Yee-hah! I have achieved this week’s main goal (“Get that Kindle book finished and uploaded to Amazon!”) three days early. I’m so chuffed!
The Busy Writer’s One-Hour Plot is alive and kicking. After spending the last couple of days (off and on) messing about with formatting and testing the book, I finally uploaded an HTML file to Amazon yesterday… and was rewarded just under 7 hours later with an email saying…
Of course, at 12.57 am I wasn’t awake to see it come in… but it was a nice surprise to see it there when I fired up my computer this morning.
You can view The Busy Writer’s One-Hour Plot on Amazon here.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting a lot more about Kindle publishing – truly, folks, this is something you want to get in on. If you’ve got a cupboard (or computer hard drive) full of rejected manuscripts, or finished books just needing a final edit and polish – drag them out and get them up on to KDP (the Amazon Kindle Publishing Program).
Formatting your Kindle book: this is something that people tend to talk about with fear and loathing, and I can understand why. However, YOU CAN DO IT. Sure, you can get weird formatting when you first upload stuff to Kindle, but once you’ve done your initial book, you know what to expect.(Just remember to save it in DRAFT mode first. I saw a published book on Amazon this morning that didn’t even have a proper title… and no picture on the cover. The message with it said ‘Don’t buy this book. This is just a draft’. ???? I shook my head. Why would you let the public see a DRAFT?)
If you have written fiction, there shouldn’t be much of a problem with the formatting – you’ll more than likely just have chapter headings and italics, both of which are simple to handle.
Since my book was non-fiction, and I had a lot of bullet points in the Word file, I had to come up with some work-arounds, since the Kindle doesn’t handle bullets well. But it all worked out OK. (I shall reveal all in the coming weeks.)
Meanwhile, lots of savvy people know far more than I do about Amazon’s algorithms (Yes, I know, it sounds like the last thing writers want to know about. But it IS interesting, and it will have an impact on your sales. If you understand it, you’ll do better.)
One of those savvy people is author Carolyn McCray, who is a top-selling Amazon author as well as a social media consultant to writers and publishing houses. Go to her website, www.digitalbookworld.com, and read these three articles, in this order.
(Handy tip: there is a little printer emblem at the top of the article that allows you to remove images (if you want to) and print/convert the article to PDF. Nifty!)
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/gaining-traction-in-the-amazon-ebook-marketplace/
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/best-practices-for-amazon-ebook-sales/
http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/price-pulsing-the-benefits-of-dynamic-pricing-on-amazon/
Happy writing (and publishing)
Marg
Congratulations Marg!! Your newly published title sounds tantalising! And… your excitement is infectious. I always feel buoyed by your posts. You probably won’t remember me from Week One when I wrote a record number of words and then got bogged in the sticky pit of plot and preparation. I did manage to download all your offerings (while feeling like I hadn’t done the hard yards to deserve such generosity). Thanks for being such a shiny role model.
Thanks, Colleen! Nice of you to say so.
I LOVE the phrase ‘Sticky pit of plot’. It says it all. I must quote that one. Keep wading through that treacle! And download away: just stash the stuff somewhere handy – you’ll have the time to get to it one day.
Currently my to-do list reads something like this:
* Get my glasses fixed (again)
* Buy something to wear to the races on Saturday (I never go to the races. Going with friends. What do you wear?)
* Write all the stuff I need to put into Author Central at Amazon
* Fix my Facebook Fan Page
* Make a book trailer
* Finish writing The Busy Writer’s One-Hour Character
… and a whole bunch more. Oh, pshaw. It’ll all get done one day.
How freaky, that your new book is exactly what I needed before I went wading into random blogs this month, trying to learn how to plot! You see, for the past several years I’ve been a pantser wrestling with picture book manuscripts.
Well, that’s great! I hope you find it useful. You know, I found when I was tutoring the children’s writing course that lots of picture book writers got into trouble because they didn’t think a picture book needed a plot…often it was a ‘slice of life’ that didn’t have any tension; any reason for readers to turn the pages. In a picture book of all things, you want kids to be eager to see what’s coming next!
Excellent! Marg, did you already have your reviews organised to post, or have they come in of their own accord?
I just let people know that it was for sale, and invited them to leave a review if they wanted to…. didn’t ask anyone specifically. But lots of Indie authors send out review copies and line up reviews first, or ‘gift’ the books to people so they can read it and review. It’s up to you what you choose to do. The only thing Amazon frowns upon is paid reviews. And rightly so.
Congratulations, Marg. I love the cover. It really catches attention. I’m sure the book has a ready market among writers at all stages of their journey … most of us know that feeling of getting so far and then being brought to a sudden halt because we don’t know what happens next.
I just hope that it helps other writers to break through the ‘plot barrier’! Glad you like the cover… it’s part of a series. The next one is The Busy Writer’s One-Hour Character.
Hi Marg
I’m back after a couple of weeks of being snowed under at work. I’ve bought your book and I love it, and I love the fact you can get great stuff so quickly for such low cost. I’m kicking and screaming into ebooks but I don’t think writers can ignore them anymore.
I received this great diagram about how a book is born this week. I hope the link works:http://www.weldonowen.com/blog/how-book-born-because-you-kids-love-infographics
It is so true!
Robyn
PS I’m making progress – slowly.
Hi Robyn!!! Welcome back. Glad you’re finding the book useful! That’s the great thing about writing for Amazon Kindle… because of its size and reach (which translates to volume sales over time) we authors can afford to make books available at a much lower cost, which benefits everyone!
Love the diagram… I pinned it and tweeted it! (Wow, I’m sounding like a real social networker instead of a fake…)
Marg Congratulations, I cannot imagine how wonderful it must feel. Just went on to Anazon to buy the book and then realised I don’t have a kindle. Actually I have an even worse confession – I actually don’t evenknow wht one is. I guess if I am writing e-books I better find that out …Post haste!!!!
So I guess I will buy a kindle and then I can buy the book …and I am very much looking forward to that.
You are an inspiration Marg McAllister.
Lee
At the rate you’re going, Lee, you’ll have a dozen Kindle books online by the end of the year! If you want to try Kindle books you don’t have to buy a Kindle to start with… you can download a Kindle app for your computer (from the Kindle site, here: http://tinyurl.com/7o3jjb3 ) to see what books are like. However, if you’re going to read/write a lot of eBooks I’d buy a Kindle or an iPad.