Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Have been busy publishing...and promoting!  If you are a self-published author, you have to do the latter to be successful in the former.  That means using "social media."  I have been posting to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Here's a rundown of 4 books, starting with the most recently published.
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On August 11 I published The Wall:  Chronicle of a Scuba Trial, in e-book format.  I posted it to both Smashwords and Amazon Kindle.  It is only 46K words, and I don't plan to put it in paperback.  For publicity I've started a twitter campaign, and am considering small ads in scuba magazines. 

Amazon link:


Smashwords link
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/568140


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Today is the 7th day of my Amazon Scout campaign for Consenting Adults Only. 
 
 https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2PN5FY0XBJRS
 
I have used Twitter and Facebook to announce the book, but so far it's not going well.  The book has not reached "hot and trending" status, which presumably is a requirement for Amazon to take notice and consider publishing the book.  I have also sent out a bunch of twitter messages to categories dealing with Las Vegas (the book's setting) and Emergency Department nurses/doctors (the main protagonists). 
 
One problem is that Amazon Scout only shows the first 5000 words.  That may not be enough to hook the reader.  The book was designed for the first 4 chapters to do this job, and that's about 10,000 words.  Anyone reading the first 4 chapters would want to continue, but if they got to 10K words they would be hooked to continue.
 
Unless there is some dramatic turnaround in the next 3 weeks, I expect to be self-publishing CAO this fall.  It will come out in both e-book AND paperback.  I think the novel should have wide appeal and may yet gain an audience.
 

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Out of Time:  An alternative outcome to the Civil War, has been in e-book format since April and paperback format since June. 
 
 
I have made a list of corrections that will be submitted this week, to both my e-book formatter and CreateSpace (print edition).  They won't affect the ISBN or anything else; just a few minor typos.  This is the bane of self-published authors unless they spend thousands for meticulous line- and copy- editing.
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I continue to work on a children's book, called Gravity is Always With You...Unless You're an Astronaut.  I have contacted an illustrator and also spent time on the Shutterstock web site.
 
 
Shutterstock has thousands of pictures available for downloading.  For a one-time fee of $229, you can download up to 25 pictures for use in your book.  You have to pay more if your book sells more than 500,000 print copies!  Any self-published author would be happy to pay more for those numbers.  The cover mockup below uses a Shutterstock photo of an astronaut.
 
My plan is to use both Shutterstock and a professional illustrator for the book.  I went to the trouble of registering the book with the Library of Congress (the text only, not the pictures; cost $55), and plan to self-publish the book later this year.  Still to be worked out are how many illustrations to use, the format size (different than for adult books - typically square), and the specific target age for the book.  Right now my target is 6-10, though that may be a bit broad.  I have been testing it on my grandkids (age range 3 to 9).
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