May02

Gift of the Destroyer, 2nd edition

by Jeroen on May 2nd, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Posted In: Reflections, My novels

In my previous post I mentioned the unexpected e-mail by Gareth, and the consequence of having to work through 21 pages of suggested revisions. It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally finished the suggested changes. I’ve already uploaded the revised versions to Lulu and Amazon.

What has changed?
The story has not been changed. Most of the changes are formatting, spelling or grammar-related. Here and there a sentence was changed to avoid certain sentence structures I tend to overuse.

What does this mean for Kindle owners?
The next time you sync your Kindle you should automatically receive the latest version.

What does this mean for other e-readers?
When I started participating in KDP Select I had to give Amazon exclusive e-book rights for 90 days. These 90 days have expired, but I have opted not to use Smashwords again. Instead, I have published the ePub edition with Lulu, which should be sufficient for most modern e-readers. Eventually, this should also mean Gift of the Destroyer is uploaded to the iBookStore and the B&N store. If your e-reader does not support the ePub format, I suggest using Calibre to convert it to your required format. Gift of the Destroyer is of course DRM-free.

So what if I had an older edition from Smashwords?
Leave a comment (with e-mail address) below, I’ll contact you by e-mail. Most likely I’ll send you a replacement ePub file.

What if I have the print version?
Unfortunately I won’t be replacing those with new versions, though if I ever become famous those first editions will be worth quite a sum to collectors (yes Jeroen, keep dreaming). But I’ll happily provide you with an updated ePub version. Leave a comment (with e-mail address) and I’ll contact you.

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Apr18

The unexpected e-mail

by Jeroen on April 18th, 2012 at 9:08 pm
Posted In: Reflections, Writing

I’m not quite sure where to begin this post, as my mind’s still racing because of the whole situation.  Here’s the thing: I am currently going through a 21 page document describing typos, grammatical glitches, and style issues with Gift of the Destroyer. This document was made by a man named Gareth, who contacted me on Twitter yesterday, asking if he could get my e-mail address for a question regarding my book.

I’ve never had any questions about my books from strangers, so I was extremely curious. I sent Gareth a direct message with my e-mail address, and patiently waited for him to e-mail me. To be honest I expected a question with regard to the book’s plot, or some other question with regard to how I write books.

My guesses were of course wrong. The gist of the e-mail was that Gareth was interested in Gift of the Destroyer, but he did not own a Kindle. Ordering a print copy from Lulu was not convenient either, so instead he offered a trade, which I can paraphrase as: he would fix the many typos and other errors in exchange for a free copy.

Wait, what?

At this point in the e-mail I think my heart skipped a beat. If there’s one thing I don’t want it’s to fall into the stereotype of “indie reader who publishes without editing”, which is why I let dozens of people proofread the novel to check for errors. Many were of course found, but it seemed “the few that slipped by” were in fact “a lot that slipped by”. So after I read Gareth’s offer my brain did this:

Having handed out hundreds of free copies as part of Amazon’s KDP select program, this really was a no-brainer. Getting a free proofread in exchange for a free copy? Hell yes!. So yesterday I took the latest edition of Gift of the Destroyer, created a fresh PDF version, and e-mailed it over, saying I accepted the offer. I expected at least a week would pass before Gareth got back to me. So you can probably imagine my surprise when he finished it in a day and sent me the aforementioned document earlier today.

I expect I’ll be releasing a new version of Gift of the Destroyer in a few days, with many fixes and a new thank you in the acknowledgements.

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Apr03

Bye bye Smashwords

by Jeroen on April 3rd, 2012 at 12:30 pm
Posted In: Reflections, Reflections, Writing

Regular readers of this blog know I do not use Microsoft Word. In fact, I tend to stay away from Windows software entirely when it comes to writing (even if I still consider it an adequate gaming platform). I realize I am a bit of an odd duck in this regard, but I’m a Software Engineer, and I like using my time efficiently.

As such, I never was a fan of Smashwords, for the simple reason that it requires your manuscript to be submitted as a .doc file. As I’ve explained waaaay back in the post about writing tools, I use LaTeX for my manuscripts. For those who are unaware, LaTeX is a document markup language that works really well for typesetting books. It is mainly used in academia, but it works really well in auto-generated formatting for the print editions of my books. In addition to this, LaTeX files are really easy to convert to other formats, and I already have a converter that translates a LaTeX file in a zipped HTML file for Kindle Direct Publishing.

So once I finish a book, the process for creating a Kindle e-book is relatively simple:

  • Package the LaTeX files and images (5 seconds of work)
  • Feed it to the converter (30 seconds of work)
  • Upload and go through KDP wizard

Print versions are even easier:

  • Run PDFLaTeX on document file
  • Go through Wizard at Lulu
  • Upload, finish wizard

And then we have Smashwords:

  1. Run detex on document file
  2. Copy/paste into Microsoft Word or OpenOffice
  3. Fiddle around with the settings for an hour to make sure it conforms to the style guide
  4. Manually reapply all style settings (~1-2 hours)
  5. Upload to Smashwords
  6. Get rejected, repeat from step 3 until it’s accepted (~1-2 hours)
  7. File available

As you can see, using Smashwords is somewhat less pleasant. Where I can publish other books and e-books in a matter of minutes, Smashwords takes hours. This would be acceptable if it only happens once for each book, but I have a tendency to release revisions if people complain about typos (which happens despite editing). As you can understand, having to go through the same multi-hour routine is unacceptable to a guy who is used to automating tasks.

So naturally, I went looking for a better way. The main advantage of Smashwords is availability in a multitude of ebook stores, most importantly Barnes & Noble and the iBookStore. But Smashwords aren’t the only aggregator for these ebook stores, so I figured I might as well try another.

To my surprise, Lulu, who does the print versions of my books, is an aggregator for B&N and Apple as well. Contrary to Smashwords, Lulu requires you to submit your e-books in the international ebook standard: EPUB, which is a really machine-friendly format. It only took me two evenings of work to modify my LaTeX-to-Kindle converter into a LaTeX-to-EPUB converter. This significantly simplifies my e-book deployment for B&N and Apple:

  • Go through first part of Lulu wizard to get ISBN
  • Package the LaTeX files and images (5 seconds of work)
  • Feed package and ISBN to the converter (30 seconds of work)
  • Upload and finish Lulu wizard

So when my KDP Select period runs out, I will not be republishing my Smashwords offering, but instead stick to Lulu.

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Mar15

Another KDP Select update

by Jeroen on March 15th, 2012 at 9:11 am
Posted In: Reflections, Self-publishing

As I mentioned in the previous update I intended to let the Gift of the Destroyer free promo last a whole weekend instead of just a single day to see if it led to more downloads.When running just a single day, I “scored” the following number of downloads:

  • Amazon.com: 195 downloads
  • Amazon.co.uk: 64 downloads
  • Amazon.de: 1 download
  • Amazon.it: 1 download
  • Total: 261 downloads

So I figured that if a single day got me that many downloads, a whole weekend might be an even greater hit. Unfortunately, I was wrong, last weekend yielded the following reults:

  • Amazon.com: 98 downloads
  • Amazon.co.uk: 49 downloads
  • Amazon.de: 4 downloads
  • Amazon.es: 1 download
  • Total: 152 downloads

Of course, I was slightly disappointed by the fact that a longer run yielded less downloads, but even so this still means 413 people found my book interesting. Also, each promo led to a short burst of actual sales, though the numbers are still somewhat embarrassing, especially if you consider I’ve managed to sell more paper books than e-books, and I have yet to turn a profit.

In any case, I’m running my next promo (the last of the free promo days) in the middle of the week rather than during the weekend. I’m not sure if it will make a difference but there’s no harm in trying.

In other news: I’ve received my first book review on amazon.com: 5 stars! Thanks Joe!

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Mar06

Interesting edits

by Jeroen on March 6th, 2012 at 10:00 pm
Posted In: Reflections, Critique, Reflections, Writing

Last week I sent a work-in-progress copy of “the sequel” to a friend who for all intends and purposes does the conceptual editing for my books. As usual, his comments range from impressions about the story as a whole, my writing style, down to minor nitpicks about the story in general. Reading his e-mails is always very motivating, and I put great weight to his advice as it’s always spot on. With regard to “the sequel”, he had a couple of suggestions.

First of all was a lack of describing situations from the characters’ points of view. I have a tendency to focus on plot progression and dialogue, but sometimes neglect describing the situations (I figure that for many fantasy authors it’s the other way around). This is easily fixed of course.

Next: Gift of the Destroyer essentially has 3 main characters, and primarily tells the story from Lianna’s point of view. But “the sequel” has 6 main characters, and switches between two of them for the point of view. With a cast that is twice as large you get a lot more interaction, and the need to distinguish between the various characters increases. As such, the advice was to put more emphasis on the various quirks each character has. This is quite easy for some characters, but a bit tricky for others.

But the final piece of advice is proving to be a lot of fun. Apparently, my characters all seem to use a very advanced level of English. This is suitable for some characters (educated background), but somewhat unfitting for others (one character has lived on the streets for years, another is a soldier). As such, I’m “downgrading” a lot of the dialogue to use simpler words. In the case of two characters, I’m adding a lot of swearing, which is proving to be a lot of fun if somewhat tricky.

The problem with adding profanity is twofold: first of all, I want to keep the book more or less suitable for a younger audience, which forces me to be a bit creative in what I use as swear words. I want to avoid words such as “fuck”, “fucking” or anything else relating to reproduction (most of my book sales have been in the US, and sex can be a bit of a touchy subject among Americans). In addition, I have to keep in mind the origin of each swear word, and if the development of such a swear word would be plausible in my setting. The people of Chaedin and the Seven Villages do not believe in a personified deity, so saying “God-damned” or anything related to that wouldn’t make much sense (they tend to stick to “Light-Blasted” in that regard). Aside from religion and reproduction, another common origin for profanity is bodily functions (for example: “shit”, though I find that one rather uninspired). A common profanity uttered by at least one character is “bloody”.

Finally, cultural events could be causes for profanity, though I’ve not yet come up with any good profanities in this regard, though I did invent a Ktharian proverb in this regard: “going North” means “staying put” or “going nowhere”.

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