Montag, 19. Dezember 2011

The Kindle tactic...

This is the plan...

  Amazon have suggested an idea that the boss of Night thinks is a good idea.

I do too, as it turns out.



  We give Amazon three months exclusive access to my book, (Division of the Damned, in case you didn't know) and they give me, (well, Night publishing) five days of promotion per month, for those three months.


  Sounds a dream as Amazon are by far the biggest distributor of ebooks and promotion is something you just can't get enough of, right?

I wonder what this promotion entails though?


  Whatever, who am I to ask, Tim knows his stuff a lot better than me, it's in his interest to sell Division so I'll go along with it. Another author, Mike Church, author of the very funny, "Dayrealing", is on the programme now and he seems happy with it.


  If I'm honest, I'm just happy that "Division" is finally going to be out there and that it's being published by a firm I'm MORE than happy to be connected to. It really is the most supportive collection of writers I have ever known on the net.


  I've been lucky in my forays into the cyber world of writing. There are so many forums, writing websites and dubious publishers out there that are either full of self-important, bile fuelled idiots or out-and-out rip off merchants, that it's hard to know where to go? To actually have found a, "community" of like-minded individuals like Night, AND that it's a money making business, is actually very lucky indeed... take my word for it.
(BTW, how I despise that word, "Community". It's been so over-used by rioting Chavs talking about how their communities rose up against the police etc etc. that it makes me squirm to have to use it. I hate it but it's the only one that makes sense so deal with it)

 
  After a very, very brief dalliance with Authonomy, the Harper-Collins peer critic website, (you give me a good review and I'll do it for you), I moved on.  A lot of people on Night like Authonomy but I didn't. The forum is jam-packed with angry, unsatisfied souls whose arrogance and rudeness is eclipsed only by their sycophantic ravings about how good Harper-Collins is.


  However, that's where the bad times stopped. I landed next at Struggling Authors, which moved nicely on to Night. How lucky is that then?


  This is a bit of a pants post, I know. However, after the initial part about Amazon I had nothing more to say, so I wibbled a bit.



  OK, as you were.

Take it easy.

Reg. ;-)

Mittwoch, 7. Dezember 2011

Double DOH!

... and it gets worse :-(

OK, so I send the story off and I'm thinking, "What could possibly go wrong now?" as I pat myself smugly on the back... ... ...

A lot, that's what.

The next day I received this polite but alarmigly cryptic message from the guy in charge.

"My assistant editor has read through your story and has a minor problem. The version you sent us still seems like the work in progress, has all the red and blue deletions and the like. "

Because I'm about as proficient on Word as I am at Astro-Physics, I managed to send the document off without accepting the edits.

So all the lines and boxes that appear while editing WERE STILL THERE !!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!!

How embarrassing is that then?

If this story is accepted, then it's one in the eye for those who claim that editors and publishers have no soul, lol.
The covering letter actually read,

Dear blah blah,

So, embarrassing, here is my third attempt at submitting my story,
"The Ides of March" for your Vampyre Anthology.


I am so disappointed in myself... :-(

As you were.

Reg :-/

Donnerstag, 1. Dezember 2011

DOH !!

I've just sent a short story off to a website.

I spent ages on pumping it up to the required word count and formatting it to their expectations, (every publisher wants their submissions, "just so". You'd have thought they would have made a standard for this sort of thing by now, eh?)

Then came the covering letter. Because I wanted to casually slip in my idea about the Classical Horror anthology I'm on right now, (not an easy thing when you're trying to pitch for your short story AND sell them an idea for something that hasn't even beem written yet), I had to give it extra special attention, be extra clever with my wording and extra blah blah fishcakes, whatever, you get the idea..

Yeah, well I finished it and was pleased with the whole package. I mean REALLY pleased.

The covering letter read like a dream and after attaching the Word doc. for my short story, I pressed send and patted myself on the back. Job well done, thought I... ... Not.

After pressing send I noticed a Word doc still open. It was my short story, formatted to their requirements but NOT SAVED !!! DOH !!!
So basically they recieved the old format and it looked nothing like what they had demanded on their website.

I saved it, copied and pasted the covering letter onto a new email, attached the document and wrote above the writing for the official covering letter:
Dear mr. Blah blah,
  This is my second attempt at sending you my submission and it's due to
the fact that I forgot to "Save" the title, my name, word count and
email address in the original document.
How embarrassing is that?
So... apologies and onwards.

Do you think they'll mind? LOL.
Whatever, life goes on, eh?

Reggie ;-)