Just thought I’d share an intersting article on self-publishing. It relates to Smashwords and ebooks, and talks about the business and economy behind them. If you’re planning on self-publishing and/or e-publishing, it’s worth the read.
Tag Archives: writing
Graduation – Where To Go From Here
Wow, it’s been a busy week. One of the (many) reasons for this is graduation. That’s right, I can now say I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Photography, with a minor in creative writing. What does that mean? Makes it easier for me write my credentials on website. And I now have an actual album portfolio (a metal cover with leather binding and metallic pages, if you’re curious to know the details). I also have my Honor’s College Project, the “1000 Words” book.
But the real reason I wanted to bring this up was because of a few important things that I took from college. One thing is the importance of passing on knowledge. In an ideal world, education would be free, and passed on without having to pay for it. One great thing about the internet. It’s also a reason that I’m trying to keep my blog updated. I’m trying to focus on the self-publishing business and book cover design, as well as photo illustration. And I’m trying to post something useful when I do, so that there’s at least some tidbit of helpful information to pass on.
Which is why, if you have a question, feel free to ask. I may not know the answer, but if I do, or if I have ideas, I’ll try to help out. It’s why I’ve posted a list of blogs on the side of this blog that may proove useful to you. Yes, I’m trying to promote my business, but I also do want to be helpful.
Anyways, for my little note about promotion today, this is the flier I made to promote “1000 Words.” I don’t really expect it to bring much notice, but then, I didn’t write “1000 Words” to be a popular book. It started out as a portfolio to showcase my book cover designs, but hopefully it’s entertaining, too. But I included the picture in the flier, for recognition, listed where it could be found and the prices, and said a little bit about it, both genres and what it is. I tried to make it bold and readable. We’ll see if it gets noticed or not. 🙂
Up Next:
1. Try to find a “real” job (that is, something to pay rent until I get this book cover business going)
2. Edit Distant Horizon, my YA novel I’m hoping to traditionally publish
3. Write novella one of the “Socks” novellas (more on that soon)
4. Work on premade covers to offer (more on that soon)
5. See about doing interviews with various self-published author to get the other side of the publishing business.
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Life, Photo Illustration, Writing
“1000 Words” – Now Available in Paperback
Well, the good news is: It’s here. My Honors College Project is done. Turned in. Complete.
Yay. 🙂
Formally titled “1000 Words: A Collection of Short Stories,” is is now available on Amazon. I even fixed the description’s HTML so that it used line breaks. (Though it looks like I’ll have to independently set up the “search inside” feature for the paperback book).
Gotta admit, the cool thing is that while I was showing a copy of the printed book to my mentor for the project, a few of the other photo students got a chance to look at it and seemed impressed. Plus, one of the staff who works there decided to buy my book, making him the first official buyer of the paperback edition. Yay! My fiance has first dibs on the ebook edition. LOL 🙂
So now, here’s the part that may or may not be helpful for those of you reading my posts. I’ve taken pictures of the printed book (The Honors College permitted me to buy ten of them, one first myself, one for my mentor, and one for each of the seven models), at different angles. It’s a 6×9 inch paperback book from CreateSpace (they do print-on-demand, or “POD” printing) at 72 pages.
I’ll say one thing. It may be small, but I’m impressed with the interior color printing. The text is crisp, and the colors from the images don’t appear to smudge. The inner covers look great. I might have been a little off on how the spine was supposed to look, but it looks like the guides were correct (once I made a PSD to work from) for the wraparound cover. The paper for the front cover feels a little thin (as opposed to the paper a book printed at Lulu used for the cover) but the quality of the image looks great.
The paper pages are a bright white, but easy to read. I would personally consider extending the gutters out a bit or changing how I typeset the text in word, because the sentence feels a bit short when I try to read a paragraph, but that’s something I personally can do better to improve.
The pages open easily but do not lay flat (I felt a bit concerned about how thin the book is, but the binding appears to be holding).
Now, on to the pictures. 🙂
Front Cover:
Back Cover:
Side View:
Side View:
Inner Pages:
Text Page:
Cover Page:
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing
Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – Ebook Anthology Now Available
Well, the good news is in! “1000 Words: A Collection of Short Stories” is now available as an ebook on Smashwords, and soon to be available on Kindle. 🙂
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154613
Here’s the cover reveal (went through a couple transformations, but this is by far the one I like best. Yay for a “Twilight Zone” feeling):
Overall, converting it into an ebook wasn’t so hard. Mostly just time consuming, and tweaking things here and there (I’m pretty sure there’s still a couple issues with the Smashwords format, but I’m not sure what). Once I had the Smashwords one done, converting it to a Kindle ebook didn’t take long. Unfortunately, you don’t get all the neat layout designs of a print book, but the content and images are the same.
It’s available for $2.99, and comes with one additional short story not available for free (unlike the other nine stories in it). I will soon be making a print edition available through Createspace, and the price is to be determined.
I’m considering offering formatting services for both print and ebook editions for self-published authors if this goes well, so let me know what you think. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Business Ventures, Writing
Self-Publishing “1000 Words” – Socks
The last “1000 Words” short story, Socks, is now available on Smashwords. It’s young adult themed, mostly sci-fi romance with a hint of a dystopian background. I say a hint because they’re never actually in a dystopian society, but it was in the back of my mind when I wrote it. Needless to say, I had an interesting time working on the cover. It didn’t like me.
First of all, I wanted a pair of socks on the cover, one of the elements in the story. So I decided to make it plain and simple, aiming for something like the cover of Matched. Only, if you think about it, that cover isn’t really simple. Clean, yes. Not simple. (Awesome book, by the way, if you like dystopias and romance).
So I did up a pair of socks to look like the ones in the story, threw it on a white background, used a grungy text in watermelon pink to match the coloring. Too plain (as you can see below).
So then I decide to do a soft background, one with an industrial or city look and a grungy texture over it. Ah-ha! Awesome! I showed it to a few people… who pointed out that socks would do nothing to sell the story, especially considering that it was pink… and looked nothing like a dystopia. (Nevermind that at this point I realized the story isn’t dystopia. It’s sci-fi, maybe post-apocalyptic, but not dystopia). I was disappointed, since I thought the cover was well done… until someone else pointed out that it looked like a children’s book.
Well… rats.
As you can see below… it doesn’t fit the market.
So I tried again. Borrowed from the background, grabbed a couple pictures of people, did some more tweaking… and hated the cover. Didn’t look right, wasn’t going well at all, and I needed to be formatting the print version of “1000 Words,” not fiddling with covers.
Finally, I tried again. I borrowed the original background and softened it. Found a picture of a girl in my stock, tried to give it that sci-fi dystopia look. Made it kind of ambiguous. Image was kind of soft, so I played with that more in my favor. Added text… no socks this time, and didn’t make it pink. Played on the gray, grungy look. Liked the title being center, and added a bar running behind it.
I actually like this cover. Now the only problem is that it looks military sci-fi/dystopian… when the story is sci-fi romance (in a post-apocalyptic world). *Sigh.* Well, it works for the point of showing cover art, but if I had more time, I’d try again. Maybe a couple teens laying back on a grassy hill, overlooking the destruction of the city. A nice, opening scene. And in the gray sky, “Socks” would be written in the clouds.
Why didn’t I think of this three days ago? Now I know I need to get more couple stock photos.
So there you have it. The process behind the cover art for Socks. What did I learn? You can make a cover you like, but if it doesn’t look the genre, you’re still going to have problems.
Read Sockfor free on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/154150
Up next: I’m working on revamping sbibbphoto.com, where I’ll split it into two sections. One will be for “real world” photography, while the other will be for book covers and illustrations. Also, I’ll soon be announcing the release date for the print version of “1000 Words,” and I’m currently in the process of formatting it for an eBook.
Filed under Book Covers, Writing
Self-Publishing 1000 Words – Four-Way Stop
Originally titled “Stuck at Twilight,” Four-Way Stop was supposed to be about a guy who comes to a stoplight, then realizes all four lights are red. He waits around, then finally decides to run the lights… only to find himself stuck in the crossway of another dimension.
Instead, Four-Way Stop turned into some literary/horror mix, about a man whose choices lead him directly to a four-way stop. Maybe later I’ll write the original idea as a short story, or maybe not. Now that I’ve completed the short stories for 1000 Words (and I have the print book formatted, too!), I’m going to be quite happy to return my focus to my young adult novel I’m working on, Distant Horizon (you’ll probably hear more about that in future posts, when I run out of things to say about 1000 Words).
The cover for Four-Way Stop was probably one of the easiest for me to complete, even though it was one of the fastest I had to finish. I knew from the start that I wanted to have a red stoplight play a prominent feature in the image. Better yet, it needed to be gray, and preferably have rows of corn or wheat, as well as a road running through it.
So I searched through my personal stock imagery, and found an amalgamation of images to put together. A road, tall grass, a red stop-light (knew I had to have that picture somewhere…) and a weird tire-texture that I motioned blurred for the rain. Put it together, and by itself, it looked horrible. This is where textures came in handy. Since it was supposed to be rainy, I added a bit of cloud texture to give it a foggy look. Blurred the background, since who can see in heavy rain? Added the rain texture and tinkered with the effect. Finally chose the image of the girl, and blurred out the side of the face as part of the story. Made it look ghostly, changed the color to a stormy green.
Gotta admit, I was pretty happy with the result.
Anyways, I then worked on adding the text. I wanted to play with text placement, and conveying the idea of a stoplight. I also wanted “Stop” to be in red, and play a prominent feature. Thus I placed the texture into the corner, all nice and small. It did show the background, but it didn’t really look like a title. So I made it larger, and while I’m not happy that it obscured the background as much as it did, I am happy about the placement, now.
Below is the background image, as well as the final book cover.
You can find Four-Way Stop, a literary/horror short story, for free on Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/153784
In the meantime, if you’re curious about the statistics for the project as a whole, Dreamkeeper is in the lead with 122 downloads, easily surpassing The Carrier, which has been up a week longer, and stands at 102 downloads. It’s possible that people are downloading in multiple versions, or not reading them, but still, I found it interesting to see. I’ve gotten a couple more reviews on the stories (mostly good, yay!), but Dreamkeeper has none at this point in time.
Aside from the short I just did upload, Shafted Dreams has a measly 19 downloads, and no reviews. I do wonder whether this is because of the cover or the blurb, since everything else is between 30-70 downloads.
After this, I only have one more 1000 Words short story to upload, Socks, and I’ll have a little bit to talk about its cover, as well. The final short story, dubbed “1000 Words” for the title of the anthology, will only be available in the eBook and print anthology versions. I’m not quite sure what I’ll sell the print version at, but the eBook version will likely cost $2.99. I don’t expect a lot of sells, especially since I don’t have any marketing plans in place for it, however, I think it’s nice to offer something for those who want to “contribute to the author.”
Meanwhile, the print version of 1000 Words is in the proofing stage (to be printed as soon as possible, in order to get in turned in on time), but I’m fairly happy with it. Reminds me that I actually enjoy formatting print books. Of course, the next step is the eBook, which means seeing how to implement special text as well as embedding images into the file.
Let me know if you have questions, I’d be happy to answer them. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Writing
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!
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. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Writing
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
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
Filed under Book Covers, Writing
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. 🙂
Filed under Book Covers, Writing
Stephanie Flint - Author and Artist 