The Sixth Discipline Got Its First Review!

The Sixth Discipline got a review on Amazon! The reviewer gave it four stars and wrote a very lengthy and in-depth write-up! You can read it here if you're interested!

Links to buy the Haven books

To put them all in one place, here are the links for the Haven books:

The Sixth Discipline (first book in the Haven series)

on Amazon Kindle

on Barnes & Noble Nook

on Smashwords

on Sony

on Diesel eBooks

note: also available on iBooks

No Safe Haven (second/last book in the Haven series)

on Amazon Kindle

on Barnes & Noble Nook

on Smashwords

note: will also be available on iBooks

Do It Yourself Publishing

Well, I now have two books out as ebooks. In case anyone is interested, I thought I would report on my experience with the self-publishing process.

So far, I can report several facts, as seen from my perspective (even facts can have perspective):

1) Amazon sells a lot more ebooks than anyone else; of course, I don't have much to go by yet, as almost the only people who have bought my books are people who know me, IRL or online. But I gave my family and friends three choices and 90% of them picked door #1, Amazon. This may not be typical as probably 2/3 of my friends and family don't have ereaders yet— hard to believe, I know -) — and ereaders determine a lot of folks' choices.

2) It pays to get a pro to convert your MS Word file. I used a company called 52 Novels. I think it's really one guy with his wife helping out, but he did an excellent job. I am very pleased with the appearance of the ebook. Plus, he took care of embedding the cover and creating a table of contents, so everything links as it should. The Kindle offers a nice feature that lets you jump chapter-to-chapter by pressing the right and left sides of the 5-way controller, but it only works if the chapters are coded as chapters. This works in my books, but not in a lot of traditionally published novels.

3) Smashwords, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), and Barnes and Noble's PubIt are all very easy to use, if you have your files in the right shape. This is where it really paid to have the pro bundle everything up for you. Smashwords was actually the fastest to get the book up, with PubIt next, and then KDP. A nice plus for Smashwords is they will push their books out to other platforms. I don't recommend using them to push to B&N or Amazon, since both vendors provide an easy-to-use interface that lets you have more control over how the book will look, but Smashwords is one way to get a self-published book into iBooks (although you need an ISBN and really good formatting to do that).

4) Covers matter! Even though the book is digital, it still needs a cover. For one thing, it's what ebookstore browsers see when shopping on the web, so it needs to be eye-catching in both thumbnail size and in book-size. I paid a graphic designed to create my covers.

5) There is writing the book (write, edit, proof, get feedback, rinse and repeat). There is creating the ebook (getting a pro to do both the cover and the conversion, in my case); you need to be sure you allow for a review step, to see the book as it will look and proof it one last time. There is loading the ebook (the easy part, if you have the right files, all ready to go). And finally there is marketing. That is the hard part. In order for strangers to buy your book, they have to know it's there, and have a sense that they want to read it. Writing the blurb is not the end of marketing! I'm working on getting reviewers, even while I'm still proofing my next book Tribes (not part of the Haven series).

No Safe Haven is in the Kindle store!

No Safe Haven, the sequel to The Sixth Discipline, is now for sale in the Kindle store!

A third (unrelated) book called Tribes will come out later this year. It's waiting on a cover and some additional proofing. I will be posting about the process of publishing ebooks in about a week or so.

No Save Haven is up!

No Safe Haven, the sequel to The Sixth Discipline is up on Smashwords and now on Nook! ! It should follow shortly on Kindle, and in a couple of weeks, iBooks.

iBooks and the sequel!

The Sixth Discipline is now available in Apple's iBooks application. If you have a iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, you can use that app to get the book.

Also, No Safe Haven, the sequel, has just been loaded to Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords. I will post links as soon as the book becomes available.

To print or not to print

Technology is having a profound impact on the process of publishing. It used to be that the only option for self-publishing a book was to hire a printer, publish however many books you thought you could sell, and then cart them around to bookstores and try to get the store owners to put your book on their shelves. It took a fair amount of money and a huge amount of effort.

A new option for self-publishing printed books these days is print-on-demand or POD. A POD machine such as the Espresso can crank out a single book almost like a photocopier cranks out a report. The book can be digitally printed, bound, and and trimmed in about 15 minutes. Once these machines get more affordable, we might even see them in bookstores. But for now, most POD services operate with both the production process (where the author provides the book content) and the sale to the reader happening online. Some examples are Lulu and Amazon's CreateSpace.

This means that POD doesn't provide any noticeable advantage when it comes to getting a book into a bookstore. Also, the books cannot be produced as cheaply one at a time, so they can't be priced as competitively as ebooks.

Which is why I went with publishing my books as ebooks only, rather than also adding a print option. I haven't totally written of the idea of producing print books, but making the book look decent takes some skills I don't have.

I have been interviewed!

The Kindle Authors blog has posted an interview with me by David Wisehart, in which I talk about how I write and give advice for other writers.

Go read it if you're interested!

A word about ebooks

A few years ago, very few people had heard of ebooks, even though they have been around for decades. Several things kicked off the change that started book publishing on the path to digital books becoming a mainstream phenomenon. First was the invention of e-ink, as seen first on a Sony Reader, then the Kindle, then the (non-color) Nook ereader. The e-ink screen offered vastly reduced eyestrain, much better battery life, and no glare in bright light.

Second, Amazon got into the business with their Kindle ereader. The Kindle had two additional things going for it, in addition to e-ink. The first was wireless delivery of ebooks. You didn't even need to own a computer to buy and download books; you just needed a Kindle. The second was that Amazon had a much bigger, better organized ebookstore than Sony or Fictionwise, or any previous ebook vendor.

The combination of an easy to use ereader and a well-stocked store made ebooks take off. Barnes and Noble got into the act with the Nook and the Nook Color, and Apple came out with the iPad.

The Kindle and other dedicated ereaders hooked the voracious readers— people who read two or more books a month. The iPad hooked the casual reader. They already had the device, and it allowed them to download several different ereader apps, including Apple's own iBooks, and read books in color. Over the last year, ebook sales have been growing by leaps and bounds.

Which is the main reason that publishing solely in digital form is now a viable option! And that's why my first book, The Sixth Discipline is now in the Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords ebookstores.

Two more links!

Here is the link to buy The Sixth Discipline if you have a Kindle or a Kindle app.

Here is the link if you have a Nook or a Nook app.

If you need the apps, you can download Amazon Kindle app here.

Or download Barnes and Noble Nook apps here.

If you have a Kobo or a Sony Reader, Smashwords is a viable option. If not, I recommend using either Kindle or Nook apps, as they are easier to use.