I submitted my book for review to "Underground Reviews". I have received the following:
"Congratulations on having A Prison of Worlds (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 1) selected as a Pitch Perfect Pick Finalist!
Our judges analyzed your book’s pitch, sample content, and several other factors and found it’s initial presentation comparable to other quality books in its genre and market. Once qualified, it had to finish in the top five of all our weekly qualifiers. This is an honor not given lightly.
Your book will be promoted as a finalist on our Facebook page by Monday. The following Sunday, we will add up your Likes and shares on Facebook, as well as the votes on our website. The winner will be published to our Magazine the following week, and the synopsis will go out to our 2000+ subscribers and 2000+ social media followers. The winner will also join the ranks of a select few books that are eligible for entry into our 2017 Novel of the Year competition."
I am not sure how their system works but I think they gave me an award for not having formatting that sucks. A review may or may not happen later. That's encouraging, right?
I recently made a few changes to the web-site. I added a Bloopers page to the allow the reporting of errors from the books. I really hate errors. If I could put a bounty on them I would. I know my readers aren't too fond of them either. Anyway, I don't think posts or changes to other parts of the site get reported like an update to the Blog page, so I am not sure anyone noticed.
Second, I have added a minor animation to the top of the "Projects" page. It was intended to be a tiny icon sized animation, however Wordpress construction tools seem to lack the concept of manual sizing. So it's a bit grainy and cut off when its resized to be the entire top of the page. It still was a cool little thing to put at the top of the page. If I get feedback such as "It crashes my machine!" or "I spent five hours downloading that page!" I will remove it.
A reviewer noted that I had messed up on a 'Find and Replace' while fixing the name Matt. Now all such 'matters' simply don't 'mater'. That's a horrible ryhm but it was mildly amusing when it was pointed out. Embarrassing too;) I have since updated the story and all matters of importance are back in place.
On an unrelated note... I have been doing some research on advertising. Two years ago when I published there wasn't much guidance except to blog, Facebook and Twitter. After I published my second book I did a bit more research. It turns out that the most up to date directions focus on reviews. Reviews submitted before the book is even published! Amazingly enough, there are scads of review sites out there that only will review a book before it's published. I'll have to remember this for book 3.
Amazon has an interesting program as well, where they accept unpublished manuscripts in some sort of contest and if you win they will sponsor your book and guarantee a minimum income over the five-year contract. Again, something to remember for next time.
Since I seem to be a bit behind in the whole advertising and review curve, I have been submitting my story to several book review sites and blogs. From what I have read only the free ones have any real weight, though most of the paid ones don't actually guarantee a favorable rating. It's interesting, I'll have to see if anyone will pick my book to review. It's all voluntary (unless you pay them) so I assume it depends a bit on luck.
There was an interesting tutorial that suggested that in order to have a hundred reviews upon the day you publish, you have to contact five (or maybe it was ten) times that many to solicit reviews. It also had methods to contact reviewers on Amazon and request they review your book. It seemed... exhausting. However, if you follow his advice and get a hundred reviews on the day it's published, you will probably deserve every one of them. Another common suggestion is to request a review at the end of your book. This seems fairly reasonable. Do you think I should add this?
Okay, not as fun as saying 'Book 2 is submitted' but still important. Stewart was kind enough to review the book and add some excellent corrections. He also fact-checked a few things which means I need to make a minor correction to Book 1.
For some reason, the first batch of corrections never got saved, so I had to redo them. However, they are all fixed (until we find more) and the book is uploaded to Amazon for their review process. Thanks, Stewart!
Published on Amazon! Scrubbed it with Grammarly last night. Hopefully, that got the worst of the errors. One of my readers has kindly volunteered to read through it too. Thanks! As before it will get better and better as I clean it up, but my goal was to make it a decent read the first time through. We'll see if I succeeded pretty soon.
Finished Book 2. I just got through proofreading it the first time round. I want to see if I can find another set of eyes to look at it. The last time I published (Book 1) I thought I had most of the errors caught but it took being read by another person and myself an additional two times to actually get most of the glaring errors. Ideally, it would be someone with Word and willing to use "Track Changes". Last time my brother in law graciously volunteered, but he just got a new job so I think he's busy. I'll try Grammarly but I had mixed results last time.
So we all know what happened on Tuesday. Been a little depressed since then, however writing is actually a pretty good distraction. I am about 3/4 to where I want Book 2 to be.
Okay, so it has been a few months since I published on Nook and Apple. Wow, Apple was a bear. I got MacInClouds to work but it was slow. Ignoring that, it is funny that a company that prides itself on easy to use products such as the iPhone can have such counter-intuitive processes. Needs some Usability studies.
Nook wasn't that bad. It had an okay process and except for having to re-format the document, it wasn't bad. Having said that... I am removing my book from both services. While it is probably due to my lack of promoting I didn't actually sell anything. Really, nothing. This is in marked contrast to Amazon, whose sales have petered out, but had some decent activity for a period of time. I bow my head to the Amazon deities and will use their services going forward. On the bright side, this allows me to use Amazon KDP Select again. Whoot.
On to news regarding the book 2. I am on chapter 19. While the first book had only 21 chapters I am findings my chapters are tending to be shorter on average so this is only 2/3 done.
I am also thinking of putting a few of the early chapters of Book 1 up on Spacebattles. I am not sure anyone has ever heard of it. In fact, I never heard of it until about a year and half ago. Think of it as the forums version fanfiction.net with a bit of an obsession with a specific web novel. Wait! You never heard of fanfiction.net either?!? Yeah, most people look at me the same way...
I may also put up an earlier fanfiction story I wrote on Spacebattles, mostly to encourage myself to finish it. It is only a few chapters from completion but it has been stalled for literally years. I learned a lot from writing that story. I think you can see it in my writing as the story goes on. And it was a hoot. I still get people favoriting it, but Ranma fanfiction is pretty dead. Too bad, I still enjoy it.
For anyone unfamiliar with fanfiction, it is taking an existing character belonging to someone else and writing your own story about him. It is allowed by law as long as you don't make any money from it and post a disclaimer.
Just thought I would make an update here. The second book is coming along well. Hopefully, it will get done this year.
On another note, my computer and my wife's computer both went out. She lost her boot drive and my operating system crapped out. Both simple problems but a series of weird circumstances has made it ridiculously hard to fix the simple things. The computers are 7 years old, so this is to be expected. The good news is that no information lost, just a delay as I get my house in order, so to speak.
In other news, my Amazon KDP Select obligation just ran out so I am now in the process of publishing to Barnes and Nobles, Create Space (printed books) and Apple. B&N is as easy as Amazon. Create Space wasn't so bad, though I have some unresolved questions. I now understand why other Kindle books charge $15 for a one-off printing. The less said, the better.
Apple is really tricky. They prefer you use an aggregator so their "help" isn't very helpful. If you don't have a macintosh it is non-existent. Still, it seems there are online converters to the ePub format and there's a service I have heard of called "Macinclouds" where you rent an on-line macintosh. I think I can use this to publish through Apple, but we'll see.
Merry Christmas everyone! Just thought I would give out a status for those who were interested. The bad news, no sequel this year. The good news is that the story is still cooking away. Maybe by next year I'll have something I can publish. I am hoping that when I do I can have it proof read a bit more than my initial book was. Thanks for reading!
I found a new feature in Kindle. Apparently, readers can report errors in books. This, in turn, gets fed back to the writer by Amazon Kindle. A bit embarrassing, but there is no point in pretending my book doesn't have mistakes... The feedback I got was very specific and allowed me to delete several repeated paragraphs! Maybe one day I can pretend!
Anyway, version 6 is published. Once Amazon reviews the changes it will go live. It also has a new cover. I previously mentioned that I bought some royalty free photos. Well, I edited them a bit and I think its pretty decent. I wanted to mix in a cityscape but after several wrist breaking hours with the photo editor, the changes weren't saved. A bit disappointing. I used Cyberlinks PhotoDirector and it doesn't allow saving while removing backgrounds and you can't edit the foregrounds once isolated. Still what I have is better.
As a side note, the original dragon cover is actually a wooden carved figure I own. It was a gift from my wife. Not really a realistic dragon or what I picture my main character to be, however I thought it was decent as concept art. Its actually a varnished brown color but I thought grey scale hid several flaws better.
I downloaded some very nice royalty free pictures. I also bought a photo editing program. I am hoping that I can get a nice shiny new cover out of it. I may even put a rear cover on if I figure out how. I have gotten a bit of criticism on the cover and while I didn't think it was that bad... I admit its not that good. That's what you get for doing a book on a budget, I guess.
So the cover I can fix fairly inexpensively. Not sure what to do about the spelling and grammar except go over it and over it until I catch most of the errors. The commercial service I saw to do this for you was about $2000 for a book this size. Ouch! It's going to be a long while before I even make that much.
Anyway. the second book is started. Not far in, but started. I have some ideas on the cover too, however it will be while before it matters.
More...
One of my readers notified me I had duplicated text in the book... and told me approximately where. I have now updated the story and it should be on Amazon within 12 hours. Please welcome revision 5!
I have been arranging to sell my house and move. Things are falling in place and hopefully, I can get back to work on the sequel instead of spending all my time organizing and packing.
I had been making regular improvements to the books and feeling very proud of it. Then I downloaded the book from Amazon and realized it still had the original version. I have unpublished the book entirely and re-published it. Hopefully, this will work. It should be on version 4. I will also try to get in touch with Amazon's service people and figure out if I am using their upload system incorrectly.
Just finished editing and uploading a new revision of the book using the free version of Grammarly. It caught a lot of errors so I am hopeful that it will be a better reading experience.
