The Publetariat Vault will officially open to all authors on Monday, 6/29/09, but it’s actually already open for any early birds reading this who want to get in on the ground floor. To get the ball rolling, the Vault is offering a special promotion: the first 300 published listings will be free of charge for 90 days from the day the Vault opens for publishing pro and producer searches. And beginning with the 301st published listing, all listings will have the first 30 days’ listing fee waived as well, to provide a free trial period. Read all about it here.
Month: June 2009
Do I Need To Outline My Plot?
This post, from Robert Gregory Browne, originally appeared on his Casting the Bones website.
One question I always hear from aspiring writers is, “Do you outline your plots?”
I remember asking this question myself quite a few times, back in the Stone Age when I was typing scripts and stories on my IBM Selectric. If, by some weird stroke of fate, I happened to stumble across an honest to god real published writer (I didn’t do conferences in those days, didn’t know they existed, and there was no Internet), the subject of outlining came up pretty quickly.
Why?
Because, like all aspiring writers, I was always searching for what works. A lot of us look at someone else’s success and think, maybe I should do what they’re doing. Human beings seem to have this unending desire to emulate others in hope that some of the magic dust will rub off on us.
That would explain the thirty billion Star Wars clones that came out in the 1970’s, and the gazillion comic book movies put into production after the Batman and Iron Man franchises took off.
So when Bestselling Author X says he writes using an outline, it’s only natural for aspiring writers to think that they need to outline, too.
I can guarantee you without a moment’s hesitation that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of writing workshops going on in the world at this very moment where the workshop leader is telling his or her students to pull out the index cards and start mapping out their story. And this is NOT BAD advice.
The bad part is when they insist that this is the only way to properly construct a novel or screenplay.
The truth is, there is no one way to do anything in writing.
I was reminded of this in one of the comments from the How to Beat Writer’s Block post. And when I teach classes or do presentations or podcasts with my friend Brett Battles, I always try to remember to tell the audience that.
There is no single way to approach writing.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Robert Gregory Browne is an AMPAS Nicholl Award-winning screenwriter and novelist, currently under contract to St. Martin’s Press, Droemer Knaur, and Macmillan UK. He’s also published in Russia, Bulgaria and Denmark, and has a story in Lee Child’s crime fiction anthology, KILLER YEAR. He’s a member of MWA, ITW, RWA and is a regular columnist for the Anthony Award nominated writer’s blog, Murderati.
Read the rest of the post on Casting the Bones.
Read the rest of the post on Casting the Bones.
Authors: 5 Ways You Can Be Your Own Alchemist
This post is from The Creative Penn.com: Writing, self-publishing, print-on-demand, internet sales and marketing…for your book.
Alchemy is the science and art of turning what is base into something precious. It means transformation and renewal, death and rebirth. There are many myths, legends and secrets around alchemy and it has been a creative muse for many people throughout the centuries.
Here are 5 ways you can be your own alchemist for your writing:
- Take your darkest and hidden secrets and turn them into nuggets of gold. We all have our dark and dirty memories, but you can turn them into the basis for brilliant writing. It is not about baring your soul, but using what is down there and transforming it. Fictionalise it. Use the lessons to share your wisdom. Your story is original and people want to hear it. You are unique and you can shape that into brilliance.
- Edit your work dramatically. Turn your worst writing into something great. Sometimes our writing itself is base and dirty. It needs refining, sometimes drastically. The alchemist used fire to destroy and refine. You may need to be as brutal with your writing to make it into something beautiful.
- Transform yourself. Learn, grow and change to develop your self and your writing. “The book you write will change your life” Seth Godin. I truly believe this. The experience of writing a book, whether it is for you alone or for many readers, can transform you into a new person.
- Test and refine your methods and works. The alchemists were always looking for new ways to reach The Philosopher’s Stone. To be the one to finally turn lead into gold. They were chemists, scientists always experimenting. You also need to experiment as an author. Learn from failure and continue to move on. Try different techniques and methods. Include new ways of writing as well as book promotion and sales options. This is a lifetime of work, so you have time to make the changes.
- Include both spirituality and practicality into your writing. Alchemists have been linked with both the science of chemistry and also esoteric spirituality. Combining both creates a powerful writing career. Authors need to stay in touch with their soul and spirit in order to create and give their energy to the work. But equally, authors need a practical sensibility in order to deal with business, publishing and book promotion. To be entirely focussed on one without the other is useless.
How To Link Your Blog To Your Facebook Profile With Notes
EDITOR’S NOTE: 7/26/11 – THE "NOTES" APP TO WHICH THIS POST REFERS HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY PORN SPAMMERS. WE THEREFORE NO LONGER RECOMMEND FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS IN THIS POST TO LINK YOUR BLOG TO YOUR FACEBOOK PROFILE.
This post, from Coree Silvera, originally appeared on her Market Like A Chick site on 6/7/09. It contains a great how-to for integrating your blog into your Facebook profile, so your blog posts will automatically appear on your Facebook profile page.
Using your blog as your hub is part of a smart and strategic social media marketing plan. I have found that Facebook offers the greatest linking capabilities so far. Not only can you link your blog in via the Notes Application, but I also use the Facebook Networked Blogs, that gives added exposure.
I know there are female ‘tech geeks” out there, but I am not one of them! It takes me a little longer to understand how to do these things than most so I’d like to make it easier for other women if at all possible.
I’ve tried to take the steps to add Notes and link your blog in simple language that my female powered brain needs to understand. Hopefully, other women marketers will be able to understand how simple it is to link your blog to your Facebook profile using the Notes application from these easy steps:
1.You will need to log in to your Facebook account, then go the Notes application page. You’ll see all your friends that use the app listed there. Click on “Go To Application” button on the left side of the page.
2.After adding the Notes Application to your profile, click on “Import a blog” under “Notes Settings”.
If you don’t already know your blog’s RSS feed URL, you will have it memorized soon! It usually looks something like: “http://www.yourdomain.com/feed”, depending on what type of feed or service you use. If you don’t know it, just click on the RSS button on your blog and it will take you to the URL that you can then copy. If you use Feedburner you would paste the feed URL they provided you here.
Read the rest of the post on Market Like A Chick.
Should You Talk About Your Article Or Book Ideas?
This post, from Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen, originally appeared on her Quips and Tips for Successful Writers site on 6/16/09.
Successful writers create new article or book ideas all the time – but do they talk about them before they’re written? Not according to Mario Puzo, Sidney Sheldon, or Ernest Hemingway…
“Never talk about what you are going to do until after you have written it,” said Mario Puzo.
Oops. I’m not only talking about my latest book idea, I’ve actually written about it on my blog (The Adventurous Writer), in Seeking Successful Published Authors. But, the good news is John Steinbeck talked about his book ideas before they were written, too! Here’s a few quips from published authors about talking about writing – plus some tips. For more in-depth info on getting your ideas published, click on Putting Your Passion Into Print: Get Your Book Published Successfully! by Arielle Eckstut and David Sterry.
Should You Talk About Your Article or Book Ideas?
The quip: “I don’t like to talk about works-in-progress because if I do then it’s on TV 10 weeks later, and it takes me two to three years to write a novel because I do so much rewriting.” – Sidney Sheldon
- The tip: Okay, we may be successful writers, but most of us aren’t in Sheldon’s league! Even so, many writers fear the possibility that their book or article ideas will show up in a magazine, another writer’s blog, or a book. I believe the chances that someone deliberately steals ideas are slim (plus, you can’t legally fight it because ideas can’t be copyrighted). I also believe in a cosmic karma/common sense flow that leads people to similar ideas at the same time. That is, leads for ideas are floating around in the news, on Twitter, etc – our world is so small, writers are bound to come up with the same ideas at the same time. (To figure out if your idea is valuable, read Tips for Recognizing Great Article Ideas)
The quip: “You lose it if you talk about it.” – Ernest Hemingway
- The tip: If you talk about your ideas, be selective. Don’t spread your ideas around writers’ forums or on Twitter (oops, I goofed again). Rather, share your ideas with inspiring fellow writers, your writing group, or people you trust. Talking your way through problems with finding sources for articles or plot dilemmas for novels is a great way to find solutions! But, I encourage you to pull a “Hemingway”, and do what works for you.
Read the rest of the post on Quips and Tips for Successful Writers.
Marketing Expectations And The Small Press
This post, from Jason Sizemore, originally appeared on the Apex Books Blog on 6/10/09.
Even in the best of times, making a small press successful is a tough maneuver that few have accomplished. The current economy exacerbates the difficulty level, as well. All the small presses are hungry for your dwindling spare change. That’s why I find the common notion of many authors to believe that once they sell a book to you, their obligation to the publisher is done, to be confusing and irrational.
From my perspective, this almost feels like the author is saying “Okay, buddy, you’re lucky none of the big publishers grabbed my collection/novel/novella/anthology and paid me the five-figure advance I deserve, so you are granted the right and privilege of publishing my work. Have at it.”
I’m not sure why authors feel this way. Why wouldn’t you want to promote your work? Everybody knows that most small presses pay little to no advance. Apex pays an advance, but it’s about 1/4th professional rates. Any noticeable amount of money you’ll earn will come through royalties. To earn royalties, the book has to sell.
Many small presses have little to no budget for advertising. We advertise in Cemetery Dance, Weird Tales, Albedo1, Fangoria, Rue Morgue, Space and Time, Electric Velocipede, Shimmer, on the ProjectWonderful banner system, on SFScope.com, and on any surface that we can slap our beloved Apex alien head on. Many publishers never get out and run the convention circuit to promote their authors. Not so for us on both accounts. We actively travel to promote our books. We have dealer booths in the halls of at least a half-dozen conventions a year, almost always done at a loss because you (the publisher) have to sell a lot of books to compensate for the costs of the tables, food, gas, lodging, etc.
Read the rest of the post on the Apex Books Blog.
Networking – Not A Dirty Word (it just feels that way sometimes)
This post, from Angela Slatter, originally appeared on her The Bones Remember Everything blog on 6/10/09.
I once had to present a faux writers festival presentation as part of an assessment piece. As someone who doesn’t like speaking in public, interacting with strangers, or even being seen, I was quite happy pitching that writers should be read and not seen. That the golden days were when we didn’t have to be performing monkeys.
I was wrong.
I was wrong because there never was a time when we didn’t have to sing for our supper. From the troubadours and travelling storytellers to Chaucer, from Oscar Wilde to Mark Twain, we’ve always had to perform in public if we wanted attention. Hell, even Bram Stoker schlepped across the US giving readings. If we don’t perform, we don’t eat; and most of us like eating.
A lot of writers (myself included) can be described as ‘anti-socialist’ – we’d refer to be at home, on our own, just writing and spending time with people who don’t actually exist outside of our own heads. It’s like a game of Extreme Imaginary Friends. We don’t like to talk to anyone (except the furry familiars and the pretend people), and we just put the pretty words on the page.
You can get the words in the right order, you can get them to shine and dance on the page, but this doesn’t prepare you for the other part of your career: the talking to people part. If indeed you do want to be published, you will need to interact with other human beings: agents, publishers, publicists, booksellers, the marketing and sales departments, and most terrifyingly of all, readers. These are all categories staffed by humans. A writer needs to know how to talk with them, interact with them, in short, network with them.
Read the rest of the post on The Bones Remember Everything.
The Fiction Writing Workshop: Plot (Keep Your Eye On The Ball)
This post, from Kristin Bair O’Keeffe, originally appeared on the Writers on the Rise blog on 6/15/09.
Growing up, our family played a lot of backyard baseball. My mom was usually the pitcher. “Keep your eye on the ball,” she’d say before unleashing a pitch. When I followed her instruction, I usually hit a line drive or on a good day, a homerun (sending my sisters into a wild scramble in the outfield); when I didn’t, I either missed the ball completely or hit an embarrassingly lame foul tip.
Throughout the years, I’ve discovered that in this particular way, writing fiction is not so different from hitting a baseball. If I follow my mom’s instruction when writing-keep your eye on the ball-I am able to create a compelling plot in a story.
Take, for example, Audrey Niffenegger’s novel The Time Traveler’s Wife. In it, the plot (the ball on which you must keep your eye) is “time-traveling man falls in love and wants to stay put in the present with his woman.”
In the book, all action and events speak to this plot in some way. As the story moves forward, Niffenegger keeps her eye on the ball. If she didn’t, the story would wander, and readers would get frustrated, give up, and move on to another book.
As you can see, plot is not a list of events in a story. Plot is the purest description of a story.
Another good example is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Of Love and Other Demons. Here the plot (ball) is “rabid dog bites girl; girl may have rabies.”
And again, throughout the book, Marquez keeps his eye on the ball. Never do you, the reader, lose sight of “rabid dog bites girl; girl may have rabies.”
Read the rest of the post on Writers on the Rise.
Publetariat Vault Update: Nearly There!
Development work is complete on the Publetariat Vault, the FAQ and Terms of Use are up, and we’re now in the testing phase and on track for launch at the end of June. Whether you’re an indie author seeking mainstream attention or a publishing pro or producer seeking proven literary material for low-risk acquisitions, you’ll want to check out the Vault.
From the Vault’s welcome page:
Publishers and Producers:
The Publetariat Vault is a searchable database of independent literary works for which the authors own all rights free and clear and are interested in selling those rights, with accompanying sales data and reader reviews to take the guesswork out of determining commercial potential in the mass market—and it’s FREE for you to use.
The Publetariat Vault is a searchable database of independent literary works for which the authors own all rights free and clear and are interested in selling those rights, with accompanying sales data and reader reviews to take the guesswork out of determining commercial potential in the mass market—and it’s FREE for you to use.
Find independent literary material that is already proven in the marketplace See actual sales data, and know if the work already has traction See reader reviews from bookseller sites, reader communities like Goodreads, blogs and elsewhere Search by genre, topic, keyword, recommended reading level and more to find the kind of content you want to acquire See author platform pieces, buzz, publicity and more, and know if the author will be an active partner in promotionIndie (Self-Published) Authors:
The Publetariat Vault also provides a groundbreaking service to you: the opportunity to get your indie book in front of the publishers and producers who are seeking proven books for low-risk acquisitions. If you’ve ever thought that if publishers or producers only knew how well your book is selling, how great its reviews are, and what a great job you’re doing to promote both it and yourself, they’d snap up the rights in an instant, then the Vault was made for you.
– The Vault will initially open only to authors who wish to create listings
– The Vault won’t open for pro searches until the 300th listing has been published – ensuring lots of listings for pros to search – The first 300 listings to be published will be listed for free for 90 days, beginning on the day the Vault opens for pro searches The Publetariat Vault is currently under construction, with a planned launch at the end of June, 2009. Note that member registrations for the Vault will not be processed until the site go-live date, which will be announced on Publetariat, on this site and elsewhere.
See this Publetariat article for more information, or click the links above to check out our FAQ and Terms of Use. Click here to view a blank listing form, here to view a sample published listing, and here to view the search form publishing pros and content producers will use.
Free Books And Ebooks And Promos, Oh My!
This piece, from Alan Baxter, originally appeared on Publishing Renaissance on 6/14/09.
When I first started self producing my novels as POD trade paperbacks I was against ebooks. This is back in the dark ages, around 2006. My thinking was, “I want people to buy my books, therefore I’m only going to produce actual books!” If I could go back in time I’d give myself a solid slap upside the ear.
The simple truth is that POD trade paperbacks, even bloody good ones like mine, are still more expensive than their mass produced counterparts. You can buy my book on Amazon for around $15 or you can buy something by Neil Gaiman for $8, or that awful Twilight rubbish at around $5 or $6. Obviously, these low prices are for paperbacks, smaller and of lighter paperstock than POD trades, but that’s beside the point. The consumer is usually happy to buy books in a variety of formats if the price is right and if they’re really keen to read the them.
Therein lies the rub. Convincing people that my books are really worth reading is the hardest part of indie publishing, especially when they cost around $15. I currently have two novels out – RealmShift and MageSign. Neither of them have yet received a bad review – a few negative or lukewarm comments in otherwise positive reviews is as bad as it gets. I don’t think they’ve ever been reviewed at less than 3 out of 5. I’m ecstatic about that and it proves to me that people think my books are as good as I do. But it’s still hard to convince the buying public to give them a go. As indie publishers we’re always going to be hard up against three primary walls of resistance:
1. The recognised author name
2. The trusted publisher brand
3. The low price of light stock paperbacks
The price is something that we’re always going to struggle with. The recognised author is something we hope to become, but in the meantime have to struggle against. The trusted publisher is something that is becoming less and less of an issue. In all honesty, how many people check up on the publisher before buying a book? How many people would decide against a purchase on the grounds of not knowing the publisher? But whether that affects a buyer’s decision or not, that publisher will always have the massive marketing department and distribution reach that we can only dream of. So what to do?
Well, we have to embrace the new. Big trad houses are just starting to get on board with the idea that ebooks are becoming more popular. The Kindle 2 from Amazon has recently been released, the Sony Reader is very popular outside the US, the iPhone has a Kindle app. My novels are now selling better in Kindle editions than any other format. The trouble with the big houses is that they’re still charging at least $10 for an ebook. Talk about missing the point! My books are $3.19 on Kindle and $3.50 at Smashwords and I thought THAT might be a bit overpriced. But they’re selling and that means people are reading my books, hopefully enjoying them and, also hopefully, telling friends and colleagues all about them. So my writing and my name are being disseminated among a larger audience.
Read the rest of the post on Publishing Renaissance.
The Dreaded Author Platform
This post, from literary agent Rachelle Gardner, originally appeared on her Rants & Ramblings On Life As A Literary Agent blog on 6/15/09.
Last week at the Write-To-Publish conference, the one topic that kept coming up in conversations, panels, and workshops was AUTHOR PLATFORM. Yes, the hated p-word!
I explained again and again that publishing just ain’t what it used to be. Gone are the days when publishers were solely responsible for the marketing of a book.
Today’s audience is more segmented than it has ever been before. People have more options for their leisure time than ever before – 600 channels on television, movies on demand, video games and Wii, and then of course, the Internet. It’s harder than ever to attract people to books. The way to do it is increasingly through personal connection, and that means YOU, the author, making connections with your readers.
(This discussion applies mostly to non-fiction writers, but you novelists, take note. It will help you, too, if you want strong sales on your book.)
It has never been more crucial for authors to play a major part in marketing themselves, BUT it has never been easier. Where are readers hanging out these days? The Internet. That’s the best place for you to find readers for your books.
The Internet has leveled the playing field. With a well-written and compelling blog, you have the potential to build a significant platform. If you take the time to research website optimization and do everything recommended to build traffic on your blog, you can build a sizable audience in a matter of months. Then when you begin to use Twitter and Facebook strategically, you can grow your audience exponentially.
You can, and you must.
Read the rest of the post on Rachelle Gardner’s Rants & Ramblings On Life As A Literary Agent blog.
Amazon Kindle Numbers
This post, from bestselling mainstream author J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing blog on 6/11/09.
Elsewhere on the Internets, people have been referring to my previous posts about the Amazon Kindle (here and here) and one of the things they were interested in is numbers.
So here they are. Thoughts, explanations, and predictions to follow.
AFRAID by Jack Kilborn, a horror novel, was released on the Kindle on April 1. During the first month of its release, it was available for $1.99 on Kindle. During that month, it sold over 10,400 copies.
SERIAL by Jack Kilborn and Blake Crouch was released for free on the Kindle May 20th. It’s a horror novella. As of June 10, it has been downloaded on Kindle more than 34,000 times. SERIAL also appears on www.blakecrouch.com, and has had 12,000 downloads, along with 7000 downloads from the Sony Reader website.
Both AFRAID and SERIAL were released by my publisher, Grand Central. They promoted both titles on Amazon using sidebars on Amazon.com, and on the Amazon Kindle blog.
On April 8th, I began to upload my own books to Kindle. As of today, June 11, at 11:40am, here is how many copies I’ve sold, and how much they’ve earned.
THE LIST, a technothriller/police procedural novel, is my biggest seller to date, with 1612 copies sold. Since April this has earned $1081.75. I originally priced it at $1.49, and then raised it to $1.89 this month to see if the sales would slow down. The sales sped up instead.
ORIGIN, a technothriller/horror occult adventure novel, is in second place, with 1096 copies sold and $690.18. As with The List and my other Kindle novels, I upped the price to $1.89.
SUCKERS is a thriller/comedy/horror novella I wrote with Jeff Strand. It also includes some Konrath and Strand short stories. 449 copies, $306.60.
DISTURB is a medical thriller. 371 copies, $234.21.
SHOT OF TEQUILA is a crime novel featuring Jack Daniels. 342 copies, $164.02.
55 PROOF is a collection of 55 short stories. 217 copies, $138.99.
PLANTER’S PUNCH is a Jack Daniels novella I co-wrote with Tom Schreck. 154 copies, $107.10.
DIRTY JOKES & VULGAR POEMS is a collection of over 1000 of my Twitters, one-liners, and funny poems. 37 copies sold, $18.57.
So far on Kindle I’ve earned $2781.35 in 64 days.
PRICING: I’ve kept my collaborations priced at $1.59, and upped my other books to $1.89. Also, I reduced the price of my poetry collection to 80 cents.
What I’ve learned about pricing: Not much. I went on some Kindle forums and asked what the magic price point is, and got answers ranging between free and five bucks.
I’ve kept my books under two bucks for several reasons. First, because my intent is to use these books to hook readers and get them to buy my other, in-print titles. I give these same books away on my website for free, so charging Kindle users more than a few bucks doesn’t seem fair.
That said, raising the price from $1.59 to $1.89 didn’t cause any drop in sales or Amazon ranking. In fact, my Kindle numbers have been steadily going up.
I don’t know what the perfect combination of price/profit is… yet. Authors make 35% of their suggested retail price (Amazon then discounts this.) So I can raise the price, sell fewer books, but still make a greater profit.
For me, however, this isn’t all about profit. It’s about units sold. Which also gets confusing.
Read the rest of the post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.
Kindle DX Image Test
This is a cross-posting of a piece from Joshua Tallent which originally appeared on his Kindle Formatting blog on 6/14/09. In it, he explores the display and formatting differences between the Kindle and the Kindle DX, with an eye to helping authors avoid any pitfalls in formatting their manuscripts for Kindle publication.
In my book, Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide, I cover a broad range of formatting information and tips, with examples of HTML code that can be effectively used in Kindle books to create the best display possible on the Kindle 1 and Kindle 2. I bought the new Kindle DX last week, and after some extensive testing I would like to share with you some information on the formatting differences between it and the other Kindle devices.
There are actually not too many formatting differences between the Kindle 2 and the Kindle DX. The basic paragraph formatting is the same, the text indents are the same, and the specialized formatting I discuss in my book for creating outlines and poetry all works the same. It does not appear that Amazon has made any changes to the default text formatting on the Kindle DX like they did on the Kindle 2.
The only change that will make a large impact on anyone developing books for the Kindle DX is the screen size and how images are displayed on the device. I discuss image dimensions on the K1 and K2 in Chapter 5 of my book:
There has been a lot of talk on the Kindle DTP forums about what dimensions an image should be to take full advantage of the available screen real estate. The consensus opinion, and the response stated by the DTP admin, has been that 450 pixels wide by 550 pixels high (a ratio of 9:11) is the proper scale. In the course of my formatting work and testing I have found that there is a little bit more to the story than that.
The actual size of the viewable book area on the Kindle 1 screen is 524px × 640px, and the viewable book area on the Kindle 2 screen is 520px × 622px. Any images larger or smaller than that (including those sized 450px × 550px) will be automatically re-sized until the width or height fits the viewable book area. At 261px × 319px on Kindle 1 and 260px × 311px on Kindle 2 (half the size of the viewable book area) the image is no longer resized to fit the book area’s width or height.
This is important when you are creating logos or other small images for your book. Logos usually look great when sized around 75–100px wide. However, images will still lose some quality when reduced in size, especially photos. I suggest that you keep your images at the Kindle 2 dimensions (520px × 622px) if you can, so that your image quality does not suffer.
Since the Kindle devices all allow image zooming, you could also create images for the K1 and K2 that are 600px × 800px with the instruction that users click on them to zoom in and see the images full-screen. That is not practical in books that have a large number of images, but it would be useful for books with detailed maps or graphics that make a big difference to the content of the book.
Like the K1 and K2, the Kindle DX has specific image dimension restrictions of which every eBook creator should be aware. The DX screen is 824 pixels wide by 1200 pixels high, and the viewable book area on the DX is 744px wide by 1022px high. The DX also has the same automatic up-scaling feature present in the K1 and K2, so all images larger than 372px × 511px will be automatically re-sized to fill the width or length of the viewable area. That applies equally to images made for K1 and K2 books, which are displayed on the DX with a noticeable decrease in image quality.
That leads me to my current frustration and to a very large problem with the current publication process at Amazon. The default format for books on all three Kindles is the Mobipocket eBook format. When you upload a Word document, PDF, or HTML file to the Digital Text Platform (DTP), the system runs Mobigen (the command-line version of Mobipocket Creator) on the file and generates a PRC/MOBI/AZW file that can be read on the Kindle. The same process is activated when you send a file to your Kindle using its e-mail address.
Because the DTP will automatically create a Mobipocket file based on the file you upload, it is always best to create and upload a Mobipocket file yourself. In addition to giving you better control over and knowledge of the book’s formatting, uploading a Mobi file gives you the ability to add a cover image that automatically zooms on the K2 and DX, and it gives you the ability to create waypoints in the Location Bar on those devices, making navigation between chapters as easy as a right- or left-click on the joystick. I cover the details of creating a Mobipocket file with these additional features in Chapter 7 of my book.
However, Mobipocket Creator and Mobigen both reduce the size (and, by necessity, the quality) of images when embedding them in a Mobipocket file. That function was apparently included in the days when Mobipocket books were being read on small Palm-like devices that could not handle large, high-quality images or large file sizes. Images that are the proper dimensions for the Kindle DX screen are automatically re-sized whenever you generate a Mobipocket file. This function cannot be overridden, and is not related to the compression option you can set in the two programs.
The only way I have found around this automatic re-sizing is to generate the Mobipocket file using the any2mobi command line tool provided with calibre. This tool does not re-size the images when it creates the Mobi file, so the quality of the images does not suffer. If you have calibre installed, calling the any2mobi command is very easy. You can run it on an HTML, OPF, or ePub file, or on a file in any of the other supported formats. You could even create your OPF file using Mobipocket Creator, then create the mobi file using any2mobi.
The re-sizing error in Mobipocket Creator and Mobigen brings an important additional side effect into the picture. Because Amazon uses Mobigen behind-the-scenes to create practically all of the books that are for sale on the Kindle store, there are currently no books on the Kindle store that are actually developed specifically for the Kindle DX. In effect, the "Optimized for Kindle DX" icon we have seen cropping up lately is useless. I downloaded samples of many of these books to my DX and found that their images all suffer from the re-sizing/compression issue.
This issue also highlights the problem with selling one book file for use on every eBook device. While the goal of a universal eBook file is great, reality has not yet caught up with desire, even in the ePub ecosystem. Because every device is different, there is still a lot of value in giving users a file that is formatted specifically for their device. This is especially true of devices that have extraordinarily large or small screens, or devices that have display limitations. Amazon has a unique opportunity here to allow publishers and authors the ability to target book files at specific devices. What works well on the K2 may not work as well on the DX, and vice versa. Since Amazon knows what device a file is being sent to, they could set up the system to deliver an optimized book file for the device chosen. That would allow content providers to upload optimized books to the Amazon server with the intent of giving users the best possible reading experience. Whether Amazon adjusts the system to do that or not is up in the air, but I think it would go a long way toward increasing the real and perceived value of eBooks.
Another problem with the way the Kindle devices currently handle images is the automatic up-scaling of images larger than half the viewable screen width. This function creates a lot of confusion about the actual screen real estate available, and, by necessity, it makes small images grainy and pixelated. If you have to make a 200 pixel wide logo 100 pixels wide just to make sure it does not take up the whole screen on the Kindle 2, the logo is going to lose a lot of quality. The resolution of Kindle E Ink screen is 167 pixels per inch, much better than just about any computer monitor available. Images in Kindle books should be allowed to take advantage of that amazing resolution and to take up consistent space on the screen, giving content creators more flexibility in designing eBooks that look great and provide the best reader experience possible.
In conclusion, I sincerely hope that Amazon releases updated versions of Mobipocket Creator and Mobigen, and that they remedy the issues with optimized eBook files and image up-scaling. As always, I will be closely watching the Kindle format, and I will keep you up-to-date if anything changes.
Hat tip to John at Reader Plates for the calibre solution.
Joshua Tallent is the author of Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide, the founder of KindleFormatting.com, and a Kindle publishing and formatting consultant.
Please. Self-Publishing Isn't Real Publishing, Is It?
This post, by Vérité Parlant, originally appeared on her Whose Shoes Are These Anyway blog on 6/9/09.
You know that song "Dinosaur" by Al Jarreau? Lately I feel just like that.
Despite the success stories I keep hearing about people who’ve published their own books, despite knowing exceptional writers who have, due to the blindness of publishers, had to publish their own books to prove that their work is marketable, I still struggle with the notion that self-publishing is a legitimate route to book publication. This hang-up is about me, I think, internalizing old media messages.
Maybe it’s that self-publishing is also called vanity publishing. After many years of Sunday School, I know vanity is a sin. Perhaps my mind is equating self-publishing with sin-publishing. Hmm. I need an exorcism!
If you look at this poll on self-publishing that I think I created in 2003 or 2004 at a site I rarely visit now but for sentimental reasons am still a member, you’ll see that my apprehension about self-publishing is not a new affliction. When I say afflction, I mean torment. The debate keeps me confuzzled.
I can tell you why self-publishing, especially for people for color, is viable and reasonable. I know the history, how many well-known African-American novelists had to publish their own works first because white publishers wouldn’t do it and black publishers were nearly nonexistent. I concede that even today, good poets in particular, still have to step out on faith and publish their own books of poetry first.
At the same time, I applaud writers who finish their books because it’s something I have yet to achieve. Grrrr! And I cheer them on when they send them to press themselves. "Oh, you go girl!" I say, gesturing thumbs up, weeping on the inside that my book still isn’t done.
Furthermore, I know as the African-American Books Examiner, I will be reading novelists who are either self-published now and will be big names in the future or who used to self-publish and are big names now. And yet for myself I don’t think I will feel published until I finish a book and sell it to a publishing house.
Even if I wrote a book, couldn’t sell it to a publishing house, then turned around and sold millions after publishing it myself, I think the devil on my shoulder would still needle me and say, "Ah, but you didn’t really publish a book, now did you?" Clearly I suffer from giving "authority figures" too much power over my value as a writer.
Read the rest of the post on Whose Shoes Are These Anyway.
Creating Believable Middle Grade and Young Adult Characters
This article, by Laura Backes, is a cross-posting of a piece which appeared on The CBI Clubhouse on 5/19/09.
How to reach older readers with characters that are believable, bold and memorable.
When you search for a novel to read, do you hope to find a story about someone exactly like yourself? That first glimmer of recognition might be intriguing, but after several pages you’d probably get bored. Adults read for entertainment, escape, and to get glimpses of lives different from their own. If the main character is too ordinary or familiar, the story won’t hold any surprises. You already know how it ends.
Middle grade and young adult readers are no different. They want to identify strongly with the characters in their books, and understand those characters’ problems. But they also need the characters to be a bit bigger, braver, or smarter than themselves. The problems must be more dramatic than the readers’ own, the stakes higher. Tension builds when protagonists act more impulsively, foolhardy or selfishly than the reader would ever do. Novels for older readers portray a magnified version of real life.
Even though the characters and their situations might be drawn more sharply in fiction than in reality, they still have to be believable. The reader must be certain that these people could actually exist. The protagonist, however troubled, must be sympathetic enough for the reader to care about his or her problems. Including underlying universal themes of adolescence connects the reader on an emotional level.
Consider Lucy the Giant, a young adult novel by Sherri L. Smith. At over six feet tall, Lucy is literally bigger than her peers. Her size is in sharp contrast to the small Alaskan town where she lives. Lucy’s greatest desire is to fit in, a yearning familiar to most readers. One day, tired of dragging her alcoholic father home from the bars at night and enduring the taunts of her classmates and pitying glances from adults in town, Lucy runs away to Kodiak Island. Mistaken for an adult, she gets a job on a crabbing boat, where Lucy finds adventure, a family of sorts, and even has a near-death experience that teaches her running away from problems is never the answer.
It’s unusual for an adventure story to feature a female protagonist, but virtually every teen will recognize part of him or herself in Lucy. Lucy’s mother abandoned her at age seven, and Lucy spends much of the book blaming her parents for her problems. This is understandable, but what makes Lucy more resilient than an average teen is that she decides to take responsibility for her own life. At age 15, Lucy–already incredibly brave, physically strong, and carrying heavy emotional baggage–grows up.
It’s this “growing up” that marks a young adult character. They enter the story from the world of adolescence, and emerge with tools they’ll carry into adulthood. Though the reader might not make that journey as quickly or completely, he or she need examples of teens 
who did. If 13-year-old Brian Robeson from Hatchet by Gary Paulsen can survive by himself for 54 days on a remote island in the Canadian wilderness, then surely the reader can hope to survive junior high.
Middle grade readers also love characters who face situations that are more dramatic than their own. These characters learn lessons about life or how the world works, but in the end are still content to remain adolescents for a few more years. In middle grade books, the characters who often unwittingly provide the drama simply by being themselves.
Polly Horvath is a master at creating quirky, 
complex, funny characters who spin the plot in a new direction simply by entering a scene. Horvath pays special attention to the adults who inhabit the worlds of her child characters (The Trolls and Everything on a Waffle are my two favorites). Richard Peck does the same thing in his award-winning historical novels A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder. Both authors have created child viewpoint characters who are dealing with everything from surviving a summer visit with Grandma to waiting for Mom and Dad to show up after their boats were lost at sea. But the stories get their sparks from larger-than-life adult characters. The humor, and the deeper meanings of these books, comes from the children gaining deeper understanding of the eccentric adults in their lives.
When you’re developing characters for your middle grade or young adult novel, start with qualities readers will see in themselves. Then raise the stakes and see how your character reacts. Make her six feet tall. Strand a boy with no wilderness experience on an island with nothing but a hatchet. Send some city kids to spend two weeks in a small town with a crotchety grandmother. Shake up an ordinary family by dropping in an aunt from another country who spins tall tales that just might be true. Go just beyond your own experience, and that of your readers, and think big.
CBI Publisher Laura Backes has experience as an editor and literary agent, and has been published herself by Random House, Writer’s Digest and The Writer, among many others. She was Technical Editor of Writing Children’s Books for Dummies and is the co-founder of the acclaimed Children’s Author’s Bootcamp workshops.
The CBI Clubhouse is the online home for Children’s Book Insider readers and the ultimate learning & sharing spot for children’s writers, packed with articles, audio, video and fellowship with writers worldwide.