Winners and Losers

True to my intentions, I've taken a few days largely off writing and tried to just relax and do some reading. I've even engaged in a little TV/Movie action. I caught a few more episodes of The Office, watched some Frasier and Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns, and watched Hell's Kitchen. Last night I rented the movie The Losers, and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a lot. I've never read the comic book series it is based on, and it looked at first glance very much like an A-Team kind of set-up, but I liked the characters and the action was satisfyingly over-the-top. I don't know the names of the actors but among the characters we had the woman who played Uhuru on the new Trek, the guy who played the "Comedian" on Watchmen, and the guy who played Johnny Torch on The Fantastic Four, all of whom I like as characters. The villain was Jason Patric, who gave a pretty good performance as a totally conscienceless but sometimes blackly humorous evil CIA operative.

In reading, I started Hunt at the Well of Eternity, by our own James Reasoner, and am enjoying it muchly. I'm reading a collection of Loren Eiseley's poetry called The Innocent Assassins, which is, in general, not as good as his prose essays. I also started Flash Forward by Robert J. Sawyer and am liking it. I was hooked on the TV show before it was cancelled and the book so far is pretty close in many ways to the show.



I finished Ed Gorman's Harlot's Moon, which was very good, and Ira Levin's A Kiss Before Dying, which I liked a lot although I don't know if I'd consider it among the world's fifty best mysteries ever. I also read an enjoyable western by a fellow named Gary Addis, who I've mentioned in this blog before. I've copied my review from Goodreads below:

"Lance Jolley is a gunman. He's been shaped by childhood and by the harsh environment of the American Civil War into a hard man who can react with volcanic violence when he's pushed. And he's not adverse to trading on his gun rep.

But Jolley has a moral center and never forgets a friend. When the son of a friend is harassed into a gunfight that the young lad can't win, Jolley sets the range on fire as he rides for vengeance. Once more his enemies will learn not to push Lance Jolley, or those he cares about.

I just finished reading this for Kindle, which is the only way it's available at the moment. This is Gary Addis's first novel, I believe, although he's been published in nonfiction and fiction multiple times. It's a very good story, well written and strongly visual. There are flashbacks to the Civil War that are gut wrenching in their realism.

Good stuff, and I hope we see more of Lance Jolley."


Until next time, keep the word side up!
-----
-----

Some Notes on Publishing Killing Trail: Part 3

This should be the final post on publishing Killing Trail via Amazon’s Kindle ebook program. This one is mostly about the text itself, and about my results so far.

Text Issues: I purposefully decided not to make the first line of the stories flush left. Printed books do this but it always bothers me. Perhaps I’ve read too much stuff in manuscript form. Anyway, since it was my book I’d, as Cartman says: “Do what I want!” I indented the first line of all paragraphs, which looks better to me and improves my reading experience.

Whatever you decide to do about indents, however, you use the “paragraph” function on your word processor to set the margins. If you use the space bar to indent, it won’t come out right. You can manipulate the margins directly for the first line if you don’t want it indented. Always remember, though, that you can kindlize different versions of your manuscript to study before uploading it. That way you can use trial and error, if needed, to get the indents right. I’ve seen quite a few Kindle books that have indents all over the place and it does detract from the reading experience.

I picked up the margin information from Natasha, and I also learned that you need to create a hard page break after each section, as at the end of the table of contents page, and the end of each story or chapter in your book. There are a couple of ways to do this. You can put your cursor where you want the break to be, click on the “insert” button on your MS Word Menu and select “Page Break.” Or, you can put the curser where you want the break to be and hit the CTRL – ENTER keys. This doesn’t mean, necessarily, that the table of contents page will always appear on one page in an actual Kindle document, because the amount of words on a page depends on the size font the reader selects. However, it does make sure that chapter 2 starts on a ‘new’ page rather than a few lines down on the same page as the end of chapter 1.

Uploading Your File: After you have your file the way you want it (or before), have a look at the “Getting Started Guide” offered by Amazon here. You can also register and login from that page, which you’ll need to do to publish for Kindle. There is a very helpful video that walks you through the publishing process here.

Getting Paid: Amazon will pay you by check, but only when you’ve accumulated about 100 bucks. If you want to get paid before that, you’ll need to give them a routing number for a checking account so that the money can be deposited directly into that account. They apparently do this about every 60 days. I decided to set up a new account just for writing purposes and used that routing number instead of the one to my primary checking account. I’m not sure there’s any risk, but I’d prefer to take a chance with a 100 dollars instead of the several hundred in my regular account. I haven’t gotten my first pay from Amazon yet.

My Results Thus Far: And now for the good news and bad news. That is: Sales. The good news is that, between Monday, July 5th at 8:39 a.m. and Friday, July 23rd at 1:30 p.m., I sold 33 copies of Killing Trail. I make $2.07 per book at %70 percent royalties on $2.99 (minus .03 cent delivery charge), so the total comes out, according to Amazon, at $61.08. That’s $61.08 I didn’t have before. That’s a nice dinner for two at our favorite restaurant. But that’s not the whole story, of course.

The bad news is that I sold only 33 copies of Killing Trail in about 2 and a half weeks, and I laid out 25 bucks in giveaways before I even started. The bad news is that I sent several hundred emails to folks, did a blitz on my blog and on Facebook, got a big front page write-up in my hometown paper, spent 8 hours or more a day for most of the first week promoting the book…and sold 33 copies. During that time I also bought about $35 dollars worth of Kindle ebooks (and some printed books) from friends, to help them promote their work, and I know that most of them did return the favor. Take away 60 from 61.08 and I’ve got about enough for a MacDonald’s value meal. That’s still not the whole story, of course.

Honestly, I didn’t expect to do a whole lot better than this. I said going in that I’d like to sell 50 copies in the first two weeks. I figured 100 copies was real pie in the sky stuff. And, of course, the book is out there now and may continue to sell some copies over time. I can hope a bit of buzz develops. I can hope.

And, I also had good news in the form of some very nice reviews of Killing Trail. Those who read it genuinely seemed to like it, and that means a whole lot to me. I’m sure others are doing much better with their ebooks than I’ve done. Maybe they’re better writers than I am. Or better promoters. Or both. But they can’t be any happier when someone tells them that their stories are valued. I’ll end with a couple more of those reviews below.

From: O’Neil de Noux
KILLING TRAIL is a wonderfully familiar dusty, road - a thrilling ride of vengeance, unfulfilled love, sweaty saloons, bushwhacks, shoot-em-ups, bloody villains and cowboy heroes. What is familiar is not cliché when penned by Charles Allen Gramlich. The stories in KILLING TRAIL follow the tracks great western writers have left (Zane Grey, Louis L'Amour, Elmore Leonard, William W. Johnstone, Ralph Compton, Loren Estleman, John Edward Ames - the list goes on and I can't list them all). Gramlich joins the posse with stories of vengeance, right versus wrong and bullets flying. I highly recommend this book.

From: Gary Addis
The stories in Charles Gramlich's Killing Trail collection offer plenty of action, and surprisingly thorough character development as well.
----
----

Some Things I've Been Needing to Post

I’ll post the third installment of the Kindle publishing series Friday, but here’s a few items I’ve been intending to blog about and/or announce.

First, the newest Illuminata is out, and there’s an expansion of my piece on “To A Writer” in it. There’s also some stuff by the blogosphere’s own Rachel Olivier. You can download the July 2010 issue free here if you want, in either PDF or EPUB format.

Second, Jason Evans over at The Clarity of Night blog has published the winning stories from his first 12 contests in ebook form. The design and layout were done by JR Tomlinson, who also has a chapbook out from Motor City Burning Press. The Clarity of Night book is free as a PDF and includes a lot of great flash fiction. My story, “Precious Cargo,” which received the “Reader’s Choice Award” in the 2008 “Running Wind Contest, is in it. You can download your free copy here.

Third, a buddy of mine, Gary Addis, who is a talented writing coach and line editor, is currently accepting clients. His rates are very reasonable. So if you're looking to put an edge on your next manuscript, you might shoot him an email. Here’s his blurb below:

“When your car breaks down, you can lift the hood and stare at it. Or you can call a mechanic. What you don't do is abandon a valuable property alongside the freeway. A rejection slip from a publisher need not be the death knell of your dream of becoming a published writer. Send that manuscript to a mechanic.

I taught myself to write professionally by writing and rewriting and rewriting as many times as it took to get it right. The process required years and enough rejection slips to wallpaper my office. Allow me to shorten your learning curve. My services to you a beginning writer include manuscript evaluation, line by line editing, and even total rewrites when needed. My rates won't send you to bankruptcy court.

Initial contact should be via email.
Gary Addis: garyw.addis@gmail.com”

Fourth, I finished reading Bernita Harris’s Dark and Disorderly and enjoyed it very much. Here’s my review below:

This book is properly categorized as Urban Fantasy and I’ve only read a few books in that genre. Most of them I didn’t care for. This book I really liked, however. The main character, Lillie St. Claire, just seemed like an absolutely honestly drawn individual. She wasn't some super ass-kicking babe who every vampire and werewolf is in love with. She had faults and fears. She brooded at times, lost her temper at times, joked at times, felt weak at times, and strong at times. I felt like I could identify her as a real person.

The story was also very strong and really built up a steamroller of tension toward the end, with some nice twists here and there that I didn't see coming. The writing was excellent. The author clearly spent a lot of time crafting her sentences and it shows in the rhythm and poetry of the prose. I like to see an author who really cares about the writing. Bernita Harris certainly did. I highly recommend this one.


----
----