Category Archives: Writing

April 19, 2012 · 12:01 pm

Self-Publishing 1000 Words – The Magician

Whew. These past few days have been hectic. It’s time for me to order the print version of 1000 Words, and thankfully, I’m in the final stages of preparation. I’ve got all the stories done. All the covers are done. I’ve just uploaded The Magician to Smashwords. Now I’ve just got to review the print book file on Createspace and make adjustments as needed.

Anyways, here’s the cover for my latest “1000 Words” short story,The Magician. Originally it also had a border meant to look like stage curtains, with little black and white checkered buttons on the side. I was told it was too cluttered, and looked like he was in a coffin. So… I cut back on some of the florishes, adjust the text for readability, and voila! We have a cover!

SBibb - The Magician

 

Short Story on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/153295

Look forward to Socks (a sci-fi young adult romance) and Four-Way Stop (a literary horror story) on Smashwords soon. I plan to make more notes about cover design with this project in the coming posts, and I’ll also have further announcements regarding the upcoming print and eBook editions of “1000 Words,” the complete anthology.

By the way, if any of you have been reviewing the short stories already up on Smashwords, thank you. It’s neat to see the reviews trickling in. Really neat if they’re good, but still nice to know what’s not so good.

Thanks for reading, and let me know if you have any questions. 🙂

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April 15, 2012 · 12:46 pm

Self-publishing “1000 Words” – Aenima

When I went to create the book cover for Aenima, one of my “1000 Words” short stories, I had a sketch in mind. I wanted the upper half of a winged lady, with a pair of wings framing her and shaped with cogs.

That didn’t exactly happen.

I did manage to get a picture of cogs that I needed, thanks to my fiance for finding the cog while out on his dad’s farm, and I had the pictures I wanted for the lady. But I ran into issues of developing it into the actual cover. Finally I compromised. The wings are present (though looking like butterfly wings), and I managed to incorporate cogs into the picture without actually having them on the wings. Of course, right after I published the short story on Smashwords and starting writing this post, it hit me that the wings in the story are neither bird nor butterfly wings, but dragonfly wings. *Sigh.* Amazing, how I didn’t catch that, even as both the author and the illustrator.

Of course, once I tried putting the text on the image, I realized that spacing did not want to work well for text placement. And I had a horrible time with the font itself. Thankfully, I was directed to look at dafont.com for potential fonts, and found the lovely “Steamwreck” was commercially usable, and free. Yay! (Since then, I have been directed to a font site that allows people to download 10,000 fonts for $20.00. And they’re commercially usable. Not all are suitable for book cover designing, but still… it’s been helpful.) So I finally took the main image and made it smaller, then reused the background, changed the border color, and added little cogs around the text itself.

Overall, I’m pleased with it. I like the book cover image than the “Lady In Cogs” image by itself.

Aenima on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/152094

SBibb - Aenima Book Cover

So now, for a quick update:

Since uploading The Dreamkeeper yesterday, it’s had 42 downloads. The other stories still have a few downloads trickling in, though I’m not sure if that’s due to uploading more stories, or to people finding them on thier own. The Carrier has done the best job so far of still being downloaded. Shafted Dreams is having the least success. I will be interested in seeing if they continue to be downloaded once the project is complete, or if downloads will slow down. Since everything’s free, price is not a factor.

I’m considering uploading a couple other short stories I wrote (longer ones) once I complete this project, and actually pricing them to see if it makes a difference, and if those are actually purchased. Plus I’ll have the anthology version, which will cost money, however, all the “1000 Words” short stories will remain free, at least for the time being. That way, if anyone wants to support me, they can, but no one has to.

I’ve just completed another cover for one of the stories I need to write, and I’ve written a sci-fi romance story to add to the project. This means that I have two stories to edit, two stories to write, and four covers to design.

You can find my latest short story, Aenima, at Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/152094

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April 14, 2012 · 2:15 pm

Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – The Dreamkeeper

Cover reveal for The Dreamkeeper, part of my “1000 Words project.” I’m quite pleased with this cover, though the typography decided it wanted to give me a difficult time finding something that worked for the story and also looked good in thumbnail size. I finally decided that the “1000 Words” part would just have to be smaller in thumbnail, and likely unreadable at that size, while the author name and title would be clear. If it catches someone’s attention, hopefully they’ll click it and see the larger cover.

That’s the idea, anyway.

 

SBibb - The Dreamkeeper Cover

 

So for the quick update, The Dreamkeeper is now available on Smashwords. It’s also sitting at 900 words, rather than 1000. Why? Because I kept cutting words, rather than adding them. AfterThe Hunt, in which I probably should have cut another hundred words from the story, it’s become rather evident that I follow the theory of making a story as long or as short as it needs to be. That means that if it needs to be longer, fine. (But you might be suprised at what can be cut, as I’m discovering with my YA novel). However, if it should be shorter, that’s fine, too.

Of course, since this is specifically for a 1000 words project, I’m going to try to keep it within 100 words either way.

As for the statistics of the project so far, Snow Witch hasn’t had any more downloads, though The Carrier is still getting the occasional download, and now sits at 76 downloads total. How many people actually read it, I don’t know. Shafted Dreams is being… well… shafted, at a low 13 downloads since I uploaded it three days ago, while The Hunt has surpassed it with a total of 24 downloads and 1 review. Not bad for uploading it yesterday. Everything’s free, of course, so that may help me get downloads, where having them cost $0.99 didn’t have much result.

As of uploading The Dreamkeeper  a few minutes ago, it has had three downloads. I shall hope that continues. 🙂

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/151854 

Meanwhile, I am working on another cover for an unwritten “1000 Words” story, tentatively called,The Magician, and I have three story ideas to play with. One shall be young adult dystopian/war. 🙂

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April 13, 2012 · 3:37 am

Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – The Hunt

I’m trying to get these done faster as I get closer to the deadline with which I need to order this book. For those of you just now joining in, “1000 Words is my Honors College Project. The plan is to write ten short stories, each 1000 words in length (because “a picture’s worth a thousand words”) , accompanied by a book cover I design. I’m hoping to go into book cover design, so I’m trying to create a portfolio that I can use to promote my work.

 

SBibb - "The Hunt" Book Cover

 

Anyways, the latest short story I’ve completed (and published on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/151461) is called “The Hunt.” It’s a short story about a young hunter defending herself against an intelligent cougar  stalking her family’s village. This one is meant to be young adult/adult, and adventure themed.
As an update on the previously published stories, Snow Witch is standing the same in statistics, The Carrier now has 70 downloads and one review, while Shafted Dreams has only 12 downloads. Though there’s only been a few days of having Shafted Dreams self-published, it has far fewer downloads than The Carrier did. I suspect it may have something to do with an uninteresting blurb, or the difference in being published late at night versus early morning (though the fact The Carrier is still getting downloads make me think this should be a mute point).

Anyways, I have two more stories currently written that need to be edited, one story that needs to have edits finalized (which also needs adjustments to the typography on the cover), then three more stories/covers to complete. I also need to create a cover for the anthology itself. And this really should be ordered next week. Needless to say, it’s not a good idea to procrastinate. Especially when it comes to editing.

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April 11, 2012 · 3:25 pm

Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – Shafted Dreams

Another update, as the due date for completing this project draws closer… 

I have removed Snow Witch from Kindle (though it may still show as the system processes this), and made it free on Smashwords. There have been two additional downloads since then. It did recieve one review on Smashwords, which was two stars, but said it was worth the read.

The Carrier has 64 downloads since I uploaded it. There have not been any reviews as of this time.

I have just now uploaded the next short story, Shafted Dreams. Unlike the other short stories, it is a political commentary, and more on the literary side of genres. It is also told in three short points of view. I’m curious to see if it gets downloaded more or less, or has a difference in tendency to be reviewed. It is also a story I feel has a stronger cover, so I’m curious to see how that goes. Of course, I have uploaded it as free.

As a side note, I am noticing a theme starting to develop in this project, loosely themed around family. With that in mind, I’ll pay attention to that in other stories. 🙂

Anyways, the statistics of the project is as follows:

3 Stories completed.
4 Stories written but not edited.
3 Stories still need to be written.
5 Book Covers completed. 

1 Book Cover nearing completion.
4 Book Covers still need to be designed.

Anthology Cover still needs to be designed.

Let me know if you guys have any questions or anything you want me to go into more detail about with this project. 🙂

 

Shafted Dreams: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/151067

 

SBibb - Shafted Dreams Cover

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April 7, 2012 · 1:33 pm

Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – The Carrier

An update on my “1000 Words” project.

For Snow Witch, once the free trial wore off, there were no more downloads of this story (except the one I bought as a gift for my fiance). As such, I’m currently looking at two possibilities: see if sales increase once other short stories are available for free, or make it free as well, and only make the actual, final anthology cost money. (I’m thinking $2.99 sounds like a decent price). Right now I’m waiting to hear back from Amazon/Kindle as to whether there is a way to make it free on Kindle, or if I should simply remove the story so I can make it free on Smashwords.

Either way, I plan to hold off on publishing any of the other short stories on Kindle until the full anthology is complete.

This is largely due to time. It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that our final project is due on April 27th, the last day of regular classes before finals. Figure in two weeks for printing shipping a book, and that means I need to have completed the book by April 14th… a week from now. On the bright side, I guess I could do expedited shipping.

While I originally planned to do a large photobook version of “1000 Words” to showcase the completed book covers and stories, I’m starting to think that working with just the trade paperback version might be the best option.

Today I self-published the short story, The Carrier on Smashwords. Formatting was much smoother after having already done the formatting for Snow Witch. The one downside to running out of time to complete these stories, however, is not having as much time to find a proofreader. As such, I did extra proof reading of the story myself, and did it over a span of several weeks.

Once all the stories are completed, I do hope to find another proofreader for the whole anthology, or to look over it again myself, to try to catch anything I missed during this initial phase.

The benefit to going ahead and publishing it, though, is that it gives me the feeling that I must move on to the next story, regardless of if there might be more tweaks to be made. But if I were doing this for future projects, especially if it were a novel, I’d definitely want to find beta readers before it went live.

At the time of typing, The Carrier has had nine downloads, and no reviews (neither has Snow Witch). I just hope it is enjoyable. 🙂

Anyways, the statistics of the project is as follows:

2 Stories completed.

5 Stories written but not edited.

3 Stories still need to be written.

4 Book Covers completed.

2 Book Covers near completion.

4 Book Covers still need to be designed.

Snow Witch: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/139780

The Carrier: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/149719

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April 6, 2012 · 1:24 pm

My Recent Discovery of Book Trailers

So after reading the post (http://www.ravven.com/blog/2012/03/la-estrella-book-trailer/) by Raaven, which had the book trailer for La Estrella, I started getting an interest in book trailers. To be honest, I’d never really paid them much attention. I figured that if I’d read the blurb and that would tell me whether I liked it or not.

But then I started looking at book trailers, and the movie-like quality of them fascinated me. Some where less than thrilling, but others quickly caught my attention. The one Raaven mention, La Estrella, has me wanting to read the book, though I know very little Spanish. (Here’s to hoping it eventually gets translated).

Another one that caught my eye was also posted by Raaven (http://www.ravven.com/blog/2012/02/book-trailers/), called Harbinger. Personally, it’s not the type of book that I’d normally pick up, though I was fascinated by the trailer. I would give it a look now if I saw it in a book store, though I probably would have passed it over before.

Now publishers are also promoting thier books with book trailers through Facebook.

Starters instantly caught my eye, and I went on to read the sample chapter. Needless to say, it’s now on my to-read list (consequently, I signed up on Goodreads just to keep track of them all).

Starters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvNUsW1CItY

The other recent one was Under the Never Sky, which I’d previously ignored. After seeing the trailer, I definatly plan on giving the book a chance.

Under the Never Sky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0TnH3GEieE&feature=youtu.be

Would I go out and buy the book on the trailer alone? Probably not. But the ones that catch my interest do get me reading the sample chapters.

And one book trailer just made me happy, because it was advertising book two by showing the ending of book one. If you don’t want spoilers for Matched, you might not want to watch the trailer for Crossed. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovn8-Jp3ckM

Anyways, twas a thought I had. Personally I really enjoy these movie-esque book trailers, and whether I self-publish or traditionally publish the novel I’m working on, I’d want to consider the possibility of making a trailer. 🙂

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March 15, 2012 · 2:07 pm

Lucky 7 Writing Meme

Carissa (http://carissa-taylor.blogspot.com/2012/03/lucky-7-meme_15.html) tagged me in the Lucky 7 meme. She was one of the extremely helpful people who have beta read my young adult novel, Distant Horizon, that I am working on. Looked like fun, so I thought I’d give it a shot. 🙂

Here’s how it works:

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS

2. Go to line 7

3. Copy down the next 7 lines – sentences or paragraphs – and post them as they’re written. No cheating

4. Tag 7 authors

5. Let them know

My 7 lines from page 77 of DISTANT HORIZON:

Lance glared at me. Too bad, he knew I wasn’t the most reserved person around here.

            Crush rubbed the back of his neck, tossing the welder’s mask under a desk. The mask crashed into a cardboard box and a small bolt rolled out, clattering to the floor on the other side of the room. “It has to do with my power; I don’t really– stop– well. My real name’s John, but no one calls me that.”

            “The name stuck,” Pops admitted.

            “Powers?” Lance asked. “What powers?”

Might help to know that the MC is getting introduced to her new teammates… and to the concept of super powers. Crush, of course, has momentum. Anyways, just a quick taste of my YA novel I’m working on with my fiance. 🙂

Tag, You’re It!

These are the people I’m tagging. Only had a couple I could think of right off hand, but anyways, I found this to be entertaining. No obligation to continue if you don’t want to, just thought you might be interested. 🙂

Jordan: http://kissedbyliterature.blogspot.com/

Becki: http://themusingwriter.blogspot.com/

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March 14, 2012 · 3:43 am

Photo Illustration – Volcanic Ash Mock Book Cover

After attempting to create the background for another manip, I discovered it just didn’t want to work. So I stripped out the people from the image, and reworked it. Did some tweaking, added the hooded figure from a different manip that needed to be reworked, then added the book cover elements. Flipped the actual background.

Added an illustrated look to it.

Now I’m much happier with it. 🙂

SBibb - Volcanic Ash Mock Book Cover

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March 7, 2012 · 12:07 pm

Self-Publishing 1000 Words – Snow Witch is on Smashwords

SBibb - Snow Witch Cover

I have completed the cover for Snow Witch and finished formatting the short story for Smashwords. (Next up will be a Kindle edition). It is now up on Smashwords. The process felt surprisingly easy, and I only had one issue (had to change it from .docx to .doc), but the solution was easily remedied. I’m currently reading through and getting the hang of sales versus downloads, but hopefully it will work out well. I’m not sure if downloads also includes downloads of the sample.

Since Smashwords currently has a sitewide promotion going on this month for downloading an ebook, I choose to give “Snow Witch” the option to be downloaded for free. I’m hoping to entice people to download and review it, but we’ll see if anything comes of it. I missed the first half of the promotion, though, so it will only be free for three days, until March 10th. I would be curious to know how many people are interested in it because of the cover, and how many people are interested in the story due to the short description.

I also posted a note about it on my photo illustration Facebook page, made an announcement via Absolute Write’s announcements forum, and posted it here to my WordPress blog. I currently have two sales, one with the Smashwords coupon, and one an actual purchase. I’m not sure if the actual purchase was intentional or not. I’ll be curious to see how it tracks for the next few days (and will probably have to tell myself not to keep checking Smashwords’ dashboard for updates).

Next up is to create the Kindle edition, and then I need to edit and write the next short stories to be published. One down, nine to go.

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