Back to work

I've survived the holidays unscathed.  Yay!

The Buddy audiobook is available on Audible and Amazon.  It's supposed to be on iTunes, too, but I don't have a Mac, so browsing the iTunes site isn't easy.  If the audiobook is there, I haven't found it yet.

I've been doing a lot of soul-searching regarding Larsons.  I'm not sure I'm hitting the tropes in the way that readers want to see.  I may spend some time on other works for a while, at least until I figure out what to do with it.

In any event, I hope 2015 turns out to be a good year for me, both personally and as an author.  And, to anyone reading this, I hope you have a happy new year.  :)

Buddy is free!

Amazon was kind enough to price-match it.  The ebook is now a free download.

My hope is that making the ebook free will drive sales of the audio version.  Will this strategy work?  I have no idea.  I'm like a babe in the wilderness, toddling my way through the self-publishing forest and hoping to not get eaten along the way.

Trying something new is definitely exciting, though.

Now if I could just get these holidays out of the way so I can start being productive again...

Buddy (the audiobook) now available on Audible

Check it out.

 


The story is narrated by David Radtke.  Check out some of his other stuff.

The return of the radio play

The most famous (or infamous) radio play from days gone by is probably the War of the Worlds production by Orson Welles.  Some listeners apparently thought it was real, and panicked at the idea of an alien invasion in New Jersey.

In later years, television would come to replace radio as the medium of choice for broadcast entertainment, and the radio play disappeared from the collective consciousness.  For someone like me, born in the 1970's, it's simply a historical footnote, and one I probably wouldn't have learned about at all if not for the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.

But things seem to be coming full-circle now.  The advent of digital self-publishing has also led to the self-recording of audiobooks, and with that, we are seeing a return to the good old-fashioned radio play of yore.

Hugh Howey gives us an example here.  I find it interesting that the story was adapted for the first-person POV.  Hugh wrote Wool in third-person.

Baen Books is on the radio bandwagon, too.

It's an exciting time to be an author.  A little too exciting, actually; everything changes so fast, and it's hard for me to keep up.  What worked six months ago is passé now.  I guess we all just have to do the best we can and try not to get swept away.

In the meantime, though, I'm enjoying the return of the radio play.  It's like a piece of Americana from the 1930's, reinvigorated for a new century, and I think that's awesome.

Recording is done

It will still be several days before the Buddy audiobook is made available, but the work is done.  More details later...

An unexpected benefit

As a part of the audiobook creation process, I am required to listen to the narrator's first 15 minutes of my story and officially approve it before he can continue recording the rest.  I did so, and nearly fell out of my chair when I heard him say the wrong name in the story's third paragraph.

Well, I checked the file, and, sure enough, it was something I had missed during the revision process.  I felt like an idiot.  Naturally, I fixed the error and sent the corrected file to the narrator, along with an apology.  I also re-uploaded the corrected file to Amazon and Draft2Digital.

So this experiment in audiobook production has already yielded a benefit: a previously unnoticed error in the manuscript was brought to my attention.

Even if the audiobook never sells a single copy, I'm still glad I decided to do it.

Buddy is now live on all outlets

Added the links for Barnes & Noble and for iTunes on the sidebar.  The story is free everywhere except on Amazon, and that will be remedied shortly.

Buddy: the audiobook

The deal has been done, and production is underway.  More details to come later...

New links for Buddy

Buddy is now live--and free--at Scribd, Inktera, and Kobo.  Links are on the sidebar.

Updates

Well, I made it through the Thanksgiving holiday unscathed.  I'm calling it a win.  :)

I've set up an account with Draft2Digital for distribution to non-Amazon channels.  I've published Buddy there, but it's not live anywhere yet.  I previewed the epub, and some of the formatting didn't work the way I intended.  I fixed it the best I could, but I may have to find an epub editor or something to help me with my D2D submissions.

I've been considering auditions for the Buddy audiobook.  Haven't made any offers to narrators yet, but probably will sometime this week.

Unfortunately, doing all this other stuff means I haven't been doing much writing.  I'm hoping to correct that this week.

Delisted

All right... I went ahead and delisted Buddy on Kobo and Barnes & Noble.  I'll wait a few days and then put it on D2D.

Still learning the ropes here, folks.  Bear with me.

May try Draft2Digital

I've uploaded the new covers for Buddy to all three vendors, but I'm thinking of removing the story from Kobo and Barnes & Noble and then uploading it to Draft2Digital.  They'll take a cut of the profits, but it will mean less headaches for me since I'll only be uploading the story to one distributor.  Also, it will let me get on iTunes, which I currently can't do since I don't have a Mac.

This should also make it easier to set a title to perma-free, something I'm currently not having much luck with.

I'll wait a couple of days for the changes I made to go through, then I'll de-list them.  That's the plan, anyway. 

In other news, I sent a few questions to Hugh Howey and received prompt and satisfying answers.  I now know what I'll have to change in my Wool fan fiction story in order to bring it into better compliance with the "canon."  Have I mentioned yet that Hugh is a cool and generous guy?  Well, I have now.  :)

New cover for Buddy

See sidebar.

Signed up with ACX

I've made Buddy available for auditions on ACX.

I've already listened to several samples from narrators there, and even found a couple I like.  I think I'll wait a few days to see if any narrators approach me first, though.  If there's someone out there who really likes my story and wants to narrate it, then I'd like to give him a chance.

I have no idea how long this whole process normally takes.  First I have to make a deal with a narrator.  Then I suppose it's all up to him.  Buddy is 10,000 words, so ACX estimates it to be about 1.1 hours long.  I've heard that it takes about three hours of recording time for every hour of finished product, though.  An ambitious narrator could do the whole story in a day, I suppose.

Summary: I don't really know what I'm doing, or what I've gotten myself into, but I'm determined not to let my fear of the unknown obstruct me.  Hopefully, everything will turn out well.

More covers

I designed a couple more covers for Larsons.  It's not easy settling on one.  I think I've finally made "the one," though.  I may tweak the colors of the type a little.

I don't think I'll post it here before the book is published.  I want it to be a surprise.  ;)

Updated some back matter

I've updated the back matter for Buddy at all three vendors in order to reflect the new blog.  I'll get to Mr. Wilson tomorrow.

I've also discovered a better way to upload to Amazon and Nook.  I write in OpenOffice because I hate Word, but I need a .doc file to upload.  When I first uploaded Buddy back in August, I copied and pasted the whole story into Word and then uploaded that.  Well, it took a few tries to get it right.  It was pretty frustrating.

What I decided to try with the revisions was to just do a "save as" while in OpenOffice and then choose the .doc option.  This seems to work better.

Kobo, of course, hasn't been a problem, because they let me upload the .odt file.

Anyway, live and learn, as they say.

Got the short stories on the sidebar

Easy-peasy.

Yeah, I think this will be easier than navigating Wordpress.  Plus I like the bookshelves in the background.  :)

I'm thinking about moving to blogger.  It's easier than Wordpress, and I like being able to edit the html.  Anyway, I'm here, so let's post some book covers.  :)