Mood:  a-ok

Hello Dahhhrlings!

I have decided to make my short story collection A Paranormal Menagerie Too available for free from Smashwords, until the end of the year. Just thought with people buying new ebook readers and such, they can download my ebook as a free gift too!  Of course, this is also for anyone who would like to read my ebook and doesn't have a new reader.  Anyway, I'm going to set it up as free on Amazon as well (if I can). Happy Holidays, and I hope you all have a good end of the year!

Posted by heymolo at 2:35 PM EST

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Mood:  happy

My new ebook is out on Amazon in the Kindle Select area and it's free from October 3rd to October 6th.  It's another short story collection called "A Paranormal Menagerie Too".  It doesn't have a cover right now, but I"m working on it. 

The first three stories are about ghouls.  The fourth story is about the Ghostly Hunting Party led by Wotan.  The fifth story is about a dieter's nightmare.  The last two are about otherworldly creatures that terrify the living.

After the promotion, it will be available for 99 cents, and then after the first of the year, I will make it available for $1.99. 

I hope you enjoy!

Posted by heymolo at 9:43 PM EDT

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Mood:  quizzical

After much soul searching and realizing that I may be underselling my books, I have decided to increase the pricing of my ebooks.

I have read several blogs about it and though I may not sell as many as I have been (which isn't a lot at the moment anyway), I have been thinking that I may have underpriced the ebooks.

My first ebook was a 262 page standard book size (I had it published with CreateSpace), and set the price at 99 cents due to it being my first attempt at self-publishing.  My second ebook I published was actually one that had been published in paperback already, "Which Way to the Manor?" I had started it at $1.99 and then put it down to 99 cents.  In fact, all following ebooks have been set to that price. 

Well, I have often thought I was underpricing my books, but I thought it would get more readers looking at them, but it doesn't seem to be the case, so, as other authors have done, I think I will change the prices to see how the ebooks sell with a higher price.

True, I can always set them as free and see if I can get them in front of more readers, but Amazon (Kindle)doesn't allow that, and neither does Barnes and Noble (Nook), (though I believe Smashwords does allow it). Besides, I would prefer to SELL my work rather than give it away.

 Besides I always have at least one or two short stories from my collections for people to read freely on my website.

Whether this works or not, only the future will tell, but I thought this would be fair warning to anyone interested in purchasing my ebooks that the price will be going up in 2013.

Posted by heymolo at 10:43 PM EDT

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Mood:  cheeky

Going through my first ebook again, and guess what! I found more typos/grammar mistakes. Curses, curses.  How many times can you go through a manuscript and find more mistakes?  What's wrong with me?  Well, all I can say is that most of the issue seemed to be with the long story at the end, which is most of the book, so that's not good.

 However, there is always, always a mistake that you find that you swear you fixed, but it comes back to haunt you.

His name is Boris Chairlift. 

Who the h*ll is that? Well, in  my short story, "Charlie's Problem", I mention him.  HOWEVER, I originally wrote it as Boris Karloff. How did he become Chairlift?  Well, in MS or WordPerfect's (I'm not sure which), infinite wisdom, it did an autocorrect for me.  Did it ask me?  No. Why was the autocorrect on?  I don't know. All I know is now I find in my ebook the name Boris Chairlift. I SWEAR I fixed this at least once or twice already, but it keeps coming back to haunt me. Stop it!

I rant because this is not the first time where I find an error such as Boris Chairlift, KNOW I corrected it, and then find it again later in the SAME SPOT!  Is it a conspiracy to make me crazy?  I'm beginning to think so.

Something is going on, and until I know the cause of this, I will have to remain on my toes....

Posted by heymolo at 2:54 PM EST

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Mood:  chatty

Okay, here's something that I have been struggling with for a few months.

Ever since I got into ebook publishing, I have been looking at old manuscripts that never got published. 

A few of them have pictures.

One I just published "Christmas Witch" was a children's story so it HAD to have pictures. 

Well, putting pictures in ebook format is not as easy as just putting text into ebook format.

When publishing to HTML, no one bothers to tell you in a footnote that any images in the document will only be referenced in the document, not actually IN the document.

So, everytime I would load the HTML file into the Kindle Previewer, I would get the camera icon with the exclamation point where the picture was supposed to be.  The pictures were not loading.

There was in fact someone mentioning zip files on the Kindle community, but I wasn't sure how to do that.

So, I talked to some people at work. One of them mentioned that I should put it in PDF form. And he explained further to me about the limitations of putting it in HTML.

However, HTML was what the Kindle took, so....

I took a look at the files again.

Word did save the file to HTML as I wanted it to do, but it also made a folder of images for the document in the same spot I saved it to. I just didn't see it right away. So, after playing with it for a while, I decided to the do the zip thing.

I right-clicked on the icon for my html file and it gave me the option to add that file to a zip file. So, I did.

Then I did the same for the folder with the images.  I right-clicked on the image folder and added that to the same zip file, making sure it was named the same as the zip file I saved the html to.

Then I loaded it into the Kindle previewer. 

It worked!

So, that was my funness for the weekend.  Anyway, Christmas Witch is on library lending as well as available for sale for $2.99 on Amazon.

Posted by heymolo at 5:52 PM EST

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Mood:  a-ok

No, I don't have any fancy publicity going on for my book, but what I do have going on is Advertising on the Goodreads.com site.  I went ahead and spent *gasp* thirty dollars for advertising. Everytime someone clicks my ad, I have to pay *gasp* ten cents. Yeah, I know the suggestion was fifty cents (it's the default), but I thought I couldn't afford that. Besides, my ebook is only 99cents with 35-40 cent royalty so I thought I could afford ten cents a click. 

So far I have had several thousand views of my ebook (at least that is what the counter says) but I have only gotten ten clicks.  Which I suppose isn't bad - hey, I'm not complaining.  But I was hoping that I would have a few more than that by now.

 Well, it has been about a month, so I guess I can't complain.  Talk to ya later.

Posted by heymolo at 9:37 PM EST

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Mood:  celebratory

Happy, happy, happy!!!!!

I just found out "A Paranormal Menagerie" won second place in a writing contest.  Here's the link:

http://comicsforge.com/2011/08/and-the-winners-of-the-horror-happy-hour-comics-forge-contest-are/

Now, I'm just waiting for them to tell me that there has been a terrible mistake and that I didn't win at all.  I would be really bummed then :(  But right now, I'm very happy, happy, happy.  I feel like I could jog around the whole block! (If only I was in better shape.)

 And they will even post a review for my book somewhere - woohoo!  Getting a review is like pulling teeth - I tell you. 

 Now second place is pretty awesome since this was a national contest (one website on each coast sponsored it) but I have to think: If I were Pearl Forrester, what would I do?

Well, first off, I would try to do in the first place winner, Vincent Giles author of "Demon of Dog Hollow," and therefore, win by default. But as I pointed out in previous blogs, I'm not that extroverted.  Also, just to be on the safe side, if I were Pearl Forrester, I would do away with T. J. McKeough, author of "The Green Jewel," the third prize winner, keeping my place secure. But that would be if I were Pearl Forrester. 

Only if I were Pearl Forrester;)

 Anyway, congrats to Vincent Giles and TJ. McKeough, and to me (Yea!). This is completely AWESOME!

Posted by heymolo at 9:42 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 3 September 2011 3:19 PM EDT

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Mood:  celebratory

So I went ahead and did the CreateSpace thing with my ebook "A Paranormal Menagerie". It is now published and should be on the Amazon website in a a week or two. For some reason, this makes me very excited.  Maybe because I actually have a physical copy of the book. Yeah!  But it is kinda cool to have actual proof I am published.  So, beside my "Which Way to the Manor?" book, I also have a collection of short stories in paperback.  

I hope I sell a few!

I told my sister about the price of the book and she said that she had seen paperbacks at the airport for $10.75 - $11.00, so apparently, that price is in the ballpark.  I guess I'm basing my paperback book price on some very old books.

Posted by heymolo at 10:42 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 6 July 2011 10:59 PM EDT

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Mood:  happy

So after much contemplation, I've decided to do a paperback of my ebook.  It's not that I have anything against ebooks - they are cool! It's just that I don't know many people who have them, and I think it would be good to have a paperback version of my book for proof that I am published somewhere, somehow....

Now, if I were Pearl Forrester, I would probably get on all sorts of talk shows to talk about my book;however, I am no where near that extroverted.  I'm not even sure what I would say. "Please, buy my book."?

But anyway, I just feel more official with a paperbook (hard evidence) and I hope it looks good. I expect the proof tomorrow or the next day.

It didn't really take too long to put it together. I used CreateSpace to publish it, since I did my ebook orginally to Amazon Kindle, I thought I would use Amazon again.

It's nice with the template, I can compare the size to already published books laying around the house. I just happened to find a "Goosebumps" book and used those dimensions.  So you just put your document into the Word format tweak it, then export/import to PDF.

The cost for the proof was about $5 plus shipping and handling.  What I didn't expect was how pricey I was going to have to make the book cost just to see some royalties.  Even with the $39 pro plan, I will only see a 7-cent royalty when it is sold to "expanded distribution channels" with a $10.75 price tag. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that, but I figure I can afford $40 and it's only $5 for each additional year.  Also, it will get my book placed in more places.  But $10.75 for a paperback, geez, you'd think it was gold-plated!

It was a 282 page paperback, so maybe that does have some considerable heft to the size, but I was trying to price it at $9.99.  I thought that was pricey enough, just under $10. However, if I did that, I wouldn't make any royalty on the thing, and I think I would owe money on it! (If it goes negative on the royalty calculator, that's what I'm assuming.)

So anyway, yes, I went ahead and jumped in and went the paper route with my book. 

Posted by heymolo at 10:09 PM EDT

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Mood:  a-ok

Well, I'm trying to be a bit more bold about my pushing my ebooks.  I've posted on a few Facebook pages (that aren't mine). And started a discussion on Amazon and Barnes and Noble promoting my work and allowing others to promote there's as well.  I am trying to get my name out there more, by responding to blogs and messages I'm interested in.  My sales numbers have been in the single digits, I hope to change that but it may take some time.  I am trying.

My sister has an ebay account where she is trying to sell used baby clothes, and she is not getting any takers.  So I think it may have to do with the economy as well as not being known as an established author.

Posted by heymolo at 3:19 PM EDT

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