Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Gotta say (jh) your Heart of Haiku is excellent. Great example of the
power of a Single...I would never have bought a book on the subject,
but this bite-size little nugget was ideal to take a quick dip in the
water. Beautifully written. Thanks.

Ed and Jacques, and Emma, I'm getting to yours...and looking forward
to them all. But I've got to read Forbidden Sacraments today to get
ready for the next Inkwell.vue discussion starting tomorrow.

This has gone all too fast, and all too easily. Thank you all for a
wonderful discussion, great content and inputs on a whole new aspect of
publishing in the Digital Age. May your rankings increase!
  

    
I suspect this particular conversation won't end just because that seems 
to be the inkwell way. Why should it?
  

    
And the Inkwell Way says it ends on Thursday anyway!
  

    
Gail said "Does anybody do a
simple web site for a short e-book?   It seems like it would be easier
to plug an ebook by saying "It's available at [articletitle] dot com"
on a radio or podcast or even tv show. Then if it were also published
in other formats like the "nook," or even read aloud and for sale in a
spoken word format, those links could be there, too."

I don't do single web sites for my ebooks (5 so far) but I publish
them on Smashwords.com so that people with Nooks or whatever can
download them in any e-reading format.  Smashwords has a program they
call the "meatgrinder" which takes a Microsoft Word document and
converts it to all the e-reader formats.  They're easy to deal with,
and the guy who runs Smashwords is an honorable guy.

The problem with Smashwords is that nobody has heard of it, so I have
to send people there.  On Amazon, people sometimes find me while
browsing for something else.  It helps that Amazon has a "Joe
Cottonwood" page, which lists all my books and Kindle editions.

It's too bad so many people hate Amazon so much because they've really
got the browsing/serendipity thing figured out better than anybody
else.
  

    
so why does it end? you guys aren't special guests who were given well 
memberships to participate, you're here anyway. do not get this. here's a 
good conversation, LET'S END IT NOW BECAUSE THAT IS THE RULE.
  

    
Actually, Inkwell topics stay open indefinitely into the future. We
don't close them, we just move the attention of Inkwell to a different
one. But this conversation will continue on as long as people want to
continue discussing the topic.
  

    
Not what I said. I'm saying, as an Inkwell host, that conversations
are started and (officially, nominally) stopped on Thursdays. I thought
our host was terminating us prematurely. 

Right at the moment, I'm not sure setting up a webpage that'd bounce
to my Amazon sales page would be very useful, especially considering
that I've never done a web page before and it's a pain in the ass for a
couple of bucks. (When I get my book done and so on, I'll do the whole
thing about keeping a blog, promoting it, and the rest, of course, but
maybe the publisher will help with that). I've got the URL for the
sales page on almost all the e-mails I send, and Fresh Air wanted to
mention it, so I googled the title and the first ten or so hits that
come up are the book. I hope they do it (as well as hoping they run
another piece) because I'd like to see that famous Terry Gross Bounce
happen to me!

Slippagio.
  

    
Julie, I do realize that, but the effect is usually to shut down the 
convo. And I think this particular one is a special case because it's not 
about a particular book, the "guests" aren't imported from elsewhere, and 
mainly because the whole kindle (etc) thing is so new and is still 
developing. 
  

    
Just back after a week offline...

Delighted to hear that Jacques and my books were promoted, and that Ted
liked The Heart of Haiku.

Re "visible length," my Single's page says it's 29 print pages, and that is
what it is, in typescript. Word length might be more accurate, but regular
laypeople readers don't get word length--that's a writer's measurement.

Re pricing, I think we all just need to learn how to figure it out by
watching how books at different price points do over time. Amazon itself may
have learned that a bit, between Jacques' book being published and mine,
some months later.

Glad to see from that posted link that Vook is still doing pretty well.
<gower> did a Vook. Is he still on the Well? Would be really interesting to
hear his experience in this forum.

It was also interesting to see that very authoritative person advising
Richie that Kindle e-books can only be read on Kindles, wrongly. That whole
issue remains a pickle, it seems. Either time will solve it or it won't.
It's like Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, people can't hear
"Kindle" and not think "Kindle device" at the same time.

We're in a kind of Wild West for all these things, where terminology is
fluid and confusing (Ed's Kindle e-book vs my Kindle Single and Jacques's
Byliner--or was it Atavist?--Kindle Single vs finding Joecot's Smashwords e-
books--are those sold on Amazon?--and so on). My guess is that eventually
when a person buys a print book the e-book will be bundled into it--but
we're far from there. My guess is that print books will last, but bookstores
will evolve into something we can't quite see the shape of yet, and with
that transition, so will "the publishing industry." My guess is it won't be
pretty, for those of us in love with the old model. I hope I'm wrong about
that. I hope the old model will survive as robustly as radio has. But I
really liked the clarity of someone's post above that it is about logistics
and technologies and practicalities, as we move forward. The question of the
day is, how do people find out that something exists that they may want to
find, in this new world, and how will those who creat that something make a
living by doing so. I guess that's two questions, intimately related.
  

    
Oops my bad, guess we are overlapping discussions. You are right of
course, Felicity, it never ends
  

    
(fom) Sorry for the confusion...haven't hosted an Inkvue in years and
was confused about the starting date for the next convo book I'm
reading. I thought it started tomorrow, but actually, it's on
Thursday...as always apparently. Was thinking I was making a smooth
transition...not!
  

    
even if it did overlap, I still contend this one is different.
  

    
Amazon has started a featured sub-store for independently published
Kindle books that have good sales and rankings. It doesn't stop any
books from showing up elsewhere, but just highlights some of the
top-ranked indie books.

<http://www.amazon.com/b/?node=3059252011>

I think it's useful, though some of the self-publishers are skeptical
(it can promote faked reviews and ratings, sock puppets and the like). 

re: Smashwords. They don't publish to Amazon yet, as far as I know,
though they are working on an Amazon agreement. They do publish to
Barnes & Noble's PubIt, to the Apple store, and to Kobo, as well as
selling on their own site. Mark Coker really is a good guy, and very
supportive of authors self-publishing.
  

    
You're wonderfully knowledgeable, Jennifer, about how all this works.
  

    
I'm just a couple months ahead of most people, that's all. This change
has been revving up for a couple of years and I'm a newbie compared to
the folks who have been doing it all that time.
  

    
so it is the case that "kindle indie" is turning out to be what these 
are called?
  

    
I call mine a "thingle," and they haven't sued me yet.
  

    
How are sales Ed?
  

    
Meh.
  

    
Jennifer, forgive me if you already said something, but do you have an
e-book project in the works too?
  

    
I've published one short story and recreated one public domain book. I
plan to do much more, and I have to say I'm having a blast. 

I find I enjoy being back in publishing again (something I used to do
in those far distant days of pre-computer phototypesetting), and I'm
also enjoying writing more than I have in years. In fact, I'd given up
fiction writing altogether until these new opportunities opened up.
  

    
That's excellent.  Will you post links to your work?

Also, I have another question.  I spoke to someone who has looked into
these things who is convinced that the problem with poor rendering of
illustrations is about the resolution of the devices not the ebooks
formats.  

If so, then something which was produced properly would look sad on a
Kindle-the-device, but could be fabulous on some reader app on a
computer, no? Certainly with a browser looking at the cloud!  

Fine illustrations should be possible if it is only about the devices.
 Anybody know where the illustration resolution choke point is in this
process of conveying the work to its audience?
  

    
Happy to share links, and also happy to send freebies to Well folks
who are interested in anything.

Last Night, a short story

Smashwords
<http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/57247>

Amazon US (it's also in the UK and DE stores)
<http://www.amazon.com/Last-Night-ebook/dp/B004Z20DZQ/ref=pd_rhf_p_t_1>

Barnes & Noble
<http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Last-Night/Jennifer-Powell/e/2940012608239>

200 Eggs A Year - How to Get Them

Amazon US (not on UK or DE at this point)
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EHRY94>

B&N
<http://search.barnesandnoble.com/200-Eggs-A-Year-How-to-get-them/Edgar-Warren/
e/2940013104808>

Smashwords doesn't take public domain works.

The story has been up longest and has had a handful of sales. Though
when I made it free on SW I got nearly a hundred downloads, which
tickled me. It's early days for me yet as a virtual unknown. I'm
working hard on both more fiction and more farm and garden books.
  

    
> If so, then something which was produced properly would look sad on a
> Kindle-the-device, but could be fabulous on some reader app on a
> computer, no? Certainly with a browser looking at the cloud!

The photographs in the Kindle version of Annie Jacobson's AREA 51: AN
UNCENSORED HISTORY indeed look fabulous in the Kindle app on my iPad.
They are, however, black and white (as were the originals).

I don't know what would happen if you included a color photo in a
Kindle book, whether it would display in color on color devices but in
B/W on Kindles, or what. I suspect we may not find out until Amazon
releases a color Kindle (or a color tablet), which has been rumored for
ages.
  

    
The black and white illustrations in one of my books came out better
in the Kindle edition than they were in the original hardback edition
30 years ago.  The illustrator (Ed Wong) rescanned the images himself
for my ebook edition and he is delighted with the outcome.  He even
gave me a brand new illustration to add to the 20 or so we already had.

Like any other aspect of publishing, a lot depends on the prep work
behind the scenes.  Careless scanning and careless formatting is common
even among the major publishing houses who put out sloppy ebooks and
then wonder why people don't want to pay $25 for them.

If the book looks bad on your Kindle, it's likely to be the fault of
the publisher, not the Kindle.