I have noticed, and you may not have, that I've been writing less of these columns.
I chalk it up to the fact that I have expanded the scope of what I do on my other blog, the Fritz365. It used to be all poetry, or at least that which I viewed as such. Now it has grown into poetry, concept stories, and serialized stories, and a few ideological statements masquerading as some bastardization of verse.
I'm developing my own style, or at least trying to. It was unconscious at first, but now I choose to continue in the manner in question, it feels like it works for me. If it ever catches on, it will doubtless be after my death. Though the chips are stacked, and telling me that it probably will not catch on at all.
I have been mulling over what to concentrate on next. I have several threads of ideas going here and there. I have quite a few of the 'Tales of the Wrench' stories out there already. It wouldn't be too awful to write some more, and publish them in a book and ebook. Like I did the Man in the Desert concept (Kisses Blood Kerosene & Silk).
I've written a few blatantly biographical ones, and a few others that are almost that, but with some little creative touches in as well.
I've been very pleased with the Amazon.com publishing process, except for one thing: I can't set the price of my ebooks as Free. It's very frustrating. I'm not trying to make money, or a living at this stuff. Maybe I could someday, but I'm not counting on it. So the important thing for me is to simply get my stuff before people's eyes. Hence the desire to offer it for free.
Smashwords, has come to my rescue. In more ways than one.
While it was easy making the hard copy book versions for Amazon Createspace, it was a little harder to get the formatting right for the Amazon Kindle store. It was then a few orders of magnitude harder to get the files formatted just right for the Smashwords edition.
Reason being, that Smashwords converts and sells in many different formats, so as to be available on as many devices as possible. They also have deals with the Apple store to sell the books that have been submitted to them, as long as they meet some stricter "premium" guidelines.
The "premium" moniker has nothing to do with quality of content, at least I don't flatter myself that way. Because I'm proud to say I got at least one of my books into that status with them. It was a simple matter of formatting, formatting, formatting. I kind of enjoyed it.
Hopefully, my longer poetry collection will be accepted as well. Though it was done before the Man in the Desert dealio, it has hit Smashwords last. This is due to me being silly.
Amazon, has a program where authors share in a pot of money if their books get lent out in their new Lending Service. Now I wasn't expecting to get money, but I did support the program. I think It's a good idea. So I signed up, and was nailed down to a 90 day exclusive agreement with Amazon.com.
That, coupled with my inability to set the Amazon pricing to Free, has limited the downloads of my big book of poetry. As a matter of fact, the only downloads it has, have been on the five 'promotional' days Amazon gives you. On those days, 5 days of your choosing out of the 90 days exclusive deal; your book is free to download. I think about 45 downloads happened. Which is great! I'm pleased. I think at least half of those were friends who were just doing it to be nice, but the other half were strangers, I hope.
So this is a rambley blog post, isn't it?
Well, it's about my self publishing, a little anyways. And I'm still working on it. I'm still doing my one entry a day on Fritz365. Though who knows how long I'll choose to keep it up. It's not easy to come up with stuff every day I sometimes find. And I occasionally have to put up what even I consider to be stinkers. So that says something.
I mean well though, I swear I do! Every one of them starts with a cute or clever idea. I just sometimes lack what I need to make it march for me.
Ok, I gotta run, I'm making little sense anyways. If anyone who reads this has any questions about publishing an ebook on Amazon, or on Smashwords; go ahead and ask. But try to go through the sites in question first, after all, if I can figure it out with no help other than the FAQ's and the comment boards; anyone can!
Cheers, to glutting the words market
I chalk it up to the fact that I have expanded the scope of what I do on my other blog, the Fritz365. It used to be all poetry, or at least that which I viewed as such. Now it has grown into poetry, concept stories, and serialized stories, and a few ideological statements masquerading as some bastardization of verse.
I'm developing my own style, or at least trying to. It was unconscious at first, but now I choose to continue in the manner in question, it feels like it works for me. If it ever catches on, it will doubtless be after my death. Though the chips are stacked, and telling me that it probably will not catch on at all.
I have been mulling over what to concentrate on next. I have several threads of ideas going here and there. I have quite a few of the 'Tales of the Wrench' stories out there already. It wouldn't be too awful to write some more, and publish them in a book and ebook. Like I did the Man in the Desert concept (Kisses Blood Kerosene & Silk).
I've written a few blatantly biographical ones, and a few others that are almost that, but with some little creative touches in as well.
I've been very pleased with the Amazon.com publishing process, except for one thing: I can't set the price of my ebooks as Free. It's very frustrating. I'm not trying to make money, or a living at this stuff. Maybe I could someday, but I'm not counting on it. So the important thing for me is to simply get my stuff before people's eyes. Hence the desire to offer it for free.
Smashwords, has come to my rescue. In more ways than one.
While it was easy making the hard copy book versions for Amazon Createspace, it was a little harder to get the formatting right for the Amazon Kindle store. It was then a few orders of magnitude harder to get the files formatted just right for the Smashwords edition.
Reason being, that Smashwords converts and sells in many different formats, so as to be available on as many devices as possible. They also have deals with the Apple store to sell the books that have been submitted to them, as long as they meet some stricter "premium" guidelines.
The "premium" moniker has nothing to do with quality of content, at least I don't flatter myself that way. Because I'm proud to say I got at least one of my books into that status with them. It was a simple matter of formatting, formatting, formatting. I kind of enjoyed it.
Hopefully, my longer poetry collection will be accepted as well. Though it was done before the Man in the Desert dealio, it has hit Smashwords last. This is due to me being silly.
Amazon, has a program where authors share in a pot of money if their books get lent out in their new Lending Service. Now I wasn't expecting to get money, but I did support the program. I think It's a good idea. So I signed up, and was nailed down to a 90 day exclusive agreement with Amazon.com.
That, coupled with my inability to set the Amazon pricing to Free, has limited the downloads of my big book of poetry. As a matter of fact, the only downloads it has, have been on the five 'promotional' days Amazon gives you. On those days, 5 days of your choosing out of the 90 days exclusive deal; your book is free to download. I think about 45 downloads happened. Which is great! I'm pleased. I think at least half of those were friends who were just doing it to be nice, but the other half were strangers, I hope.
So this is a rambley blog post, isn't it?
Well, it's about my self publishing, a little anyways. And I'm still working on it. I'm still doing my one entry a day on Fritz365. Though who knows how long I'll choose to keep it up. It's not easy to come up with stuff every day I sometimes find. And I occasionally have to put up what even I consider to be stinkers. So that says something.
I mean well though, I swear I do! Every one of them starts with a cute or clever idea. I just sometimes lack what I need to make it march for me.
Ok, I gotta run, I'm making little sense anyways. If anyone who reads this has any questions about publishing an ebook on Amazon, or on Smashwords; go ahead and ask. But try to go through the sites in question first, after all, if I can figure it out with no help other than the FAQ's and the comment boards; anyone can!
Cheers, to glutting the words market
