Publishing on the Kindle - Amazon DTP (part 2)

As regular readers will know, I recently decided to investigate publishing some of my work on the Kindle. Prior to January 15th, this was something you just couldn't do outside the USA (without paying a third party). Now, the process is open to all. As I said on my previous post, I don't see this as an alternative to the traditional agent/publisher route for my novel(s). I'm simply republishing fiction that has been previously accepted by a paying magazine. Mainly just to see how well the process works.

I decided to publish an SF short story of mine called The Armageddon Machine. Actually you'd probably call it a novelette as it's getting on for 13,000 words. It was originally published in a magazine called Deep Magic. It's a deep-space, far-future story concerned with the imminent destruction of all space/time. Nothing like tackling those big themes! It had some pretty good reviews when it first appeared. Tangent, for example, called it :

"a masterful, compelling work, with deep themes underlying it that brush against life, eternity, and the meaning of existence."

So, how easy was it to publish on the Kindle? Actually, fantastically easy. Here's what you need to do.

Firstly, you need to sign in to the Amazon Digital Text Platform.  If you have a standard, Amazon customer account you can actually just use that. Once you're signed in you have to set up a bit of extra account information. This varies depending on where you are in the world. For me, here in the UK, I pretty much just had to enter my address.

Then you need to upload the text of your work and provide descriptive details : title, keywords, categories and so forth. The trickiest part I found was writing the blurb to sell the story and creating a cover image to go with it. An image isn't mandatory but I'm sure it's a really good idea : a reader browsing through screens of possible stories to download will tend to skip those that don't have a picture. A good picture, on the other hand, is a great way to grab someone's attention. In the end I purchased a suitable image from a stock photography web site, and edited it to add the title of the story and my name. This gave me a result I'm happy with.

I had to do a small amount of reformatting of the text of my story. The Amazon routines do a pretty good job of taking a Word file and converting it into Kindle format (which is actually just HTML, plain old web page format). But I found that the indentation was slightly wrong on very short paragraphs. However, this was easy to fix. You can download the generated HTML, edit it and re-upload it. If you're comfortable editing HTML it's straightforward. If you're not, it's not a big issue in my experience. The story as it was would have been good enough.

I elected not to enable DRM (digital rights management) on my story, which has the effect of making the story easier to pirate. But I'm OK with that. I tend to agree with Cory Doctorow on this : obscurity is a much bigger problem than piracy for most writers. As he puts it :

“Of all the people who didn’t buy one of my book’s today, the majority of them didn’t buy it because they never heard of me, not because someone gave them a free copy.”

Finally you need to set a "suggested selling price". The lowest price you can set is $0.99, so that's what I went for. You actually receive 35% of the sale price, although a new 70% scheme is currently being introduced (US only in the first instance). So, at $0.99 I'll receive about 35c for each purchase. Maybe 20p in UK money. Note that, strangely,  Amazon make their own decisions as to the price they'll actually sell for. What you enter is no more than a suggestion. When I first posted my work it appeared with a list price of $3.51, which came as something of a surprise. I assume that Amazon have automated routines that adjust prices according to how well things sell and that the price will fluctuate. After a few days, the list price did indeed drop down to $0.99. Then it went up to $4.69! I'll probably experiment with different suggested prices to see what works best over time but it's odd not having proper control over the price charged.

Note that the writer only receives 35% of their suggested price. If Amazon do choose to sell it for more, you don't earn more. Conversely, if they choose to sell it for less, you don't earn less.

Once everything is in place it's just a matter of clicking the publish button and waiting a day or two for your work to be accepted and made available to the 1.5 million Kindle owners to download. Easy. I found that some of the details of my work - particularly the blurb I had laboured over - took longer to appear than the rest. I presume there is some sort of manual vetting process involved. Note, also, that you can go back and change any of the details (apart from whether DRM is enabled) at any time and simply republish.

So, there it was. My story was available on the Amazon Kindle store. You can see the page for it here. There's no sign of it on the UK Amazon site, though, just the US one. I assume it will propagate out in time.

I then wanted to check that it all worked. The problem here is that I don't, I should admit, have a Kindle myself. Still, there is a way around this. Amazon also publish a virtual Kindle application for the PC, a free download that lets you emulate the device. I downloaded that and bought a copy of my own story, just to see what happened (thus, effectively, handing another $3 to Amazon's profits. I know, I know). Everything worked beautifully and I was able to read my story on my PC as if it was on a Kindle. Happy Days.

Of course, it's only then that the real battle begins. The ease of publishing like this means that there are a lot of Kindle books out there. At the time of writing there were over 400,000 in total. Just having a book up there doesn't mean anyone is going to pay to download it. Although, somewhat to my surprise, I found that people did start buying my story as soon as it had appeared, even before the description was there. Within a day I had five sales, placing the story at number 14,742 in the Kindle sales chart.

But that's just a start. The next task is to see what can be done to promote the story more widely. And that, my friends, since this has turned into quite a long post, is something I'll look into in the next part of this series.

Stay tuned!

Flash Fiction : Light Years (21/100)

... malfunctioning. ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Publishing on the Kindle - Amazon DTP (part 1)

I blogged previously about the Kindle and e-readers in general. The blogosphere and the twitterverse are still awash with people debating whether these devices will ever replace the papery books we all love. I, for one, suspect they will, although by the time they do, I'm sure the technology will have evolved considerably. We may well even end up with an e-reader that bears a very close resemblence to a paperback. I think the technologies will converge. Because, after all, the paper book is just a technological artefact : a way of delivering the words of a story to a reader. It isn't the story itself; we're just all so used to thinking in these terms as the book is so ubiquitous.

Future e-readers will, I imagine, be able to transform themselves into any one of thousands or millions of books they hold in their memory and/or which they can download. When we get to that point, the book vs. e-reader debate will have gone away. But that's for the slightly SF future. Clearly, we're a long way from that right now. I mean, the Kindle at the moment is so drab. Set it aside all those delicious, colourful book covers in the bookshop and it just looks embarassingly dull. And, while I may be proved wrong, the super new Apple iPad looks to me just too clunkily big and expensive to replace the book right now.

Still, devices like the Kindle are a start. And they aren't going to go away. As has been well documented, Amazon sold more electronic "books" via the Kindle last Christmas than it did paperbacks. The implications for all writers are enormous. Publishing houses, I'm sure, are putting vast effort into coming to terms with this brave new world. But I'm intrigued to see if I can publish something to the Kindle myself, right here, right now.

It turns out, as of January 15th, I can. In fact, anyone can. Prior to this date, only US citizens could upload content to the Amazon Digital Text Platform (DTP) and so publish to the Kindle. There were third parties in the USA who would publish for you for a percentage, but otherwise the rest of the world was excluded. That's all changed now and anyone can use the service (although currently only in English, French and German.) And there are, according to some estimates, 1.5 million Kindles out there.

Now, I don't see this as a way of bypassing the traditional find-an-agent-then-find-a-publisher route that most writers adopt for their novels. That's certainly the approach I'm going to continue to take. But I'm also intrigued to know how well publishing to the Kindle works. Partly it's the techie in me, partly the writer. So here's my plan. I have a number of short stories and novelettes that have been published in the past via a more traditional route - by magazines with proper submission and editorial policies. Some of these stories haven't seen the light of day for a while and I still own the copyright to them. So, I'm going to see how easy and effective it is to republish them via DTP on to the Kindle.

Stay tuned! In part 2, coming soon, I'll let you know how the process goes ...

Dear Fellow Self-Important Narcissists

Recently I was telling a few friends and fellow scribblers about this here blog of mine, partly because I thought they might be interested in what I have to say (well, you never know) and partly - I'll be honest - because I hoped some of them might click on that lovely little Follow button and/or subscribe to the RSS feed.

The reaction of one of them was striking. Let's call her Sue. Because, actually, that's her name. But it's OK, I can be pretty sure she won't read what I write here, as her immediate and forceful reaction was along the lines of, Bloggers! Bloody self-important narcissists! Why should the world be interested in reading what they ate for breakfast? It's this celebrity culture of ours gone mad. Mad!


I may have exaggerated slightly for comic effect there. But this is a reaction I've experienced quite a few times. Perhaps you have too? And, yes, the people voicing these objections do always seem to think we blog about what we ate for breakfast. For the record, today I had toast spread with some rather nice home-made plum jam and a cup of strong black coffee. It was tasty.

But do people who object like this have a point? Are we just self-aggrandizing narcissists?

Sue, I should make clear, is no technophobe. She's an active participant in several internet-based writing groups and forums. From these she derives vital feedback, writing advice, and, I'm sure, a sense of community. But I think that's exactly what blogs can do too. Only better. The "what you had for breakfast" objectors have just failed to understand what blogging is. Blogs are a sort of dynamic, informal, infinitely-extensible, ad hoc community. Or at least they can be. Because here's the fantastic thing. People don't use these communication technologies in the way they're "supposed" to.

A blog was originally a "web log", intended as something like an online log or diary. The sort of place you might, indeed, detail what you had for breakfast. And I know lots of people use them in precisely that way. But most, it seems to me, do not. They invent no end of new uses for the technology put at their fingertips. They use blogs to broadcast writing advice, or to publish a magazine, or to share experiences of agents and publishers, or to build a writing "platform", or to just swap tales of the trials and tribulations of writing. The permutations are endless. From the writing blogs I follow - and the fine folks who follow me in return - I derive endless useful information, support and entertainment. And breakfasts are rarely mentioned.

Twitter is the same. If you go to the Twitter web site (did I mention I'm @SimonKewin by the way?), the tweet prompt says "What's happening?" - as with blogs, the intended use is for people to detail where they are, what they are doing etc. But in my experience the vast majority of tweets aren't like this at all. They're conversations. They're bookmarks of useful or interesting web pages. They're announcements or jokes. They're the rallying cries of campaigns. Once again, people have taken the technology and bent it to their own will.

I was, I'll admit, slightly sceptical when I started this blog. It did seem a little self-indulgent. Now I see it as a fundamental part of my identity as a writer. It's as simple as that. I wouldn't be without it. I don't think it's any more narcissistic than, say, writing a novel that you hope other people will want to buy and read.

And Sue, if you do read this, I'm sure you'll appreciate the irony of me using your comments as the material for a blog post. Bloody bloggers!

Flash Fiction : Light Years (20/100)

... starship ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Book Review : The Art of Fiction by David Lodge

I've read a few of David Lodge's novels - Small World and How Far Can you Go? for example - and enjoyed them very much. I also encountered Lodge as a literary critic and academic during my Eng. Lit. BA and thought he made a lot of sense. So this collection of his essays on the workings of fiction appealed to me very much.

It doesn't disappoint. It's divided into fifty bite-sized essays, each on some aspect of fiction, and each of which can be read in ten minutes (they were originally all newspaper columns.) For example, there are sections on character, time-shift, point of view and, everyone's favourite, showing and telling. Some chapters are more useful than others. You can probably skip the one on aporia and still live a full and happy life, for example. But most are fascinating.

Lodge's writing is always easy to follow. He does stray into academic analysis a little, but it's never dry. And it means I, for one, can now distinguish between metonymy and synecdoche. Which, you know, is always useful when the conversation flags at a party.

Lodge's knowledge of literature is impressive. He clearly prefers the great, canonical works of English literature : Dickens, Waugh, Austen and so on. You won't find any Tolkien or Stephen King, let's say. Edgar Allen Poe is about the raciest he gets. But what he has to say is all pretty universal. Some of the pieces are outdated and could be revised. I really don't think that faxes represent the future of the epistolary novel, for example. But, by and large, this book provides a useful and enjoyable insight into the techniques employed by authors.

Recommended.

Flash Fiction : Light Years (19/100)

... The ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

The Genius Computer Hacker: How Good Does Research Have To Be?

I've recently finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. It was an engrossing read, although I suspect I wasn't quite as taken with it as many have been. Lisbeth Salander, she with the tattoo, is certainly a great character, and the book deals well with some large and important themes. I'll undoubtedly seek out the other two volumes at some point. I did, however, feel that the book would have benefited from further editing.

Anyway, this post isn't a review. What I want to talk about is believability and research and, as an example, the treatment of computers and computer hacking in the book. Whenever I read that computers play a significant role in a novel, I experience a slight sinking feeling. Almost invariably, as I read, it becomes clear that the the writer doesn't really know what they're talking about. Sometimes it's a basic thing that gives the game away, like muddling memory with disk space. Sometimes, as with Larsson, the treatment is more convincing, but still flawed. I won't bore you with the technical details, but I'll mention an example. At one point Salander hacks into someone's laptop and reconfigures it so that all its hard-disk activity is redirected to a server on the internet. The laptop's user then, hilariously, carries on, not noticing any difference. Not noticing, for example, that his machine has suddenly become a hundred times slower, or doesn't work at all if there isn't a wireless signal.

Now, I only notice stuff like this as I happen to know something about computers and software. My non-writing alter-ego, the one that actually pays the bills, is a software developer. For other readers it will be other things. My wife, for example, is a doctor of microbiology. She generally finds the treatment of computers in literarure perfectly convincing, but sees significant flaws whenever microbiology is involved. I, on the other hand, don't know enough about that subject not to find its handling perfectly believable.

And my question is, does this matter? How rigorous does research have to be? Are we, as writers, trying to create absolute technical accuracy in all areas we cover, or is it enough to just fashion an enjoyable illusion, convincing enough for most readers? It's significant, I think, that I was still engrossed by Larsson's book even while a part of my mind was spotting the technical flaws. I still wanted to read on, find out what was going to happen. I still "believed" in what I was reading.

The danger with making technical mistakes is that you might alienate some expert readers. But if what you write is believable enough for most people, does it matter that it's actually "wrong"? I tend to think not. We're trying to create art here, not produce text books. I write a lot of SF, for example, and I have no doubt that much of my work would be laughable to a physicist. But then, so would the great majority of SF. Disallow FTL space-travel and 90% of the whole genre goes away. For me, the fiction of SF is much more important than the science. That doesn't mean I don't strive for accuracy, or at least consistency, in my invented science (or in anything else). To be convincing, something has to have at least a grounding in reality. But it's the story that matters, I feel, not the adherence to the facts. Research is vital, but only as a way of convincing people your particular illusion is believable.

So, smiling to myself occasionally, I forgave Larsson and just enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And I made a mental note that believability in fiction doesn't have to mean obsessively strict research to the nth degree. It just needs to be good enough for the story. But I may be wrong about that. I should probably do some more research. What does anyone else think?

Flash Fiction : Light Years (18/100)

... word. ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

New Year Writing Resolutions

So, a Happy New Year to one and all - or at least to everyone who lives by the Gregorian Calendar ...

This, of course, is the time of year for resolutions. Perhaps it's the Celt in me but I rather like the idea of a period outside of time, between the old year and the new, when you can take stock, remember what has gone before and think about what is to come. Resolutions are, I'm sure, just one modern manifestation of an ancient need to mark the middle of winter, the darkest point in the year, the hoped-for return of the sun. Without getting all new-age on your ass, it does often feel like there is a pause around this time, a moment of stillness when the world is frozen (as it has been here in the UK) and nothing much moves. A good time to think.

So, anyway, one thing I've been thinking about is writing resolutions. I thought I'd do the clearly insane thing and post them for all to see. Some of these are things for me to achieve - proper SMART resolutions as discussed by Nicola Morgan. Some of these are just hopes and aspirations that are to some extent out of my control. But this what I hope and aim for in 2010 :

• Find an agent for Hedge Witch, my first novel
• Continue to write at least 500 words per writing day on average
• Complete a draft of Engn, my second novel
• Make at least 3 short story sales ...
• ... including one that qualifies me for Associate SFWA membership
• Reach 50 blog followers ...
  
• ... and 200 Twitter followers
• Read, I don't know, oodles of depressingly great books by other people. One a week sounds like a good start.

That should be enough to keep me going! Achieving all of those would make for a truly wonderful year. If and when any one of them happens I'll be a happy man ...

Flash Fiction : Light Years (17/100)

... No ...








Light Years is a work of flash fiction. In fact it is the slowest piece of flash-fiction ever written. In real-time its one hundred words would take exactly 10,000 years to recount. Because of the limitations of a normal human life-span, it has been specially accelerated to the speed of one word per week. It will therefore take just under two years to tell from start to finish.

For a full history of the transmissions, click here.

Christmas Book Quiz Winner

It's time to reveal the winner of the quiz I set just before Christmas. Before I do, though, here are the answers to the ten questions posed :



1. How many ghosts visited Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol?
   - Four (Jacob Marley, Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Yet To Come).

2. In which poem is there a "rough beast" that "slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
   - Second Coming by W. B. Yeats.

3. A person holds 66 books in their hands. They put one book down. Now they are holding no books at all.  What book was it they put down?
  -  The Bible (there are 66 books in the Christian Bible).


4. Find a verbal connection between Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes,  Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ludd-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees.
   - Dapple(d) - Name of Don Quixote's donkey; first line : "Glory be to God for dappled things"; name of river that flows from the land of faerie.

5. Which book did the American critic Edmund Wilson famously describe as "long-winded balderdash"?
   - J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. How wrong can you be?


6. Which Victorian novel ends with the words "He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was"?
   - Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

7. Which novel contains these lines in a poetic preface : "And, gentle reader, you as well / The fountainhead of all remittance. / Buy me before good sense insists / You'll strain your purse and sprain your wrists."
   - A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth.

8. In which Shakespeare play do Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek appear?
   -Twelfth Night.

9. Who lived in the house at Pooh Corner in the A. A. Milne story?
   - Eeyore.

10. What was the sequel to Arthur C. Clarke's 2001 : A Space Odyssey?
   - 2010 : Odyssey Two.

And the winner is : Andy Yates, one of my oldest followers. I mean, he's not old. He's just been one of my followers for a while. Anyway, congratulations Andy, you'll have your book ASAP.