Evans’s blog

PRIZES






The draw of all the comments throughout the Tour will take place at the end of the Tour (end-Feb). There will only be three winners, each of whom wins one signed copy of Deadly Reunion, my latest hardback (fourteenth in my Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series), one copy of each of two ebooks that are the first and second novels in my Rafferty & Llewellyn crime series, that is, one of Dead Before Morning and one of Down Among the Dead Men. They will also receive a subscription to my blog (which they can let lapse when it runs out).






CR: Crashed by Timothy Hallinan

It's all better with friends.

An Uncommonly Delicious Book

Every once in a while, I run across a book that's uncommonly delicious, and I want to tell you about it.



I began reading Least Wanted by Debbi Mack yesterday afternoon. I would have finished it last night but my eyes got tired. I finished it this morning.





This is Mack's second novel featuring attorney Sam McRae, and I liked it. A lot. She took risks with this one. Any time an author tries to reproduce dialect, there's a challenge. Mack does it well in this book. Least Wanted takes on some topics most writers would steer clear of, but she handles them with just the right amount of reality and compassion, without dwelling in judgement.

It's an e-book, and for a grand total of 99 cents, you have hours of solid entertainment. There is no better deal.

If you haven't discovered it already, not all e-books are created equal. The technology to format and keep the editing solid is still getting the kinks worked out. (And between you and me, I'm pretty sure there's a slew of e-books out there that haven't met an editor who knew what she was doing.)

Mack delivers it all. A great story, developing characters, excellent writing and an e-book experience that sets the bar.

For those of you who received a Kindle for Christmas, treat yourself to a Mack for the New Year.



CR: Secrets to Die For by L.J. Sellers

It's all better with friends.

E-Book Reading

This quote was posted on the Sisters-in-Crime loop recently and I loved it:


"Technology is not a barrier to depth, to engagement, to the cultural discussion, and that perhaps we want the same thing from our reading as we always have, regardless of the form it takes.... The issue is not what we read on, just as the issue is not what we read. The issue is that we read, that we continue to interact with long-form writing; by altering the conditions of the conversation, e-books and e-readers have already served an essential purpose.... This, I think, is what e-books have to offer: the promise of immersion, enhanced or otherwise, just as their analog counterparts have always done."
--David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times book critic, in an essay that will appear in Sunday's print edition of the paper


If you're debating whether or not to get an e-reader, maybe you should wait. It doesn't matter . . . as long as you read.

Some amazing new books, as well as a large number of out of print books, are only available electronically. A Kindle is my best entry into their pages. The application is available free for dozens of venues, but I vastly prefer reading on my Kindle to reading on my computer.

For me? I love my Kindle 3. I gifted my Kindle 2 to my husband, who has yet to finish off his pile of DTBs (Dead Tree Books) to familiarize himself with the wonders and benefits of electronic immersion into words. I'm not worried. He will. And I will continue to read DTBs. Because I love them as well.

It's the words that are important. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. It's the stories. The worlds. The magic.




CR: Skin Deep by Timothy Hallinan on my Kindle

It's all better with friends.

King of Kindle by Parnell Hall

Many of you have probably seen this already. If you have, here's another chance to smile.

As tongue-in-cheek as it is, it underscores a Brave New World that we are experiencing in publishing. There is uncertainty and upheaval everywhere we look.

The good news? The great news? It's not a demise, it's a dawning. And I think there will be room for a lot of wonderful things.











CR: Live to Tell by Lisa Gardner.

It's all better with friends.

Beyond Kindle

I love my Kindle. I use it as a supplement to traditionally printed books. As much as I love it, I also recognize it isn't perfect.

Here are things I would like the next generation of e-readers to have:

1. I can make notes and clip and save phrases on the Kindle, but it's not easy enough. Make it simple. I'm thinking maybe a stylus (do they still call those little pen/wands a stylus?) and touch-screen.

2. Let me loan my books to other e-readers, including Kindle. I'm thinking for up to 30 days, then they're magically transported back to me. It's next to impossible for me to follow up on loaned books and get them returned. And when people look at me with blank expressions? I'm totally not into twisting arms and threatening broken legs. My first Harry Potter is gone forever, as well as the first Left Behind. I admit it. I'm a wuss.

3. Color. Okay, not so necessary when everything I read is a novel, but I still like to look at covers, don't you?

4. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to correspond directly with the author of the book you're reading? "You are a fabulous author and I particularly loved . . . " Or even, "What were you thinking? Was that you or your editor?"

5. While you're at it . . . Wouldn't it be cool to see that episode of Lie to Me you missed on your Kindle?

6. This is something that could happen right now. Currently on Amazon, the cost for Kindle editions does not apply toward free shipping for traditionally published books. Some books I want on Kindle, some I want with spines. Picky, I know. But still.

Here's a link to a cool tablet coming out next year via Wonderfactory and Time Inc.

What are some of your dream elements of the next generation of e-reader? Are you as excited as I am about the rumors of the upcoming Apple iTablet?

CR: Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger.

It's all better with friends.

Tossed Salad

A few This and That's for today.

First a question/rant. I thought Kindle prices were supposed to be lower than traditional book prices. I'm seeing more and more books in the $14+ range and although it's a bit of a "deflator", there are still plenty available at $9.99 and under.

But here's what caught my eye (ire):

What's Race Got to Do with It? by Larry Elder. I can get the paperback edition for $10.17 or, wait . . . pay more ($14.82) and get the Kindle edition. What's with that? Is it the publisher or Amazon poking me in the pocket book? Someone needs to take a Reality Pill.

A magazine for suspense writers and readers. And, it's going to offer print editions! Check out Suspense Magazine. There are interviews, stories and contests. A great blend of established authors and the new kids on the block. What a leg-up for someone ready for exposure. Like, um . . . me, for instance. Hmmm. . . .

Need a kick in the derriere? I couldn't help but think of Pavlov's dogs when I first saw this. This isn't my cuppa (my love language is affirmations) but it must work for some people. Or could be, it's just a diversion. Take a look at Dr. Wicked. Enter a word goal, a time goal, click on Write . . . then do it. If you stop writing, you will get a form of "encouragement." Mine involved a car horn.

Two good books in a row. I thoroughly enjoyed Afraid by Jack Kilborn. It's on the violent side, but extremely well written and engrossing. It comes out March 31st. It has a definite military twist, but I don't want to spoil the story by telling you more.

The second book has been out for a while. The first half of Lazarus Waking by T.L. Hines was mildly interesting. I mean, a guy who dies three times and comes back to life is bound to be intriguing, right? But Hines ratchets up the second half and I ended up staying up until 1 o'clock in the morning to finish it.

The novelist daily at his task eats ashes, and if occasionally he encounters a diamond he is likely to break a tooth on it.

~JOHN BANVILLE

CR: Daniel's Den by Brandt Dodson.

It's all better with friends.

Kindle Connection

I'm a book lover. Even a bit of a book lover snob because I especially love hardcover books. There aren't many rooms in our home that don't have books within reach. I need more bookcases. (Many, many more bookcases.)

I'm a writer. Practicing the craft and continuing my education every day -- mostly from books.

Did I mention I'm a book lover?

When I first started critiquing the writing of fellow authors, I couldn't do it on my computer screen. I had to print out every page. I needed to touch it, to take the proverbial blue pencil to it in a most personal way. I knew that I'd certainly miss something critically important (good or bad) if I tried to read the work on a computer screen.

E-readers had been around for a while. I had no interest in them. I imagined them to be cold and impersonal, with a lot of glare and without the smell of a good book. No way could I cuddle up on a couch in front of the fire with a hard little computer screen that wouldn't stand a chance of whisking me off into another world.

Then along came Amazon's Kindle. It's everything they said it is, and maybe a little more.

Here are some cool features:

• Search -- I can search the book (newspaper/magazine) I've got open for one word or phrase. This comes in particularly handy when I've lost track of some detail about a character. I can also search my entire content. Let's say I have downloaded several books on writing and and want to pull up everything on "backstory." Ta-dah! I can search the default dictionary that's included (New Oxford American) or go to Wikipedia or Google or the Kindle store or somewhere else on the web.

• Clip -- I can clip and save favorite phrases or passages.

• Bookmark -- It's automatic for saving my place, but I can bookmark as many other pages as I want.

• Deleting -- When I delete a book from my Kindle, it's archived at Amazon so I can access it whenever I want.

• Notes -- I can make notes as I read something. They're numbered and specific to that book.

• Conversion -- For a "small fee", Amazon will convert my Word document.

It has a Text-to-Speech function (not to be confused with a professional audio-book), and the font is adjustable.

While I'm here, let me just say, the idea of buying more books is almost irresistible. Publishers have got to love that. Authors, too.

I also think there's a good possibility people who've not been interested in reading before, may find this new technology worth checking out.

By the way, I purchased a cover for mine that makes it look exactly like . . .

a book.

Imagine that.

CR: The Watchman by Robert Crais. (And checking out through downloaded samples on my Kindle, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey, In For The Kill by John Lutz, and Three Weeks to Say Goodbye by C.J. Box.)

It's all better with friends.

Techno Groupie

Gulp!

I ordered  a Kindle this morning. Never in my wildest dreams (prior to Kindle's introduction) would I ever have thought I'd want what amounts to a little computer on which to read books. I don't like to read them on my big computer screen--why in the world would I want to read them on something smaller?

But I paid attention. Watched all the videos from day one. The features are amazing, and the assurance that although a bit odd at first, readers quickly forget they're not actually reading a book, hooked me. Even though I've never actually seen one in person, I know I've sold a few of them just because I'm so stoked.

I asked for one the first Christmas they came out. I asked again last Christmas. Don't get me wrong, I usually always get what I ask for. The Kindle just fell through the cracks, but now I'm anxiously awaiting its arrival.

I told a friend what I'd done this morning. Amazingly, she hadn't heard of Kindle (the second person today!) and was immediately worried about bookstores.

I wish I had an answer to her concern. The fact is, I don't. Maybe book stores as we know them will morph into little cyber cafes where book groups meet and orb sample pages to each other for discussion. 

All I know is that not paying attention to technology, even embracing it, doesn't make it go away. We've built up industries and expanded our own little corners of the world through the Internet. There might be some exciting things on the horizon with innovations like Kindle--fewer trees killed, lowered publishing costs, and who knows what else.

I admit I want to see my name on the cover of a book. Hold it in my hands, flip the pages. Autograph a few. Know what I mean?

In the meantime, I can't wait to hold the Kindle in my hands and figure it out.

CR: First the Dead.

It's all better with friends.

Amazon Kindle

While the debate rages, I have to admit I'm kind of crushing on the Kindle.

eBooks have NEVER intrigued me. Cold. A screen. Blick.

The Kindle is way improved from those first attempts. I'm pretty sure I sold one to our computer guy who had to fix my horrible virus--his wife should thank me--I'm that enthusiastic about it. The only glitch in my dancing (yes, literally) description of all the cool features was when he asked me if I had one.

I still hold out a dream for a partnership between Amazon and Apple to come up with the best bells and whistles (think iPod) and the access Amazon provides. What a gift and HUGE step forward that would be. Of course, a drop in price would be a good thing too.

And one more thing that would be so cool . . . publishers realizing that the ability to share a few chapters through Kindle could equate easily to more sales. Sometimes letting go means an easier path to create buzz about a book, and money in the pocket.

The cost of producing bound books filled with paper and ink (think trees and environmental hazard) isn't going to come down. With Kindle, it goes away.

I wonder if a way to hand sell will come along?

It's all better with friends.