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.  :)