Michelle Athy's Blog, page 36

30 Books Read!

I've now read 30 books this year. I think this list is particularly diverse in genre and form. There's a nonfiction book, a contemporary romance, a dystopian novella, a book of plays, poetry, and...

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Happy 1 month, Pearl!

Once upon a time, in a not-very-exotic land called Queens, there was a short, shy-to-the-point-of-stupefication young nerd who realized that she liked stories. Loved them, in fact. Absorbed them...

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An Excerpt from Chapter 19

So. . . I don't know what's going on, but it's like the dam broke and all of a sudden, I'm just typing like it's NaNo at the Vic/Nic story. Which is great! I'm not going to question it. But I...

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Don't be paralyzed; just write

In the past, when I'd finished a story and it sat on my computer waiting for the day when I would revise it, let a friend read it, feel like I knew more in order to fix it up, or shelve it, only to...

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IWSG July: I Wrote a Book

This is a post for IWSG. The Insecure Writer's Support Group posts every first Wednesday of the month, releasing our neuroses into the world. Come join us! Thanks to this month's co-hosts:Charity...

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#LoveWins

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than...

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4 Historical Characters Mentioned in Pearl (And Maybe Some That Aren't)

1. William Wilberforce Wilberforce, 1790 “You can’t simply walk up to William Wilberforce and ask him to find your brother. That’s not what’ll happen. You understand?” <!--[if gte mso 9]> ...

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A Very Japanese + Irish Day

I've talked about my two cultures a lot. I've certainly spent a lot of time in my life explaining my precise racial and cultural background. (Can I get a nickel every time I tell people I'm Japanese...

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7 Thoughts on Self-Publishing

As you lovely readers know because I've been inundating my social mediums with my news, I released a novella into the world. Now, granted, I'm only three days out from release, but these are some reflections I've had on the self-publishing process.

1. Thank God I Hired a Really Good Copyeditor.
No, really. I've been reading my own book on my Kindle (that feels so weird to say) and although some of my formatting is kind of making me cringe (more on that later), the actual story itself isn't. Not saying it's a perfect story--it definitely is not--but I know that the spelling, grammar, and punctuation is spot on because Jess checked this baby thoroughly.

The huge amount of commas, ellipses, and dashes is my fault.



2. I'm So Glad I Went With That Cover
I'd decided to look through the many, many sites of really talented designers to see if I could find a pre-made cover, because it would be quicker and cheaper than hiring a designer. The one I ended up going with absolutely caught my eye, but I wondered if it was really "historical enough." I showed my writing group my two choices (they all resoundingly voted for The One) and after, on Saturday, I showed my best friend the two choices. She made a face at the other one I considered.

"Umm...no," she said. I've gotten a few compliments on the cover, so clearly, just go with your gut if you're looking at pre-mades.

3. Draft2Digital is Really Great.
Draft2Digital is a free self-publishing service, much in the way of Smashwords. Draft2Digital distributes to non-Amazon vendors, like Nook, Apple, etc. It also lets you convert your Word file into an epub or a mobi, the file types you need for an ebook. And it lets you preview it.

4. Oy with the Formatting.
So, I formatted the thing myself. It came out majority all right--there are only a couple of lines that I can see on my Kindle that weren't indented properly (even though they so were in my file!). It's the first time I formatted an ebook, so I'm thrilled that it didn't come out totally garbled.

Of course, now that I'm looking at it, all I can see are the ridiculously large indents (the Kindle guide says .5" is good; the Smashwords guide says .3". I should've gone with the .3".). Oh, yeah, and the fact that the chapter titles aren't exactly centered on my Kindle--and that I should've left more space in between chapter headings and the text. And why are the Acknowledgements on the last page? They're supposed to be on their own starting page...

Neuroticism, thy name is Writer.

5. Yeah, I Should've Looked At It On My Kindle First
I looked at my book on the Kindle Previewer, not my device. Hence the neurotic formatting bits. I can "unpublish" and upload a corrected file, if I want to. I'm not sure it really bothers me enough to do that, though. Or so I'm telling myself.

6. Load Up Those Keywords
Keywords are those things some readers type into the Amazon search engine. It's how they find your book. You get seven of them on Amazon. Someone on AW mentioned that you can actually type in long phrases and Amazon will count them as one keyword as long as you don't separate them by comma.

7. Marketing
So marketing. Guest posts. Interviews. Ads. Social media. Marketing is an important factor in telling people about your story. I belong to two rather large writing networks--the AW forum and the IWSG, which has a Facebook group where I post semi-regularly, usually to answer questions or comments from other members. I started looking at Goodreads groups as well.

However, constant promotion of your work gets grating after a while, for the people who follow your tweets or read your Facebook posts or whatever. I'm conscious of that, being a naturally irritable type.

7 Thoughts On Self-Publishing

As you lovely readers know because I've been inundating my social mediums with my news, I released a novella into the world. Now, granted, I'm only three days out from release, but these are some...

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