Charlene Newcomb

things that come in the mail…

The time to squee is now. 🙂

the proof copy of my book

The proof of my book arrived in the mail! I did a quick check of it today and handed it over to friend Mary B. She’ll do a read-through to see if, during the adventure <insert major sarcasm here> of CreateSpace formatting, I created any typos, caused ellipses or em-dashes to wrap to the beginning of a new line, or accidentally wiped out a sentence or two. Fingers crossed. If all goes well, in another 10-14 days, Keeping the Family Peace will be available in print via Amazon.

I am giving up my regular Thursday Walks on the Blogside posting. I don’t think I’ve managed to ready a post for Thursdays in weeks. I haven’t noticed too much traffic linking out to the posts I’ve found informative, entertaining, or outrageous, but I’m going to continue to link to a few each Friday.

So on to the blog highlights:

Interesting figures reported: Amazon’s KDP Select Has Its Hooks In Me
I didn’t go KDP Select with my novel but after reading this, it sounds like I should do a bit more reading up on it. For non-writers, Select makes your published work an Amazon exclusive for 90 days, which means pulling it from all other distribution channels. I haven’t looked at my sales in the last 10 days, but prior to that, I can tell you that I’ve had 10 times the number of sales on Amazon as on B&N. So perhaps withholding B&N & Smashwords for 3 months isn’t such a big deal? Hey, writer friends, what’s your take on KDP Select?

A thought-provoking essay/review at Romance Novels for Feminists: The politics of M/M romance and Alex Beecroft’s BLESSED ISLE

How to Publish Your eBook from Word to Kindle in under Ten Minutes by Ed Ditto
Hm… Ed makes it sound easy but I bet it would take me a lot longer than 10 minutes, especially trying to figure out how to make and insert glorious chapter heads & scene breaks.

Speaking of which…

Jaye makes some excellent points and has some fantastic tips in Scene Breaks In Ebooks: Giving Readers A Clue. Jaye formatted my ebook and it looks spectacular. A question for readers: what bugs you about ebook formatting? What kind of scene breaks do you like?

scene break

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or

Have a great weekend everyone! See you on Monday.

  1. Ken Avatar
    Ken

    I went back and forth on Select for a while, but I think I’ll try it for my book when it launches. I don’t plan on using the free days, though, since it’s not a mass-market book.

    Reply
    1. Char Avatar
      Char

      I’ll be watching for your tweets or posts about your experience! Thanks for visiting. 🙂

      Reply
  2. Catherine Hedge Avatar
    Catherine Hedge

    This is fantastic news! Congratulations!

    Reply
    1. Char Avatar
      Char

      Thanks, Cathy.

      Reply
  3. Jadey Avatar
    Jadey

    Woo-hoo! I know it must have been fantastic to finally see your ebook come to life, but to hold an actual book in your hand, flick through the pages, stick your nose in it…*ahem*…you know what I mean. I think I’d be turning cartwheels. Congratulations!

    Reply
    1. Char Avatar
      Char

      I gave up cartwheels a few years back, but there was definitely some jumping up & down going on. Thanks!

      Reply
  4. Marie Loughin Avatar
    Marie Loughin

    Select is more beneficial to the established writer with a fan base. As a start-up indie, I see no benefit in using Select unless you plan to use the free days for promotion. As a reader, I would use my monthly book borrow (or however Amazon is doing it, now) for a more expensive book and would buy books with a price tag under $6, so I wouldn’t anticipate many borrows for you. Since you only have the one book, it’s not clear to me how much benefit you’d get from the free days. The game has changed at Amazon, so you can no longer significantly boost your Amazon rankings with giveaways. The best you can hope for is that the free books might lead to buzz and word of mouth. It’s up to you to balance that against a small loss of income due to exclusivity.

    I do think that Select can be useful if you’ve published several books. Then you can put one book in select and put ads for the other books in the back. Then giving that book away free can generate interest in your other books, for which readers would pay full price. You can also whip out a couple of short stories in the same genre as Family Peace and put them up for free, hoping to attract readers back to the novel. These are things I would try if I could manage to write more than two sentences a day…

    Reply
    1. Char Avatar
      Char

      Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Marie. I wish you had time to try these things so I could watch!! Soon, right? Short stories for FP might be a possibility next year… my niece wants a sequel. I can’t quite wrap my head around that at the moment.

      Reply
  5. Adventures in self-publishing: using CreateSpace | The Many Worlds of Char….

    […] the email expressing their concern about some of the graphics. I decided to order a proof anyway. And it looked fantastic! Except for the last […]

    Reply

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