Picture Perfect Now Free!

Now that my Black Earth series has come to a close - at least in regards to the full-length novels - it's time to pick up the torch that is the Expired Reality series and start busting out more of the storyline that began my entire writing career.

Last week I released the new cover designs for the first two novels in the series - Endangered Memories, Lost Birth - along with the new cover design for the first novella in the series - Picture Perfect.

And in celebration of the reemergence of the Expired Reality series, I've made Picture Perfect available for free via Smashwords. This is a permanent price change. For those wondering, Picture Perfect is a novella set before the Expired Reality series and gives background to Drather, a bounty hunter from the series.

My hope is that Kindle and Nook follow suite by making Picture Perfect available for free - neither site allows an author to set their books for free as a permanent price - however most of the time they will price match, so once they realize Picture Perfect is free on Smashwords, hopefully they will fall in line. The good news is you can grab any and all digital versions of the novella at Smashwords, including Nook, Kindle, PDF, Apple, Kobo, etc. Go grab your copy here! And enjoy!

Lost Birth: an Expired Reality novel is Now Available For Your Ereader!

I am more than happy to announce that Lost Birth, the second volume in my Expired Reality series (young adult sci-fi/fantasy) is available in ebook format for only $2.99. In the next month or so I'll be working on having it converted to paperback as well, but for now you can enjoy reading it on almost any Ereader device. And if you haven't read the first book in the series, Endangered Memories, you can grab a copy here. Have a great weekend everyone!

Lost Birth: an Expired Reality novel

The Swallower of Worlds—better known as Legion, a mysterious alien race that was responsible for destroying Earth long ago—has arrived on the planet of Anaisha. At least this is what Carrie Green is led to believe after awakening in an underground structure known as the Complex. Unsure if the information being fed to her is true or not, or why she is being worshiped as a deity by fanatical cult followers of the flame element, Carrie makes it her priority to escape the Complex and the clutches of a madman from her past.

David Corbin, the only man who may be able to save Anaisha from the cold grip of Legion, is on his way to Galtaia Penitentiary as a prisoner, escorted by the maniacal Agent Parks. Housing many of Anaisha’s most dangerous criminals, most of whom David helped put away, the prison, it seems, will become David’s crypt. But as allies and enemies continue to scramble to find the timepiece—an ancient artifact with unknown origins and powers—one person believes David to be the hero he was in the past and seeks to rescue him from his living nightmare to help save Anaisha from its own.

Available through:
Amazon Kindle
Barnes and Noble Nook
Smashwords (for other ereading devices)

Going Nuclear

Today I start the formatting stage for Endangered Memories. Seeing how the paperback version takes significantly longer to create because of proof ordering, mailing times, and the process scrutinizing the book for formatting errors, I've made the decision to release the ebook version of the novel first, hopefully in the later part of next week.

With the formatting stage for the ebook version upon me, there comes with it a process called "nuking the manuscript." I first read about this approach in the Smashwords Style Guide, and have employed it with every ebook I format. Essentially nuking a manuscript is the process of copying your entire novel out of Microsoft Word, pasting it in Notepad, and then recopying it back into a fresh Microsoft Word file. This is to strip the manuscript of all formatting blunders and/or corruption that Word might have in it.

The big pain that goes along with nuking a manuscript is that I have to go back in and redo all of my formatting, including italics, bold, spacing and the like. It's a bit of a tedious process, but it really pays off in the end because it almost guarantees the file will turn out error-free when published on the Kindle, Nook or Smashwords.

There's no better way to spend a Friday afternoon than to bomb a manuscript. Fun stuff!

My Experience With Smashwords...So Far

For over a year now, I've been publishing my ebooks through Smashwords, an online company that specializes in allowing indie authors to format and upload their digital books to be sold on different platforms, including the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes and Noble Nook, and the Sony Reader. Although I've experience a few drawbacks during my time working with them, I would say my experience has been somewhat satisfactory.

The first thing I'd like to direct attention to is the wonderful resource Smashwords makes available to anyone who goes to their site - Smashwords Style Guide by Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords. This free guide walks you through step-by-step on how to format your manuscript in Microsoft Word to get it ready for Smashwords Meatgrinder technology that will spit out your manuscript in all of the formats available to Smashwords. This guide is valuable even if you don't decide to publish your ebooks through Smashwords because it gets your book ready to look decent on almost any ebook platform.

Publishing through Smashwords will give you 85% or more net sales proceeds from each book sale from their site. The numbers are lower if you go through the distribution channels because retail starts to take bigger pieces of the pie. Each book published through Smashwords gets its own page. Smashwords even lets you place links on your book's page of where readers can find the paperback versions.Readers can leave reviews - however a reader has to have purchased you book directly from Smashwords in order to leave a review on it, which is somewhat of a drawback. Although, authors can also create coupon codes to help promote their books. Some authors have used coupon codes that give 100% off a book. This allows Smashwords to track the download as a purchase, meaning the person who downloaded it can review the book without having to pay for it.

As convenient as Smashwords is, I have run into a few issues, such as my book taking forever to be approved for Smashword's distribution channels, and my book being denied distribution for reasons that were already resolved. I've written the support department on a number of these issues in the past without receiving a reply, although I've had Mark Coker email me himself and take care of the issues. As helpful as Mark's assistance was, I would hope to see the support team reply in a more prompt manner in the future. I know once or twice I was told that they never received my email, but in order to send them a message, you have to fill out a form on their own website, making that a technical issue on their side.

Another big issue I've seen more than once - and am currently dealing with again - is the pricing issue between Smashwords and the Sony Reader Store. I changed the price of my books on Smashwords at one point in the past and it took months for the price to change on the Sony site. When I wrote Smashwords support on this issue, I received an email back from Mark Coker explaining to me that he was working to resolve the issue.

Lo and behold, I changed the price of two of my books a couple months ago and I have yet to see the price change on the Sony site. Deja vu. However, it's changed on all the other sites I have open to distribution. This makes it difficult to tell people I have my book available for their Sony Reader because the prices are higher there than if they were to purchase my books at almost any other site. The only other option is for them to purchase the actual Sony Reader file from Smashwords and manually put it on their ebook reader.

One strange thing I've heard from other authors using Smashwords is that their sales went up when they pulled out of distribution through Barnes and Noble Nook and simply made their book available directly through the Nook platform, PubIt!. I thought this might be wishful thinking, but since I pulled out of the Nook distribution through Smashwords, I've sold two copies of my books through the Nook platform. I know that's not a lot, but my sales on that platform were zero before.

Overall, I recommend Smashwords to any indie author looking for a solid website to make their stories available in digital format on multiple ebook readers. Smashwords is still growing, especially with the big self-publishing buzz going around lately, and growing pains are inevitable. But the company looks to have a lot of potential and a very bright future.

Great Tools For Self-Published Authors

In the past, I've posted here and there about the tools I use for my web design, marketing and audio projects and figured I'd bring them all together in one reference for others wanting to check them out. This is by no means a full list of all that is out there, just a list of what I've had success with. Some are free, some cost a minimal amount of dough. Overall, I know most self-published/indie authors are on a tight budget anyway, making it difficult to outsource some of the different jobs one has to do, so these tools will definitely come in handy if you're a do-it-yourselfer like me.

Gimp (www.gimp.org) is a great FREE design program if you don't have the cash to spare for a copy of Adobe Photoshop. I mean a legitamate copy of Photoshop. Gimp has great tools that I use for website, cover and logo design. There is a learning curve, but Gimp has a great online instruction manual, and there are innumerable tutorials online by other Gimp users. Once you learn the basics of layers and importing brushes, you're on the right track.

Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) is a FREE program for recording and editing audio. I am currently using it to record myself reading my books instead of paying another company/group hundreds to thousands of dollars to do it for me. I am also using a basic Radio Shack headset with microphone to do it. It seems to work just fine since all I'm doing is reading.
I'll include some other links that go well with Audacity -
Lame (lame.sourceforge.net/download.php) - lets you convert your Audacity file to MP3 format (FREE)
The Levelator (www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator) - automatically balances out the audio level and volume of your audio file (FREE)

WebEasy Professional 8 (www.avanquest.com/USA/software/web-easy-professional-8-130293) is a web design program I have been using for years now. It is very user-friendly and relatively cheap - $49.95 last I looked - and gives you a great drag-and-drop canvas to work with, allowing you to include video, images, links, code, and other great items in your website. It has a relatively easy walk-through to help you get your website posted to the Web. If you want to check out what I've done with WebEasy, head to my website at www.davidnalderman.com.

Musicshake (www.musicshake.com) is a nifty FREE program a friend told me about that allows you to mix different, pre-recorded instruments, beats and vocals into unique songs. I am currently playing around with this program to create some theme music for the beginning of my audio books and eventually for when I desire to start podcasting. The program is free to download and free to use, but if you want to export what you've recorded into MP3 format, they offer you to do so at a price of 99¢ per song for non-commercial use and $19.99 per song for commercial use.

Dreamstime (www.dreamstime.com/free-section.php) is a great resource for finding the perfect image for a blog post, your website, or any other design project you may have in mind. They offer royalty-free images for a price, but they also have a section devoted to FREE images that can be used without (from what I've read) having to credit the person who posted the image.

Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) is becoming a pretty popular place to set up and sell ebooks. But more than that, what first drew me to Smashwords was the fact that their technology helps you format your manuscript for almost every major ereader out there - for FREE. They include a downloadable PDF that walks you through the whole process. I found when I followed all the steps - including 'nuking' (cutting and pasting your document into Notepad to strip it of it's defunct formatting) the manuscript, which I do before I even start formatting now - that my novel came out looking pretty good on ereaders. You can list and sell your ebook on their website, sign up for the various distribution channels, and even create coupon codes for your work. Smashwords does take a minimal fee from your profits, but the great thing is they won't take anything from you if you want to offer your book up for free.

Createspace (www.createspace.com) is one of many self-publishing sites out there that put the control of your book - and all of its content - in your hands. I have tried a couple other services such as iUniverse (which I did not have a good experience with) and Lulu (which is very similiar to Createspace), but I go with Createspace because my books are cheaper to purchase myself and that allows me to make more cashola. Createspace lets you upload your formatted manuscript to their site and put it in paperback and Kindle format. They charge nothing if you're taking care of the cover design, formatting, editing, etc yourself, or they offer publishing packages for a charge. They also offer ISBN#'s, which is convenient. Createspace allows you to set up your own virtual storefront for each of your books, and also offers distribution packages to get more exposure for your novels.

The Creative Penn (www.thecreativepenn.com) is a personal favorite of mine when it comes to useful blogs for indie authors. Run by Joanna Penn, an indie author herself, I have found this blog to be EXTREMELY helpful when it comes to self-publishing, marketing, book design, etc. Joanna interviews many authors, marketing gurus, and other special guests and loads up her blog with useful posts and podcasts that help with many different aspects of author and book promotion, spanning from shortcuts in using FBML in your Facebook pages to the elements of cover design for your book. I highly recommend this blog and this link - http://www.thecreativepenn.com/resources - will take you straight to a page she created for newcomers to start at. She even offers a free download of her Author 2.0 Blueprint which covers many different aspects of book and author promotion.

Hope some of you find this short but comprehensive list useful. I'd love to hear of any other goodies authors have found across the web, so drop me a line or a comment and let me know about them!

Price Changes

It's 2011 and the new year has brought a new vision in mind for where I want to go with my books. Self-published books - especially ebooks - are flooding the market and now is the time to take a second look at my marketing strategies and my writing business as a whole. After much research and scrutiny, I've decided to revamp the pricing structure of my novels, both in digital and paperback formats.

The cause for my change in attitude, at least when it comes to the pricing structure of my books, has resulted from catching up with the blogs of J.A. Konrath and Amanda Hocking and reading about their self-publishing ebook success - (you can check out J.A. Konrath's blog here and Amanda Hocking's here) In their blogs, they both are very candid about their sales numbers and the success they have experienced through self-publishing ebooks.

I've spent the last few days taking a good look at both of these success stories and taking a second look at my own marketing and sales plan and realize there are a few changes that need to be made on my part if I want to stay in the game.

One of these changes is the price of my books. Until now, I had the paperback version of the first book in my Black Earth series, End of the Innocence, available for $13.95 and the second book in my Black Earth series, The Broken Daisy, available for $17.95. I had these prices set so high primarily to be a part of the Createspace Expanded Distribution Channels which make my books available to be sold on thousands of major online and offline bookstores and retailers.

The problem with this distribution option is that my royalty shrinks to less than 50 cents for my first book and $0 for my second for any books sold outside Createspace and Amazon. That's right - even at $17.95, The Broken Daisy makes $0 in royalties for each copy sold through retailers outside Createspace and Amazon. But to be part of the distribution program, you have to have your book set at a certain price to allow for those outside retailers to take such a big cut.

Personally, I think $17.95 is ridiculous for a paperback version of any book. This was one of the major reasons I left iUniverse so many years ago - they were unwilling to lower the price of my 300 page paperback below $18.95. For a fairly unknown author to have their debut book set at a  price like that, for a paperback edition no less, is a hard sell. I'm not saying new authors don't deserve that kind of money, but for readers out there swimming the river of books, especially self-published ones, a lower price makes it easier to take a risk on an author they may have never heard of.

With the success I've seen with the ebook market lately, I'm drawing out of the distribution outlets and only allowing for my books to be sold in paperback through Amazon and Createspace. I have decided to change the prices of the paperback editions of my books to $9.95 for End of the Innocence and $12.95 for The Broken Daisy. I think the lower prices, especially for End of the Innocence, will allow readers to find out what my writing is all about without having to hum and haw over if the price is right for such a leap of faith.

My ebook prices are getting an overhaul as well. Through Smashwords, I can have my ebooks available through the Sony Reader, the Nook, the Kindle, etc. And Smashwords only takes 20%. And Smashwords pumps my book out in formats that I can take to Kindle myself and distribute for a 35% and 70% royalty.

That said, until now I've had my ebook prices set at $2.99 for End of the Innocence and $4.99 for The Broken Daisy. I've garnered very little success with those prices (though there are other factors that play into that) and I've decided to change my pricing structure for all ebooks I self-publish from this point on. These prices are of course subject to change as I see fit, but at this point in time, I am changing the price of my ebook version of End of the Innocence to 99 cents and the ebook version of The Broken Daisy to $2.99. All subsequent ebooks in the Black Earth series will be set at $2.99 as well. I plan to keep this structure when I release my young adult series this summer. Most novellas that come out I'll be listing at about 99 cents too.

So, if you've been waiting to jump on board my sci-fi/fantasy series, now's a good time to do it. The book prices have officially been dropped and you can head over to Amazon or Barnes and Noble online to grab a copy for your Nook or Kindle, or jot over to my website to grab the paperback if you are so inclined. :)