Vanity, thy name is Penguin.

There's been a lot of news around lately about the latest "service" being offered to epublishers. And I use the term service with a sneer, 'cause folks, it ain't to help you. It's vanity publishing with a new name. Publish America, anyone?

It seems Penguin, a big name publisher, has decided to fleece unsuspecting writers by charging them to upload a file and get published, for a fee plus a large percentage of royalties, forever.

Depending on the tier you choose, they don't even do the formatting for you, and there's no editing or cover design. People, if I can learn to format and upload, anybody can, if they are willing to take a little time.


It's a scam, people. They don't really do anything for you that you can't do for yourself, or get done for a flat fee. And if you don't believe me, check out how others are reporting this.

I won't give you a lot of links, just google it. Man, you're on the internet, use it! (Here's a tip, though:  check out the links in my sidebar to J. A. Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith. If you're at all interested in epublishing, you should be reading their blogs anyway.)

The sad thing is, Penguin isn't the only one to try this road in the new world of publishing.

If you're interested in a brief explanation of the "services" from Penguin, and some links to how/where to publish your own books and keep the profits, check here:

http://www.davidhburton.com/?p=6502

Anyway, I'll turn my rant face off, I've got loads of work to do, and that editing won't do itself. Drat it.

Until next time, Gentle Readers,

Do you like Christmas books?

I'm not just talking about my recent release, but books/stories in various genres, centered around the holidays? If you do, you might like to check out this site, where Markee Anderson is making a bookshelf of Christmas books.

She was kind enough to include A Visit From St. Nick, my holiday horror collection, among the other books she has linked. So, go, look -- you might just find something of interest there.

Until next we meet, Gentle Readers, take care.

The collection is live!

Well, after some setbacks, the collection went live late last night. And by late, I mean I was publishing on Amazon after 11 pm. It's available at the usual places, see the links on the left, your preference for vendors.

I'm still not thrilled with the conversion, as it seems I wasn't smart enough to have learned the HTML codes for making a linked table of contents in MobiPocketCreator, so I just uploaded the html and called it a day.

Dang it, no linked TOC at Amazon. I'm bummed. But, when Second of Three gets done helping my brother, I'm going to sic him on to the problem.

The good news is, it was perfect on Smashwords (thank you, Mark Coker for making that site), and I had three sample downloads as soon as it went live, and two people linked it to their libraries.

One thing I'm still trying to figure out is how to get nice black and white graphics to work in my files. I want to separate different parts of the file with nifty graphics, since you don't use page breaks at SW. I put one in my file last night, but it came out too small when I checked the various formats. (It was Santa on his sleigh, if you're interested, and it's very tiny.)

Ah, the perils of the self-publisher! I'll find a plain language tutorial one day that will teach me how to do it, and then I'll be cooking, baby. I wonder, is there a book called HTML for Dummies? If there isn't, there should be.

Think I will go look, before the day is out, if I can stop checking my sales, that is. I only let myself check once in the morning and once at night, but I've probably done it eight or nine times already today.

Well, Gentle Readers, that's it for now. I am in sleep deficit mode, plus I'm in arrears on my craft business and really must beat myself to catch up.

I need to finish a novel, and edit a novella (which will probably end up as a long short story), as they're the next projects on my publication schedule. I'm not even going to get into the housework, or lack thereof.

Ta!

tentative cover and story list

I've been working away at the holiday collection, getting the cover half-way decent and deciding which order the stories are going to be in so I could do a linked table of contents.

I was sort of scared about that TOC, but it turned out to be much easier than I'd feared. The Smashwords Style Guide was pretty straight forward, especially since my eyes glaze over when the tech talk starts. Wonder if that's why I never managed to become a programmer? lol

Anyway, here is the cover, which I think is in it's final form. It looks good in grey scale also.  And my boys liked it. They seemed rather impressed, actually.

I worked on this for a while, trying to get the image strong enough to see in thumbnails, especially the blood splatter, but not overpower the font. It wasn't until I changed the color from a sepia tone to the green, as well as changing the title color from black, that it worked.

I also learned how to do a drop shadow! Gosh, I'm rather impressed.

My goat was to have at least five stories, coming in around 15,000 total words, for this collection, and I made it. I'm doing the final editing now, but it should stay over the 15K mark.

Here's the list, subject to rearranging and blurb changes:

A Visit From St. Nick 
  What could Santa Claus want with an elderly Jewish grandma on Christmas Eve?

In the Meadow

Winters in North Dakota can be harsh, but this year the piles of snow are a blessing.

Miracle in 34B

The unwavering belief of a little girl in the magic of Santa Claus restores the faith of an enigmatic man.

It's a Wonderful Life

A man wonders what good he's ever done for anybody, until he meets someone who shows what his life was worth.

Figgy Pudding

  The last customer in the restaurant on Christmas Eve brings a special gift to the overworked staff waiting to close up and go home.

There's one more little tease for a story running around in the back of my mind, and if it decides to show itself in time there may be a sixth story. We'll just have to see how that goes, as I plan to publish this collection on November 7th.

So, that's the plan, Gentle Readers. Until next time we meet.

putting the "ick" in i-cyc-le

Well, I'm just so excited, I'm making bad puns. But I've finished the fifth story in my upcoming holiday collection, and I'm just about to burst with joy.

JOY!      JOY!      JOY!     

Sorry, some got out anyway. Pardon me while I clean up a bit...Okay, I'm back.

I had been worrying that I hadn't gotten an idea yet for the last story, but my little brain was churning away in the background, working on it. I was finishing up the fourth story, which I should mention has given me some scary dreams the last few days, and asking myself, "Self, what are you going to do about that last story?"

I realized I'd been humming while I typed, and one song in particular struck me. I stopped typing and just let the words flow through my head. Oh, yeah. That's the ticket! I just love it when that happens.

I finished #4 and went immediately to #5. I already have a cover in mind, so I need to do an introduction, a table of contents that links to everything, and look at the blurbs for each story.

The publication date is set for November 7, which is Sis#1's birthday. I was looking at some of the projects on my list, and had the thought to publish a major work on the significant days in my family.

So over the next year, everybody is going to get something on their birthday. Whether they want it or not. snort

I'll post some more details about the collection in a day or so, once I get the last minute things done. I'll pop the cover up, and the story list and blurbs.

Oh, and before I go, I had a really nice comment left on ye olde blog the other day, and I just wanted to say that I appreciate it.

So, until next time, Gentle Readers, keep the lights on.