Tag Archives: editing

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.

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. 🙂

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.

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.

Architectural Photos

Recently I was asked for examples of my photography related to interior architectural type photography. While I didn’t have any recent examples, I remembered taking a lot of architecturally based photography last spring break in Dallas, Texas. So I pulled out the earlier external harddrive and went through the photos to find the ones I felt best represented the potential client. Then I used what I knew about levels and masking with layers to improve them with my current skill level. I sent them the slideshow of photos along with five other relevant photos for thier review.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbibb/sets/72157625811495552/show/

I don’t know if I’ll get the job or not, but it did help illustrate the importance of being visible in the community (the client found me while I was selling posters at the Holiday Market), and of working quickly to provide a portfolio.