Cold Calling with your Book in Hand. Do you have the Stomach for it?

by A.M. Khalifa, thriller writer, Google+

In the world of indie publishing, digital is king, thanks in no small part to the publishing revolution spurred by Amazon. But for many of us writers, the notion of selling a physical book still carries a romantic, even irrational sense of accomplishment. Consider this: Although I make more money selling eBooks, I get more excited when I sell paperbacks. Perhaps the knowledge that someone out there preferred to hold, smell, feel and touch a copy of my book—even though a much cheaper and more convenient medium was available to them—is somehow comforting.

Getting your printed book in brick-and-mortar bookstores however is one of the most uphill challenges of publishing. The large chains are pretty much in intensive care with a bleak prognosis, and independent or small-published writers are at the bottom of their list of priorities. Even Barnes and Noble which has so far managed to hold on to dear life, only pays lip service to supporting indie writers. They have an opaque program that allegedly will stock the works of “local” authors in the relevant chains. But if you've ever tried to communicate with your local Barnes and Nobel to pursue that, you will have likely discovered that it’s a hit or miss and depends entirely on the mood and temperament of the Community Relations Manager you end up speaking to. Not to mention that the reigning Barnes and Noble culture looks down on print on demand books.

Which leaves small and independently owned book stores and mini chains as the most viable option. I am happy to report that I have had remarkable success getting my debut novel Terminal Rage stocked in a select number of bookstores in North American and Europe. In London for instance, I am proud to be stocked in all branches, save one, of the beautiful Edwardian mini chain, Daunt. 

The Chelsea branch of the mini-chain Daunt, London, UK

Figuring out the best way to get stocked in indie bookstores came after a bit of trial and error.

Because most of us in this business spend more time behind screens managing our digital empires and building and nurturing our tribes, we tend to also communicate primarily through electronic means. It's faster and more convenient.

When I first started querying indie bookstores electronically, I was overwhelmingly getting ignored or rejected, which was demoralizing. Then it dawned on me that on any given day, most indie bookstores probably field hundreds if not thousands of emails from new writers like me with the same idea. Each professing to be the next best thing.

So I tried something different. I started calling the bookstores to set my self slightly apart, and sure enough my success rate instantly shot up to about thirty percent acceptance.

You probably know where I am going with this: Ultimately, the most effective way to get your book picked up by indie bookstores is to go there in person, with your book in hand for a good, old fashioned face-to-face pitch. As a writer, if you are not willing to look a book buyer in the eye and get passionate about your writing, how do you expect them to do the same over email or a phone call?

Indie book stores are typically unique establishments owned and staffed by folks who are extremely passionate about books. Like Linda Nurick of Cellar Door Bookstore who plays an integral role in promoting reading and supporting local writers in her local community of Riverside, California. I have found that the best way to connect with them is in person, because they need to get excited about you as a writer as much as they need to appreciate your book. Assuming you have an excellent and professionally-produced book, my own results suggest that walking in an indie bookstore to cold call will net you extremely positive results.

However, there are a few things to take into consideration if you decide to give cold calling at indie bookstores a shot. First and foremost, research each and every store in advance. Some of them specifically request that you don’t show up unannounced, so respect their guidelines. Some small bookstores are often highly specialized in a limited number of genres which may not coincide with your masterpiece. And remember that for all brick-and-mortar stores, space is the number one premium. If a book store describes itself as "tiny", "cozy" or "small but mighty", it's most likely they have a minuscule and highly curated inventory with a limited appetite for risk. So it would probably be a waste of your time and theirs to try. 

Ultimately, I've found that the most receptive are the small- to medium-sized general bookstore that sell new books, with no outright guidelines against cold calling. With that said, even if you target your bookstores intelligently, there is still a chance they just may not be that into you. Don’t take it personally and move on.

Writers, what have your experiences been trying to get your books stocked in brick-and-mortar bookstores? And readers, do you proactively make recommendations to your local bookstores when you don’t find your favorite authors stocked?

Sign up to my newsletter below to get:

★ exclusive free fiction
★ writing tips
★ publishing insight
★ Hollywood for writers
★ counter-terrorism scoops
★ middle east analysis
★ book giveaways and competitions
★ exciting updates on the film adaptation of Terminal Rage as it happens
★ free tickets for a party of four to an Elvis Presley concert*

* indicates required field

Email Address * 

First Name 

Last Name 

Special Offer! My sizzling-hot short story, The Jewish Neighbor is available for free, for a limited period exclusively on Amazon Kindle: amzn.com/B00HSN8O8M

* While supplies last. Offers valid only in territories where time machines are legal.

A.M. Khalifa's debut novel, Terminal Rage, was recently described by Publishers Weekly as "dizzying, intricate, and entertaining." 

The ebook version of Terminal Rage is now on sale for $0.99 on Amazon.

The Trigger: Cover and Title... Finally!

by L.J. Sellers, author of provocative mysteries & thrillers

As only a writer could do, I spent the week obsessing about the word the. I’ve had a title for my new thriller for months—The Trigger. But I started considering those powerful one-word thriller titles: Stolen, Missing, Inferno, Bombshell, Shiver, Dust (seriously, a new Patricia Cornwall), and I thought maybe I should title it just Trigger.

We developed a cover, and the single-word title looked great. I asked people in my house what they thought, and everyone said, “Yeah, I like Trigger better.” But it bothered me. Whenever I would talk about the story, I would stumble over the title. It started to sound funny.

Then my editor questioned the new title and said it made her think of a name, like the horse. So I knew it wasn’t right. Especially for people who might only see the title in text  (sans cover) and be confused by it.

So I’m back to The Trigger, which works well with the story, which goes like this:

Agent Jamie Dallas loves undercover assignments that get her out of the Phoenix Bureau. But when a woman and her baby disappear from an isolated community of preppers in Northern California, she knows the risk of infiltrating the armed group is dangerously high.

Once inside the compound, she discovers that the brothers who founded Destiny are scheming something far more devious than kidnapping or murder. Meanwhile, her local FBI contact, Agent McCullen, is pulled from her team and assigned to investigate the murder of a woman with phony ID, found at the bottom of a motel pool.

Soon Dallas finds herself in deeper trouble than she's ever encountered—with no way to reach her contacts. Can she break free of the bunker and stop their bizarre end-of-world plans? Will Agent McCullen identify the killer in time to help?

The Trigger is a gripping story that highlights our greatest fear—how a hacker and a fanatic with grandiose ideas can threaten civilization as we know it.

The book is scheduled for release January 1, and I have a great contest planned with a huge prize—a trip to Left Coast Crime. More details can be found on my website.

If you’re interested in an early copy of The Trigger (ebook and some print) and are willing to be on my street team to help launch it, please email me. ARCs will be ready in about a month.

So what do you think of the title? The cover? Story concept?

Conned?

By Jenny Hilborne
Author of mysteries and psychological thrillers

Advertising is necessary, but most people detest adverts. They slow a movie (unless you record and fast forward). Magazines are filled with them. They even find, or used to find, their way into some paperback books. At least with a print copy, we can see the ads upfront.

With eBooks, the ads are unseen - until we get to the end of the book and find sample chapters of the author's next work. Not everyone has an issue with this, but for some readers, it's a problem. I recently read an online discussion about how readers feel cheated by the inclusion of sample chapters.

The problem is not so much the insertion of the additional chapters, but with perception.

On an eReader (I'm using Kindle as an example as I've never read on a Nook) the percentage of the book read is shown. This gives the reader an idea of how much story is left. Imagine getting to the 70% mark, believing there is 30% of the story left, only to find it wraps up within the next few pages. We weren't prepared for that. What happened to the rest? This is not a good kind of surprise.

It doesn't matter that the novel itself was full length and that with the added excerpts we actually got more for our $2.99 or $3.99 than if we'd only received the novel. What counts is that we feel misled, conned, cheated. Even with free downloads, readers do not like the story to end with 30% left on their Kindle. Not even 10%. Some of those who paid for the download commented that they feel as though they've been tricked into paying for the author's advertising.

I've seen it with books I've downloaded to my Kindle. I understand the frustration. We can't "see" that the author gave us more than we paid for because we only see that book ended before we were at the 99% or 100% point on our progress bar. It feels like the story ended too soon and the author filled out the remaining percentage with the excerpts to reach 100%.

Readers getting pissed off is the last thing an author wants. Once they've been turned off, we've lost them, along with everyone to whom they might have recommended our books. An author can argue all they want that the reader got more than they paid for, that the excerpts did not reduce the length of the book, but it does no good once the reader is annoyed.

Yes, readers can ignore the excerpts (and from the comments on the forum, the majority do), but they are still unhappy about what they perceive as a shortened story. 1% or 2% left for advertising seems to be okay, or just one page of links to the authors next work. Readers commented that if they enjoyed the book, they still don't read the excerpts. If the quality of the blurb or the sample pulls them in, they trust the rest of the writing is as good, and they will find the author's next works on their own.

Readers: how do you feel about excerpts? Even if the book was great, does it leave you feeling misled when an eBook ends at less than 100%. Would it turn you off recommending or reading other books by this author?


https://twitter.com/JFHilborne
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Madness-and-Murder/100276173345429

Why I'm Leaving the World of Indie

By Andrew E. Kaufman

I recently made a very big decision in my career as an author. I’ve signed publishing deals with Thomas & Mercer and 47North (the Amazon-owned imprints dedicated to mystery/thrillers and horror/sci-fi/fantasy).

 After making the announcement, people began asking the inevitable--they wanted to know why I'm surrendering my status as an indie author.

It’s a good question, one I asked myself a lot before signing the deal. I’ve always been very proud of my indie status and of the movement itself because it's given me and countless others a chance to live the dream after facing years of rejection from traditional publishers.

But even though the conditions will change, I know the thinking behind them won’t. I realized this when Alan Turkus called to congratulate me on our partnership. He told me that their philosophy is to treat authors as customers, not as clients. That resonated very strongly with me, because it's a new way of doing business, something that before now has not been a common practice among traditional publishers.

And it isn't just talk. From day one, I’ve been treated in ways I know many of my traditionally published counterparts have not been. The lines of communication have been clear and open, and my input is extremely valuable to them. I feel like an active participant in my publishing process, something that as an indie author has always been very important me.

Another reason I made this move is because my goal has always been to take my publishing career to the next level, but as an indie author there’s only so much I can do to grow my readership. The publishing business is changing at break-neck speed, but it’s actually the indie portion that’s changing the fastest. With self-published books flooding the market at an alarming rate, it’s getting harder to sell them. Amazon has the marketing resources to help me reach a wider audience—something traditional publishers can’t do--while at the same time, take a significant load off my shoulders, so I can dedicate more time writing and less to promoting.

And then there are my readers, who are as important to me as the work itself. Amazon became the world's largest bookseller by putting their customers first, and I know they'll treat my audience with the same degree of care and respect that I do.

I'm very excited about this opportunity, but even more excited  to see another new and viable route for others like me who have struggled so hard to get their work into readers' hands.

Andrew E. Kaufman is the bestselling author of The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted and While the Savage Sleeps. For more information about his work, please visit his website at: www.andrewekaufman.com

The End

By Andrew E. Kaufman

I’ve been thinking a lot about endings lately. No, not my own. The ones in my books. The reason for this moment of reflection is that I’m wrapping up my third novel.

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m beginning to gain a better grasp on my process as an author. I’ve done it enough now, that I kind of know of what to expect as I stumble my way through. That’s not to say it’s always easier—it’s not. In fact, in some ways, it’s actually harder. I’m more the daredevil author these days, more willing to strap on my helmet and try things I would never have considered before, and with that comes its share of problems.

But the one thing I still pay very close attention to are my endings. They're important to me—really important—both as a reader and a writer.

As a reader, nothing bothers me more than a book that keeps me in suspense and turning the pages only to reach a conclusion that feels tacked-on or falls flat on its face. It doesn’t matter how engaging or well written the story is up to that point. If it doesn’t satisfy, I feel cheated. In fact, in those cases, that makes it even worse because my expectations are higher and the disappointment, greater. Reading is an investment, one that requires a payoff, not just in money but in time. Especially time. Since I've started writing books, I find I have far less of it to read. What little time I do have I want to feel worthwhile and enjoyable.

As an author, I know I won’t satisfy everyone, but I want to leave as few feeling disappointed or cheated as possible. So while I’m writing, I try to pay special attention to my reader’s mind as well as my writer’s. Part of that means making sure I’ve laid the groundwork and weaved my story in a manner that makes the ending feel organic rather than out of the blue or as my editor often cautions, “just in time.” I also try to pay close attention to both the story and the emotional plots. Two very different things but ones that are equally important. Since my stories are character driven, I want my readers to feel the emotional impact on my protagonist, and I want it to hit them hard. If my main character is feeling deep sadness, I want tears. If he’s feeling joy, I want the reader to experience that as well. When he’s in danger, I want them to know they have a pulse and to really feel it.

Recently, a writer-friend expressed her annoyance when she got to the end of a book and discovered there really was no ending at all. Lots of loose ends and no mention of a sequel. Bad move. She decided not to buy that author’s books anymore.

Another told me he bought a second book from an author after falling in love with the first, but when he did, it was a big disappointment. The reason? The ending was a big letdown. 

These examples illustrate rather well how important an ending is in a book and how it can make or break an author's career.

So as I wind up to the ending of my own novel, I’d love to get your input. Readers: what bothers you most about endings, I mean, what drives you absolutely crazy? Writers: what do you do to make sure your endings measure up?

A Dozen Do's and Don'ts on Prepping Your Novel for ePublishing

By:  Kimberly Hitchens.  Well, as you all know, I originally promised to blog, two weeks ago, about the ISBN monopoly controlled by initially the ISBN.org and then, here in the US, Bowker.  However, that post was delayed by an unforeseen “cat-astophe,” when The Amazing Zep (“Zeppelin,” properly known as Suncoon Tucson), a 7-month old Maine Coon kitten, decided he could fly off the top of our 7’ cat condo.  Obviously, I’ve allowed him to watch entirely too many Marvel Comics movies.  He leapt from the top of the Condo, aiming at a nearby artwork niche, and the results were, shall we say, not good; he nearly came to be known as Hindenburg.  Half a house-payment and 5 exhausting days later of caring for him 24/7, he’s fine, the little monster, but I apologize for missing the blog.  His nefarious face is shown here, so all will know the miscreant.  (And, yes, because most people look at kitten pics and go, “awwwwwwwwwwwwww…;” I’m shamelessly exploiting your weakness for kittens.)

But yesterday, Editor Extraordinaire Jodie Renner dropped me a line, and asked me if I happened to have a list, or a link to a list, of tips for preparing your Word document for e-publishing, whether you’re going to use an eBookformatting company like mine, or DIY.  She suggested it would make a good blog post—and I’d do anything to oblige her.  So today’s topic is What NOT to do in your Word document, either to keep costs down, or to make it easier for yourself/your formatter, to create your book in a gorgeous style.

1.       Everybody already knows #1; use Word’s built-in styles whenever possible.  Use them to automatically indent your paragraphs; don’t use the tab key or the space-bar (5 times or however many).  Now, an experienced formatting won’t have difficulty with this.  But if you’re using someone new, or doing it yourself, this will cause you problems.  Moreover, if you use Word’s built-in styles for all your regular narrative paragraphs, you shan’t have a problem, when you upload to the  KDP, with inconsistent paragraph styling—which you will have if you “style” every paragraph differently, not deliberately, but through misadventure, by not knowing and understanding Word’s styles.  If you don’t have a basic understanding of how these work (and how to see how they are working), take a few minutes and watch this video (not from my company, but we think it’s nice and clear enough that we host it in our Knowledgebase) on our Knowledgebase (you can enlarge it to full-screen for easy of viewing):  http://booknookbiz.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/182863-video-on-word-styles Our Tutorials section also has a video on the TOC and how to use headings (just click the “Tutorials and Videos” breadcrumb to take you to that section, or click “Home” above the article header to rummage around to your heart’s content.

2.       Speaking of…Header styles.  Very few people seem to know about or use what used to be called the “Document Map” in word.  If you use “Header Styles” to create your chapter headers, you’ll be able to easily navigate through your document by simply enabling the “Navigation Pane” on the left-hand side  (In Word 2007-2010, “View—> Click “Navigation Pane”).  If you’ve used header styles for every chapter head—lo!  Right there in the Navigation Pane, you’ll be able to see (and jump to instantly) the beginning of every single chapter.  An even bigger “freebie” side effect of doing this—you can auto-generate your Table of Contents.  This is incredibly handy for those of you determined to “DIY.”  For the video on how to do this, please see our second Knowledgebase video:  http://booknookbiz.desk.com/customer/portal/articles/182864-video-on-headings-and-toc-in-word If you don’t like the LOOK of the header styles that are available to you, you can change that with a simple click—but that’s generally covered in the first video, so by the time you get to the second video, you should already know how to fix that.  This can also save you some ducats at the formatters, depending upon how their pricing lists are structured.

3.       Lists.  Ironically, for either price-savings or saving yourself DIY brain-damage, don’t use numbered or bulleted lists, IF they are indented.  If you must have a bulleted or numbered list (yes—like the one I’m using here, hence the irony), and you’re going to publish to Amazon, it’s a giant pain.  If you can live with the bulleted or numbered list at the left-margin, it will work fine.  However, if you are attempting to indent them, what will happen is that the wrap-indents will NOT align perfectly. This is due to the ability of the Kindle e-reader (of all kinds, excluding the Fire, which can do this quite nicely) to rescale fonts.  The “wrap,” inside the secret-sauce code of a kindle book, is set in (either) a percentage (of the available screensize) or “ems” which are relative to the font, unlike text measurements—which are absolute.  What this means is that your text wrap will, on an indented, bulleted or numbered item, look perfect at one font size—but  will creep, ever so slightly, left-or right, as the font-size changes, relative to the selected font-size, if that makes any sense.  To wit:  if you increase the fontsize, you increase the amount of the second-line “indent” in the wrap.  However, the first line remains as it was set up (don’t ask), so your second line creeps left or right.  If this doesn’t faze you, then rock on.  If you have bulleted lists, and want them to align as perfectly as possible---well, you know where to find us.  ;-).  Making them perfect can’t be done in Word.

4.       Return-itis.  This one may seem obvious, but, I kid thee not, we get at least one manuscript a week in that is actually typed with a “return” keyed at the end of each LINE.  Not paragraph, but LINE.  Seriously; we have authors who don’t understand that Word wraps automatically, nor how to set line-spacing, so in order to make their manuscript “submission-ready,” they type to the right margin, and hit “enter” twice.  Please:  for your sanity and mine, don’t do that.

5.       Don’t create a dedicated STYLE to italicize or bold your text.  Simply highlight the text you want to italicize, and use the “I” button at the top of the ribbon/menu.  Same for Bold.  If you create styles, but also use the buttons, you can create inconsistencies in your work, and if you’re not a Styles-Genius, it can get confusing. 

6.       Fonts!  If you ever read what I write here, you know that you have to license any copyrighted fonts you use.  That’s the first thing; the second thing, however, is equally important.  If you use fonts in your book, to set apart various types of content—for example, the interior FP thoughts of your killer—be aware of the following:  the Kindle e-ink devices, as well as the majority of all e-ink devices, like the Nook e-ink readers and the Kobos—do not support more than a single font.  In the Kindle legacy devices—still the most widely-used of all reading devices, of any brand—they have a single font, called “Caecilia,” which is a Times New Roman clone.  Therefore, although you can license and embed fonts that will work spiffily in ePUB readers and in the Kindle Fire, be aware that firstly, that second font, despite your wishes, won’t show up on the Kindle legacy devices and second, if you’re trying to do this from Word on a DIY basis, it won’t work.  Despite your best efforts, as far as I know, if you endeavor to upload a Word file with multiple fonts in it, you will not obtain the desired result; font embedding has to be done from within HTML or XHTML (HTML you used to be married to) to work correctly.  On a Kindle you can use a second font—a Courier monospaced font—if absolutely necessary, but it doesn’t reflow like the TNR font, and it’s not very attractive.  You should, if you are going to DIY, consider using a fleuron or some other graphic device, to set that “other font” or inner thoughts, or whatever it is, apart from the rest of your regular narrative flow.

7.       Poetry, song lyrics, and other miscellaneous material that is indented and somewhat “columnar.”  For ease of formatting, both for yourself and any formatting company, don’t use “enter” at the end of the line; use a line break, which is SHIFT+ENTER, as opposed to the usual “enter.”  Don’t use this coding pair to create a new paragraph, but if you intend to display poetry or song lyrics, this is the combo to use at the end of each “line.”  At the end of each STANZA, however, you would use the usual “enter” key, twice, as you would for a scene break.  (Yes—there are better ways to do this, using Word’s built-in Styles, but this will work “okay” for both DIY and for any formatter worth his/her salt.)

8.       Spelling.  Yes, I know—how obvious is this? But you would be shocked at the huge number of manuscripts we get in here that are chock-full of spelling mistakes.  I think that authors invent character names and places, which Word, naturally highlights with the ubiquitous red line; and they get so accustomed to seeing that, they ignore the REAL errors.  If you have invented names, places, etc., in your ms, tell your spellcheck to “Ignore” those, so that you stop being “spellcheck blind.”  Correcting spelling errors that your readers find, post-production, is embarrassing for you; and if you’ve used a formatter, it’s expensive, as editing in HTML isn’t like editing in Word. 

9.       Hyphenation and Track Changes:  (A Twofer!). First, if you’ve used hyphenation throughout the document, for line endings (optional hyphens), you should do a search and replace, and remove all optional hyphens.  If you don’t, they can show up as regular, non-optional hyphens in the finished eBook product, which you obviously don’t want.  Use FindàAdvanced FindàMoreàSpecialàOptional Hyphen, and replace with nothing.  As far as Track Changes goes, ensure you’ve “accepted all changes” in your document.  If you do not, the edits that are now invisible to your eyes—all your additions, deletions, etc.-- will show up in your ebook, just as if they were typed in the text.  I can’t emphasize enough the importance of these two “pre-flight” items.   

10.   Explicitly marking your scene breaks.  If you are going to use a formatting service, ensure that you explicitly mark your scene breaks.  If you haven’t been a religiously neat typist, and occasionally have extra “enters” between paragraphs, a formatter can’t infer when you want a scene break used (a flush left paragraph with vertical whitespace above it) and when you do not.  If, like some authors, you have multiple types of scenebreaks—one that uses a flush-left, and one that doesn’t, due to whether or not it’s simply a passage of time, or a POV shift—then be sure you mark them differently and explicitly.  EBook formatters don’t read your book and can’t read your mind, so be sure to tell them what you want.  At Booknook, we have our clients use the old convention of *** to indicate any scene break where they desire the visual cue of a flush-left paragraph with vertical whitespace above.  Alternatively, of course, you can use a graphical fleuron—but be aware that using fleurons requires extra coding for use in Kindle, as the e-ink devices will try to grossly enlarge them (that’s the default Kindle behavior.)  If you use a formatter, the cost will be higher; if you try to do it yourself from Word, the results, on the actual e-ink Kindles, may not be what you expect. 

11.   Broken Paragraphs:  If you’ve used any form of conversion software, (please see Tip #12, below), or perhaps typed the file on different computers, over a long stretch of time, make sure you diligently scan your document for broken pararagraphs.  If you’ve converted it from any other format, or had it scanned & OCR’d, the incidence of broken paragraphs will be quite high.  To find broken paragraphs, turn on your Pilcrow icon (if you don’t know what this is, please see my blogpost here called “Pilcrow A Go Go,” from last October), and scan the right-hand-margin.  If you see a Pilcrow mark hanging out in the right-hand margin, in the middle of what should be a paragraph, that’s a broken paragraph, and that’s the way it will convert in an eBook—as two separate paragraphs, broken right where the Pilcrow is sitting.  If you see one sitting there, highlight it and delete it, and fix any formatting around it (usually, a space is needed before the ensuing word).  For additional information on the “end of line” pilcrow problem, please see my post on “Pilcrow No-No’s, Part II,” from last November, which addresses this exact problem. 

12.   Don’t Convert!  Okay.  Here’s a tricky one.  This will sound contrary to everything you’ve read, on the KDP forums, etc.:  but don’t convert from Mystery Format A into Word.  If you have a PDF of the interior of your print book, just find a competent eBook Formatting company and hand it to them.  If you have a Wordstar File from the dawn of time, hand THAT to them.  WordPerfect?  Pretty much the same (although later Wordperfect files convert very nicely, but some don’t, and you end up with a manuscript full of “@” signs where you should see left-hand-quotes, and a host of other glitches).  We get roughly 2-4 manuscripts a week in from prospective clients that know that we have a higher charge for PDF than for Word (as do all formatters that are serious), and they’re all the result of either using Calibre, or some online “You can convert your PDF file to Word, Easy/Free/Cheap!” website.  Here’s the actual truth:  It does NOT work, not at all.  What comes out looks, on the surface, like a pretty good Word file; but lurking beneath what your eyes can see is a disaster waiting for a place to happen.  Believe it or not, it’s cheaper, in the long run, if you simply hand a PDF file to a converter, who, quite frankly, will scan it, OCR it, and proof it, just to get the same starting point as  a Word file—because the results from that are 100x better than what you’d get by using Adobe Acrobat X Pro and attempting to export the file as a Word file.  If you have an endless amount of time, and knowledge of HTML, you can use the “auto-convert” method; and spend days or weeks cleaning up the ensuing HTML.  But if you hand a file like that to a converter, like us, they’ll charge you for all those man-hours.  Honestly, the scan option is probably cheaper. 

And there you go.  An even dozen items for you to use in creating and “pre-flight checking” your book for e-formatting.  We have other frequently asked questions, along with the two videos I already pointed you to, in our Knowledgebase, which you may find by clicking here.  Not many are actually about formatting, but we do have some nice links about marketing, Retailers, and a few hints and tips on Social Media.

(And yes, for those of you who’ve emailed, tweeted, and asked:  yes, it’s true.  We have Jackie Collins in the house; you should expect to see “Chances,” her first Lucky Santangelo novel, in eBookstores around the end of the first week of June!)

Hitch
K. A. Hitchens is the owner of Booknook.biz, an eBook formatting and production company, specializing in producing affordable and professional conversions for every author--from first-timers to NY Times Bestsellers.  You can follow us at Twitter ( @BooknookBiz ), Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/pages/Booknookbiz ), Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/booknookbiz/  ) or  LinkedIn (just search for us).

Happy Birthday, Mom

Red Tide is now available through Amazon.

When I look at that sentence, I just shake my head. As long as it was in coming, it feels like it happened overnight. I talked about it, wrote about it, dreamed about it—then actually sat a target date for publication. April 2nd. What would have been my mom's 79th birthday.

The "Writer at Work, Stumbling Toward Publication" line by my signature is forever gone. Well, the last part anyway. We'll see what might take its place.

Today I'm looking at a long list of things I should do to get the word out. QR code, website, Goodreads Author program, guest posts, business cards, Twitter, Facebook, blah blah blah. I also want to begin the self-edits for my next book.

Stop.

For a few minutes, I want to tap into the feeling of accomplishment and savor it.

Before I leave to savor, I want to let you know that in honor of my mom's birthday, Red Tide will be FREE Saturday, March 31st through Monday, April 2nd. Honest reviews are appreciated.