One down, one to go

Okay, the corrections have been made to the converted file for The Nostalgia Gambit. Now I need to finish evaluating the copyeditor's comments and make her suggested edits to King of Trees.

Once I get a final pass version of TNG, I will load it into Amazon's Kindle Direct Platform. That usually takes a matter of minutes, once I have a corrected file.

Oops, just realized I also need to write the "back cover" blurb.  Even though ebooks don't have a cover, they still need a description.

It will probably be January before King of Trees comes out.  Once we get into the holiday season, everything slows down.

That's strange . . .

According to my Blogger stats, someone found my blog by searching for the phrase "The Nostalgia Gambit." The weird thing is, my book by that title isn't out yet, and I don't think there is another book by that name. Which makes me wonder how someone knew about the book if they didn't already know about my blog?

Or maybe another author out there is thinking of using that name for his or her new book?  Hmm.

The Nostalgia Gambit is on my Kindle!

Of course, it's only the proof copy. I loaded the version that 52Novels sent me onto my Kindle so I could  do one last final proof, especially to check for conversion errors, which fortunately, are usually very rare. Once I send them my corrections, it should not take long before I will get back a file I can load into KDP.

I will be launching this on KDP Select, so it won't be on other platforms for a few months.

Almost there!

Going a little crazy here

I feel like a juggler who has launched one ball too many into the air. The main level of my house is being renovated, so we're camping out in the basement for several weeks. We're using a picnic cooler as a desk/coffee table, and I'm making the copyeditor's revisions to King of Trees while crouched over my laptop.

At the same time, I'm waiting for the converted file for the The Nostalgia Gambit and the final cover for King of Trees. As soon as I get TNG back, I need to load it onto my Kindle for final proofing; the conversion is generally very smooth, but sometimes quote marks don't convert correctly or it turns out there was weird stuff in the Word file that came through in the epub/Kindle versions.

And, of course, with home renovation, things never go as smoothly as you had hoped. Do the words "termite damage" and "rotten floor joist" sound as scary to you as they did to me?

At least tomorrow the floors should be done, and we will be able to bring the cat home from kitty jail. Now if I can just keep him from walking on my keyboard . . .

The Nostalgia Gambit is out for conversion!

Final edits are done, the ISBN has been assigned, the cover is complete, and I have sent it off for conversion. Now to get going on King of Trees, which is right behind TNG. KoT is back from the copyeditor and I need to start going over her comments/suggestions/corrections.  I will post the cover for that one soon, too,

All this in spite of suffering through a major home renovation and Hurricane Sandy, too! Luckily, Sandy didn't affect my area too badly. I feel so bad for the folks in New York and New Jersey.

Status on The Nostalgia Gambit

The manuscript is still at the proof reader's but it's due at the conversion house next week. It usually takes them anywhere from four to 10 days to give me the file back. Then I have to load it onto my Kindle and do one last proof. Their conversion is usually excellent except for occasional problems with quotation marks or places in the text where there's special formatting.

After I give them the corrected HTML files, it usually takes only a few days to get the corrected Kindle and epub format files back. I plan to launch the book as a KDP Select book, which means that it will be only on Amazon for three months. Amazon only takes a day or so to load a book via KDP, which means the book could be in the Kindle store before December 1.

I'll post a link and add it to the Books page as soon as it's for sale.

My review of the Kindle Paperwhite

I've had the Paperwhite for several days now. I got the 3G model, but of course the first thing I did was connect to my home network. It was pretty easy to set it up, and the bunch of books I had already sent to the Paperwhite downloaded quickly.  I've read on it for a fair bit now, and I'm ready to say what I like and what I don't.

The Good

• The screen: It's fantastic! It really is a noticeably better level of contrast, blacker letters on a whiter page. Black and white photos and drawings look especially crisp and nice. The Paperwhite screen is also more responsive, because it's capacitive instead of infrared, I find that the number of times I advance a page without meaning to is much less than with the Touch. 
• The built-in light: It provides excellent, easy to control, pretty even lighting, and it doesn't seem to drain the battery, either.
• The feel: The Paperwhite is so small and light! I am happy I got a slip case so I can easily take the Kindle out of it and read with just the device in my hand. It makes one-handed reading easier.
• The screen savers: The screen savers (unless you have a KSO* version) are the same as for the Touch, and I was happy not to lose them.
• The Home screen:  The Paperwhite has the option of displaying book covers instead of just titles and authors. As long as it's an option, I'm OK with that. It's nice to have when you want it, but I won't always want to waste that much screen real estate on book covers.  

The Bad 

• No text-to-speech (TTS) or speakers or a headphone jack. Frowny face over that one.
• Ads on the home screen! I did not get a KSO version, but when I have the home screen set to display book covers, it will list a row of books on my Kindle, and then a row of "Editor's Picks," a.k.a. books or Kindle Singles that Amazon wants me to buy. In other words, I'm seeing freakin' ads! Cut it out, Amazon! They might be great books, but they're still books I don't own and you want to sell me. When I want to shop, I'll shop. Luckily, the ads don't show after page 1, or if you're using List mode. Addendum: Amazon now allows you to turn this off! Yay!
• No Home button. The Touch had one physical button (beside the off switch) and that was the button on the bottom of the bezel that you could press from anywhere and it would take you to your Home screen. Now I have to get the menu, and then press the Home icon.  It's not terrible, but it's not as easy.
• No page swipe up and down for next chapter/last chapter. Why the hell did they take this feature away? It was a wonderful way to browse an ebook. I don't care that all the chapter headings are now on the Go To menu, why can't I browse without getting a menu every time? 

The Undecided

• Collections: I haven't imported my collections to this Kindle yet, because I don't have all the books I want copied over yet. Kindle collections are device-specific; if I import my Kindle Touch collections now, it will apply those labels to the books currently on the Paperwhite, but if I send over more books from my Archive (now called The Cloud), then they won't keep the labels they had on the Touch on them when they arrive on the Paperwhite.  Once I get everything set up, I will import my collections and see how it goes. If collections are raddically differnt on the Paperwhite than they are on the Touch, I might do a post on just collections. 
• The timer: The Paperwhite alerts you to how much longer it will take you to finish reading a chapter and even how long for he book as a whole. I haven't decided yet it that's annoying or useful. 
• Airplane mode: Having the wireless off is now referred to as Airplane mode. You even get a little icon of an airplane on the status bar to show you airplane mode is on (and ergo, wireless is off). Maybe it's to encourage the FAA to let people keep their Kindles on during take-off; otherwise, I don't get why they changed the wording of a feature the Kindle has had since Day 1. they also moved the function to the settings menu, so that's an extra step as well as a weird name.

All in all, I love my new Paperwhite. I have had the original Kindle, the Kindle 2, the Kindle 3 (now known as the Kindle Keyboard), and the Kindle Touch. Each new device has offered improvements, but this is the first time when it has felt like there really is not that much to improve, at least in the hardware (except for TTS).

If I were posting this on Amazon, I would have to give it five out of five stars.

* KSO is Kindle with special offers, a cheaper version that shows ads as screen savers and on the home screen.

I finished the copy edits on The Nostalgia Gambit!

I finished editing The Nostalgia Gambit, based on the marked-up copy provided by my copyeditor. I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. I have the cover, and I have the ISBNs. Now, as soon as the proof reader is done, the book can go off to the conversion house.

And then, of course, I'll have to proof again on the Kindle (my new Paperwhite arrived!) and make any last minute fixes. Once I have a corrected mobi/prc file, I will load it to KDP Select. I don't plan to leave the book in KDP more than one 90-day cycle, but I will use the free days promo feature of KDP Select to get a head start on selling.

In three months when the KDP Select period is over, it will be the middle of February or so, and I am hoping by then Smashwords will finally be able to accept epub files! That will make offering the book in other stores not only simpler, but also mean the version pushed out from Smashwords to other retailers will look much better.

Why I don't write time travel stories

This article in The Guardian about the last episode of Dr. Who is a good example of why I don't write time travel stories. If you have not seen this episode and plan to watch it, stop reading now, because major spoilers are involved! Ditto for reading the article, by the way.

Okay, for those not worried about spoilers, companions Rory and Amy Pond end up in the recent past, in New York City where the Weeping Angels are causing havoc in the space time continuum to such as extent that the Doctor declares he can never go back there to that time again. When Rory and Amy get sucked back to NYC's past at the end, they become stranded. The Doctor flies off in the Tardis without them. What the Guardian article shows is an alternate ending where Brian, Rory's wonderful father, meets his grandson, who shows up on his doorstep (actually Rory and Amy's doorstep) as a grown man and hands Brian a letter explaining that Rory and Amy were trapped in the past and could never get back, but they wanted him to know they had a good life and by the way, shake hands with your grandson.

The article wonders why the ending wasn't filmed, as it would have provided some wonderful moments for the actor who plays Brian, and also some closure on the Ponds as companions. I think that's one reason why it wasn't filmed!  Time travel stories don't have closure because the writers always want to leave a loophole to change things. Suppose Rory and Amy move to London and wait a few years.  Could the Doctor come back for them then? What if more angels were to show up and suck them farther back in time?  Could the Doctor rescue them then? Without closure, the dramatic present is still wide open, and I think the writers prefer it that way.

But not me. That kind of plot loophole just makes my brain hurt.

Did Smashwords update all the big retailers at once?

I haven't been checking sales reports on Smashwords lately, so I don't know if they did them all on one day or three days in a row, but there are now new sales reported for Sony, Apple iBooks, and Barnes & Noble. I did best on iBooks as usual, with Barnes & Noble next and Sony last.

As on Amazon. No Safe Haven is selling the best, but Shades of Empire isn't that far behind it. Also, I have more sales in the US than anywhere else. I wish I knew how The Sixth Discipline (free book!) was doing on all those platforms but B&N is the only one that lists numbers for free books (except maybe Sony, and I haven't got a free book with them yet).