Writer’s Group Anthology

The Writers of the Desert Rose Café recently published an anthologies of short stories.  I’m excited for them. This was something my own group considered doing but never reached its goal of compiling the stories.

These local authors gathered a number of short stories in a book encompassing many styles, and although I haven’t read it yet, it sells for only $2.99 for the Kindle.

What do a dozen plus people from different walks of life and with ages spanning five decades have in common?
They love to write.
This group, Writers of the Desert Rose Cafe, admits storytellers, novelists, playwrights, poets, and authors of children’s literature. One member specializes in autobiographical non-fiction. Another writes only 55-word shorties—stories with a beginning, middle, and end told in only 55 words. Others pen screenplays, blog articles, poetry, haiku, Christian fantasy, doomsday or science fiction, or murder mysteries. Several create solely for kids.
The group meets at the Desert Rose Cafe, a popular bohemian coffeehouse that serves karma by the cup, in historic Williamsport, MD.
This is the first anthology for the group.

Don’t worry if you don’t own a Kindle. You can still read the eBook via the Kindle app for Windows or Mac. Click here.

If you’re local in the area of Williamsport, MD, the Desert Rose Café serves up some tasty meals at low prices. The owners are friendly people who are more than happy to serve you.

You can order the book here;

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Self publishing book covers

When I decided to self-publish my short story, Into the Shade, the idea was both exciting and a bit daunting to me. To put my stuff out there for just anyone to read (and leave feedback)? Yikes. It was getting the book cover that I found the most troublesome.

A book cover needs to catch a reader’s attention. It’s the first marketing move you make as a writer- a self published author. When you take the route with a publishing company, they will decide on the cover. They know the market, appeal to artists, and wrap the manuscript in nice packaging. As a self published author, you need to do the same.

The cover should include some element, a tease, of your story. With mine, I choose a dark, smoky background with a woman’s face in repose. I wanted to capture the elements of being in a dreamlike place, but also hinting at something sinister. I almost went with using a scene direct from the book, but in half shadow.

The cover can be a photograph, painting, print, or other media. My cover is a mix of 3D render created in DazStudio. (Dazstudio is free, but getting all the 3D models might cost you a bit. It’s a fun program to use.) I then photoshopped the rest. (You can use Gimp, which is similar to Photoshop but free)

I’ve seen some beautiful work at sites such as Deviantart, or use Google to look up artists that could do something specific for you.

It might cost some money, but consider cost of any marketing venture. Do you want people intrigued by the cover, to want to read the story inside? Does it grab their attention? Does it promise more? Consider a book cover as marketing material, which often finds its way as elements of your site, letterhead, and more. My short story perhaps doesn’t accomplish this, but my novel will.

Share your experiences with book covers in comments below. What are you thoughts on covers to your stories? What styles do you like? Photos, paintings, symbolic or literal?

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It’s official; I’m a Kindle-single-amazon publisher!

 

It was a bit more time-consuming than I expected, but its done and official. My short story, Into the Shade, is now live on Kindlesingles.net.

I’d love if anyone orders it to please leave a good review!

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The publishing to Kindle Singles…so far

Learning how to format the document for Kindle singles took a bit longer than expected, but it is done. The short story is official published. Unfortunately, I screwed up the book cover on the first try so that needs to be fixed before I post the link to my blog. I wanted to share a few things that I felt were needed to be shared for those interested in this method of publishing;

Your book cover graphic should be 2500 x 1900.  Include title and the author’s name. Don’t include ‘by Your Name’. It doesn’t look right. Amazon provides a ‘placeholder’ type book cover if you don’t have one.

Preview your book before publishing. I used Mobipocket Creator (free) to create the file, and used Kindle Viewer to preview. I was rather surprised how different my book appeared in the program.

Edit and do rewrites. Remember your story goes public and will be open to reviews. Go through and check spelling, grammar, and strengthen writing before publishing. I liked using feedback from my fellow writers, but also a site called Paper Rater. It checks for a number of things and provides a report. Its also free.

Check formatting. Amazon has a pretty extensive page and PDF documents on this topics, but I found this article helpful in giving the basics and using basic language.

Check and double-check everything about the book, then publish. You will need to wait about 12 hours for it to go ‘live’, and for me, it was maybe 6 hours.

Have you published yet? What was your experience? What are your thoughts on this method of publishing? Post in comments below.

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Some nifty writing ideas!

I found this little gem of an article the other day, A 12 Day Plan of Simple Writing Ideas, and like the suggested activities to spark creativity.

There are 12 days of writing exercises you can use that will break through blocks, spark new ideas, and get the ball rolling for new writing projects.

I’ve done a few of the exercises before such as the thinking of titles. I’ve also found a number of lovely images online of places that would make a wonderful setting for a story. I really like the idea of writing from a bad guy’s point of view.

Try them and see if it work for you. Post below if you found some success!

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Kindle Singles

Want a place to sell your short stories via Amazon Kindle? Look no further- Kindle Singles is a service offered by Amazon so that authors can e-publish short stories to the web. Readers can then download to Kindles, Ipads, Iphones, and computers.

I intend on using this in the upcoming weeks and will post my experience if you’re interested. If you publish with this method, be sure to leave a comment letting me know how it worked out for you.

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