Good News: My Career Grows

Last year saw my first short story, TO LIGHT AND GUARD, published in Bewildering Stories magazine. That was a big milestone for me: my first official publication.

This year is shaping up even better! I had a poem, THE TOWERS STOOD, published in the World Healing, World Peace 2014 Poetry Anthology, and my short story DYING BREATH sold to Youth Imagination magazine!

In even more exciting news, my middle grade sci-fi retelling of the Wizard of Oz, OZCILLATION, was picked up by Evil Jester Press, and will be released in 2015! I am so excited to work with this group of enthusiastic and creative people, and to be one of their first middle grade novels as they expand.

Right now, my novel is with the editor, so I am waiting on pins and needles to get the feedback from her. I know there will be some hard work ahead to make OZCILLATION all shiny, but I am ready to tackle it. I will be approaching the novel with fresh eyes, as I have not read the book since I started querying agents waaaay back in December of 2012. I have come a long way as a writer since then and will probably see things in the book I want to change as well.

So what am I doing while waiting for my editing notes? I am editing two short stories that I hope will find homes this year. I am doing final preparation on my genealogy book for upload to the self-publishing Print-On-Demand (POD) site, likely by the end of this week. Then I will figure out how to format the genealogy book for ebook, and upload that. I’m sending querying to agents for my YA contemporary fantasy THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS. I am also beginning to work on my marketing strategy, as well as optimizing my website and blog and other social media. Oh, and I’m working on another novel.

So, I’m busy.

The list, of course, does not include weekly repetitive tasks like blog posts, watching the 2 TV shows I allow myself to watch, reading, taking care of the business of life, and running around after my most important Work-In-Progress, my preschooler!

As much work as the coming year will be, I am looking forward to the challenge! How about all of you? What new bragging rights do you have? Share!

GoosesQuill FB

CreateSpace vs. Ingram Spark

Any of you following along will know I am trying to self-publish a Print-On-Demand (POD) genealogy reference book on my family in particular. I had decided to use Amazon’s CreateSpace because so many people suggested it and it has been around a while. What I found was that because of the length of my book, I could NOT use CreateSpace (more on that below), and so I went over to Lightning Source, another POD company people had suggested. Lightning Source’s POD arm for small or self-publishers is called IngramSpark.

The following comparison of the two resources is necessarily incomplete, as I could not complete the process with CreateSpace and have not yet completed the process with IngramSpark. But it’s what I have found so far.

CreateSpace is very easy to use. However, I found their Submission Guidelines to be missing or misleading in key areas. When reading how to format your book’s interior, it tells you the gutter margin for 3 different pages count ranges, all the way up to 1,000 pages. What they don’t tell you anywhere in the Submission Guidelines (it can be found elsewhere on the website) is that there are maximum page limitations based on trim size and color vs. black and white options. Based on their Page Count table, the maximum number of pages anywhere is 828 (not 1,000) and if you choose to do full color, 480 is your limit. My full-color book, unfortunately, is 508 pages. Due to the nature of the content, there is no way I can cut 30 pages out. Which is why I went to IngramSpark. (I did confirm with CreateSpace customer service that I was correct and I COULD NOT print this book with them.)

IngramSpark is also not difficult to use. However, it will require more money for you to get started. At this point in the process, I have run across several fees:

  • $49 one-time set-up fee per book (waived if you have a 50 book drop order within a certain amount of time after setting up your book)
  • $11 annual distribution fee (if you are simply printing for your family and do not want distribution, this fee is waived)
  • ISBN fee. IngramSpark requires you provide your own ISBN number. You can purchase one for $125, or you can purchase batches of them for less per unit through Bowker. CreateSpace allows you to either use an Amazon ID number (not the same as an ISBN) or to purchase an ISBN through them (I think it was $10) or to provide your own.

So it is more expensive to use IngramSpark. The question you need to ask yourself is: Can I make my book fit CreateSpace’s limitations in a way that will not compromise the book’s quality? In my case, because I have a lot of photos and documents and charts, the answer was “no.”

The actual interior design process is the same–upload a PDF to their website. I will say that IngramSpark’s gutter margins are MUCH smaller than CreateSpace’s, probably due to manufacturing differences, which allows me to have larger photos and charts.

I have not used the cover designer for either system yet, so cannot know how they compare. I also don’t know about the quality of the final product or the tracking and royalty payment facets, since I haven’t finished the book yet.

Having to switch to IngramSpark has set me back, because with the much smaller gutter margins I need to re-size all my photos, graphs, etc. The text, of course, was easy to readjust. Still, I am pleased that I have an outlet to get this book out there in the way I envisioned it, instead of having to present it in a non-optimal way to force it into CreateSpace’s limitations.

I am slowly exploring this self-publishing world, both in ebook and now POD. It’s a fascinating journey! I will bring more info on IngramSpark after I have completed the process and have more to share.

Have you done POD? What has your experience been?

GoosesQuill FB

Amazon Kindle and CreatSpace

A while ago, I put my first short story, To Light and Guard, up on Smashwords. I did it mostly as a learning experience, and haven’t done much to promote it. I wanted to learn how to format a story to upload, and how all the technology worked. That’s much more easily done with a 3,000 word short than an 80,000 word novel!

To round out my education in the technology realm, I just last week got To Light and Guard for sale on Amazon. The process was much the same as Smashwords, just slightly different formatting rules. So now my story is available on both major self-publishing platforms, and available for all ebook formats, including PDF. (A Kindle-friendly file is also available through Smashwords, but the only way to get it listed on Amazon is to either sell more than $2,000 worth of the book or post it directly, as I did.)

The process on both was relatively painless, as long as you are able to read directions and pay attention to details.

I am now embarking on my first print-on-demand project—a genealogy book through Amazon’s CreateSpace. I am still in the process of learning how to format the book properly, and I am sure much tinkering will be required until I get it looking the way I want.

I probably chose a difficult book to start with, because mine includes photos and other non-text illustrations. This interrupts page numbering and makes things a little more complex. But it’s coming together.

I was slightly disappointed in the limits of size and lack of choice in paper type on CreateSpace—I was hoping for a slightly larger than 8.5 x 11 book, but in the end that size might be a blessing in disguise since all my pages are already 8.5 x 11. As long as I get the margins right, that might actually make it easier. I had also hoped that I could specify that the photo pages be on heavier, glossy paper, and the rest on regular stock, but I so far do not see that as an option.

The book is nearly done the preparation stage, and then I will upload it to CreateSpace and finish the process. I am eager to see it all put together and get an author copy to hold in my hands. This book represents years of research, and I hope to get it into the hands of other researchers who can use my work as a stepping stone for theirs. I know how excited I always was to find that someone else had done meticulous research on my line, and that I did not have to re-invent the wheel. I want to give that same thrill to other researchers!

I’ll let you know how the CreateSpace experiment works out. One thing is for certain—I am learning a lot!

Have you ventured into self-publishing? What has your experience been?

GoosesQuill FB

Genealogy Book Update

Some of you will remember that I have been chipping away at a genealogy book for my dad’s side of the family. I hope to have it finished and ready for my family around Christmas, but it may slide a little if other things that are in the works happen—you know, life getting in the way of your plans!

I did reach a milestone today, though. I finished going through all the endnotes and putting them in proper format. I had been cutting and pasting the source material from my genealogy program (Legacy), but it doesn’t put it in proper endnote format. What was there might have been all right, except that when I do something, I want to do it right. If I want this book to be taken seriously by other genealogists, I need to have the sourcing done properly.

So I laboriously went through every endnote (some chapters have 80-90!) and put them in the right format. And that helped me, too, because I found some source material that needed to be more clearly marked—or that I couldn’t remember where I got it. And I added to each endnote where the original material is housed: in my possession, in other archives, in church or cemetery offices, etc. That way people can duplicate my research easily if they want to find the primary documentation.

How close am I to finishing? I need to tweak the illustrations—some are facing the wrong way. I have to put final touches on the chapter title pages. I have to line edit the entire thing, including picture captions and family trees. I have to fix weird glitches in the Index where things are italicized or bolded for no apparent reason. I am hoping to get a few more photos from people before I “go to press.” Oh, and I have to design the cover. So, not too far—but not too close, either. If I have a few concentrated weeks, I should have it done by early December.

Then comes the fun part—figuring out how to properly format it for Print On Demand (POD). I will likely use CreateSpace. It should be an interesting challenge to get everything formatted the way I want! But I geek out over that sort of stuff, so I’m sure I will enjoy it, even with its inevitable frustrations.

So that’s where I am with my genealogy book—hit a milestone, but still a ways to go. And when I finish this one, I have my mom’s side of the family to do. I learned a great deal from this book, so hopefully the other one will go faster as I will do things correctly the first time. So maybe by next Christmas!

How about you? Any pet projects you are working on?

GoosesQuill FB

Meetings of the Minds

Whew! A very long day of writing-related meetings has left my head spinning, but my inspiration pumped! There is nothing quite so super-charging as sharing ideas with a group of writers who share your passion. Who else could understand your chagrin at searching for the word “just” in your manuscript and finding it several hundred times?

 

The first meeting was three hours of the Writer’s Coffeehouse at Saxby’s in Doylestown, PA. Led by Jonathan Maberry, there was a wide-ranging discussion about all things publishing, but mostly focusing on self-publishing and POD (print on demand). We discussed the differences between self-publishing and POD, as well as when using those services could enhance your career or harm it. There was speculation that POD especially will become more “legitimized” as previously-conventionally-published authors who have been dropped by their publishers use PODs as an outlet for their work.

 

Then onto another marathon workshop, this one in Warrington, PA, also with the ubiquitous Jonathan Maberry, called Revise & Sell. Today we focused more on the revision process, our writing process, where ideas come from, and how we get into the heads of characters who are completely different from ourselves. That is part of the fascination (and scariness!) of being a writer. I am not an alien despot who thinks it is perfectly okay to enslave humans, but there is one in the science fiction book I’m shopping (The Forgotten Planet), so…

 

Days like today are exhausting (it also includes almost 2 hours of driving for me), but electric, as well. I always leave these workshops fired up and ready to write!

WP-Backgrounds Lite by InoPlugs Web Design and Juwelier Schönmann 1010 Wien