Musings of Two Creative Minds

     With the voice of experience, Mr. Gaughran shares his many insights of the world of publishing, and in particular self-publishing.  With the advent of e-books, many writers and would-be writers have found themselves faced with the opportunity to finally put out that book they’d been thinking about for years.  Yet, they quickly find that the most daunting task, is not writing the book itself, but how to get it out to the public.  Should they go the tradition route of finding an agent, and then a publisher?  Can they deal with the countless rejections or avoid the scams that promise seeing their work in print, for a ‘nominal’ fee of course.      Mr. Gaughran provides the reader with enough food for thought that would make a seven course meal look like an appetizer.  But he never gets preachy.  Instead he simply supplies the reader with tools and knowledge to navigate the world of Indie Publishing.  He provides ...

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  After lining up my Beta-Readers, the allergy season kicked into unbelievably high gear and knocked the breath out of me literally!  What energies I've had have been dedicated to working on The Vampyre Blogs novel itself and formatting "THE SHIP" to be ready to go to Smashwords, Kindle and Createspace once I hear back from my beta-readers and make a few changes to the manuscript. This brings me to today's topic.  Formatting your book to go to press through these three outlets can be trying at times.  I've only had to go through it once so far and that was a little over a year ago when I published "THE BRIDGE".  Luckily, I did remember a lot of what I learned back then for dealing with Kindle and Createspace.  Smashwords is taking a little more effort and I will address that topic in another entry very soon. Today, I want to focus on a shortcut I've discovered that has made my formatting efforts for Creates...

Okay gang, guess what I'm up to this week?  I'm redoing "The Bridge"...AGAIN! Let me clarify, I'm reformatting "The Bridge" specifically for Kindle e-readers.  Last night I got a 3 star review on Amazon, which I've been anticipating for some time.  I mean, in spite of all the 4 and 5 star reviews, it was bound to happen right?  Of course.  But when I read the review I was stunned to see where some of the problems were for this reader.  They considered the story itself a 5 star read.  But the editing and formatting were barely 1 star.  Now I've known about the editing for some time and have plans in the very near future to get the book the professional edit treatment it needs.  I'll finally have the funds to do it, I'll explain how that happened in another post.   But the formatting issues that were raised stunned me and I couldn't help but smack myself in the head for being a fool.  Especially, when I went over to Amazon an...

Okay, so I've had my debut on Smashwords and learned a lot from just going through the process.  Today I'd like to share a bit of my experience of working in Smashwords with you all.  First up, it wasn't all that hard and I say this as someone who is NOT "Tech-Savvy".  Luckily I do know MS Word. Now I want to say, simply follow their directions.  Make a back up copy of your work and then totally do the conversion on the back-up copy NOT the original.  This is because all that lovely formatting you did originally to your piece is about to got out the window and be undone.  Why?  Because Smashwords is helping you re-format your work so it can operate in the e-book program world and will look nice and readable.  Remember, if you're going this route you want to present a beautiful product for your audience.  Plus, your work deserves to be presented in the best fashion possible.  You're not doing this just for your readers, it's also for yo...

A quick Vlog entry about book covers and what to watch for in making your own from scratch.  I don't recommend necessarily doing one yourself, unless you are an artist.  It's fine to maybe make a rough sketch and get an artist friend or even hire someone to do it for you.  There are plenty of artists who specialize in doing book covers and you can find them all over the internet, or through friends on FB.  In my case, I am an artist, but also my cash flow is very tight.  So I basically HAD to go this route.  So this vlog entry is about the thoughts I put into the image and how it would appear to the casual reader going through a bookstore, or skimming through Amazon or Barnes and Nobles' websites. I would also point out that there are a number of very good book cover programs available on the internet, including through Createspace, Smashwords, Lulu and the others.  The nice thing about those is that they are already formatted to fit whatever stan...

First of all, I want to wish everyone a HAPPY NEW YEAR!  If you're going to be on the road tonight, please drive carefully and watch out for others who may not be doing that.  My wife and I will be curled up at home watching one of our favorite movies "HOLIDAY" with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn.  Yes, it's an old B and W but the message it shares is very powerful and personal to us.  That message is simply "Chase your dreams.  Don't wait for things to happen, make them happen.  Even if it means taking risks instead of playing it safe all the time.  Hold onto each other as you go along because there might be pitfalls and you may have to go back to selling peanuts, but believe in those peanuts and each other.  This way after you've analyzed what went wrong, you can try again and again until you succeed in making it that dream a reality!" All of this is easier said than done.  But remember this.... UNLESS YOU TRY, THAT DREAM HAS NO CHA...

Well gang,here it is.  I finally finished the cover for my debut novel this afternoon.  It took some doing but I finished it finally.  With my tight budget and the fact that I'm an artist in my own right, it only made sense to do the cover myself.  I've already got about a 1/4 of the novel formatted.  I'm using Createspace.  I'll do another entry on what went into the formatting and why I made the choices I did.  I hope to post that one in a day or so.  I want to focus on finishing the formatting and getting the whole thing together before New Year's Eve if possible.   In the meantime, any comments on the book cover would be welcome.

I thought you all might like to see how the cover of my novel is coming along.  It's almost done.  The editing of the novel itself is coming along nicely too.  I'll let you all know when I start the formatting for Createspace, Kindle, Nook, PDF, paperback (i. e. print on demand), etc.