Daniel Ruth's Blog, page 3

Let’s Say We Didn’t

Okay, so it has been a few months since I published on Nook and Apple.  Wow, Apple was a bear.  I got MacInClouds to work but it was slow.  Ignoring that, it is funny that a company that prides itself on easy to use products such as the iPhone can have such counter-intuitive processes.  Needs some Usability studies.

Nook wasn’t that bad.  It had an okay process and except for having to re-format the document, it wasn’t bad.  Having said that… I am removing my book from both services.  While it is probably due to my lack of promoting I didn’t actually sell anything.  Really, nothing.  This is in marked contrast to Amazon, whose sales have petered out, but had some decent activity for a period of time.  I bow my head to the Amazon deities and will use their services going forward.  On the bright side, this allows me to use Amazon KDP Select again.  Whoot.

On to news regarding the book 2.  I am on chapter 19.  While the first book had only 21 chapters I am findings my chapters are tending to be shorter on average so this is only 2/3 done.

I am also thinking of putting a few of the early chapters of Book 1 up on Spacebattles.  I am not sure anyone has ever heard of it.  In fact, I never heard of it until about a year and half ago.  Think of it as the forums version fanfiction.net with a bit of an obsession with a specific web novel.  Wait!  You never heard of fanfiction.net either?!?  Yeah, most people look at me the same way…

I may also put up an earlier fanfiction story I wrote on Spacebattles, mostly to encourage myself to finish it.  It is only a few chapters from completion but it has been stalled for literally years.  I learned a lot from writing that story.  I think you can see it in my writing as the story goes on.  And it was a hoot.  I still get people favoriting it, but Ranma fanfiction is pretty dead.  Too bad, I still enjoy it.

For anyone unfamiliar with fanfiction, it is taking an existing character belonging to someone else and writing your own story about him.  It is allowed by law as long as you don’t make any money from it and post a disclaimer.

New Horizons

Just thought I would make an update here.  The second book is coming along well.  Hopefully, it will get done this year.

On another note, my computer and my wife’s  computer both went out.  She lost her boot drive and my operating system crapped out.  Both simple problems but a series of weird circumstances has made it ridiculously hard to fix the simple things.   The computers are 7 years old, so this is to be expected.  The good news is that no information lost, just a delay as I get my house in order, so to speak.

In other news, my Amazon KDP Select obligation just ran out so I am now in the process of publishing to Barnes and Nobles, Create Space (printed books) and Apple.  B&N is as easy as Amazon.  Create Space wasn’t so bad, though I have some unresolved questions.  I now understand why other Kindle books charge $15 for a one-off printing.  The less said, the better.

Apple is really tricky.  They prefer you use an aggregator so their “help” isn’t very helpful.  If you don’t have a macintosh it is non-existent.  Still, it seems there are online converters to the ePub format and there’s a service I have heard of called “Macinclouds” where you rent an on-line macintosh.  I think I can use this to publish through Apple, but we’ll see.

I wanted to publish through Android Play but they stopped accepting new authors almost a year ago.  Apparently, there was rampant piracy and they were less than responsive to it until a large European publisher had the weight to make them do something.  So far that “something” is a hard stop.  As far as I know no one has any idea when they will start up again.  A lot of bitterness in the posts I read.  Mostly about the complete lack of communication from Android for most of a year.

Christmas Update

Merry Christmas everyone!  Just thought I would give out a status for those who were interested.  The bad news, no sequel this year.  The good news is that the story is still cooking away.  Maybe by next year I’ll have something I can publish.  I am hoping that when I do I can have it proof read a bit more than my initial book was.  Thanks for reading!

Stop In the Name of the Kindle Police!

I found a new feature in Kindle.  Apparently readers can report errors in books.  This in turn gets fed back to the writer by Amazon Kindle.  A bit embarrassing, but there is no point in pretending my book doesn’t have mistakes…  The feedback I got was very specific and allowed me to delete several repeated paragraphs!  Maybe one day I can pretend!

Anyway, version 6 is published.  Once Amazon reviews the changes it will go live.  It also has a new cover.  I previously mentioned that I bought some royalty free photos.  Well, I edited them a bit and I think its pretty decent.  I wanted to mix in a cityscape but after several wrist breaking hours with the photo editor, the changes weren’t saved.  A bit disappointing.  I used Cyberlinks PhotoDirector and it doesn’t allow saving while removing backgrounds and you can’t edit the foregrounds once isolated.  Still what I have is better.

As a side note, the original dragon cover is actually a wooden carved figure I own.  It was a gift from my wife.  Not really a realistic dragon or what I picture my main character to be, however I thought it was decent as concept art.  Its actually a varnished brown color but I thought grey scale hid several flaws better.