Glynn Stewart's Blog, page 33

Projects Update

There’s been a bit of radio silence on here the few weeks – I started a new job in January, and while it’s been an absolute blast, its also taking most of my brainpower during the week. Most of what’s left goes into writing rather than posting here. Somehow, I suspect everyone’s okay with that!

Figured I would throw out a quick update on what I’m working on:

The main project right now is Space Carrier Avalon.  This is at 47,000 words, and tracking relatively well for a target release date of  around the end of May.  I haven’t quite been at the pace I’d like, but its been picking up as I get used to the new job, so I’m pretty happy with where this is at.

The other project that I’m working on is something that wasn’t on my official two book schedule.  I just got the edits back on one of my older fantasy novels and am grinding through them. There are a lot of moving pieces on this one, so I’m not one hundred percent sure when this one will be out beyond a vague ‘in the next month or two.’

I’ll update further on that project as we get closer to release, and the same with Space Carrier Avalon.

A special note to remember: as with Starship’s Mage: Omnibus, I will be giving away a trade paperback of each book to a randomly selected member of the mailing list. The mailing list also will get the first notification once the books are up, so there’s two reasons to sign up right there!

-Glynn Stewart

The post Projects Update appeared first on Faolan's Pen.

The Glynn Stewart How-To Guide for Self-Publishing

A few people have asked me for a guide on the mechanics of self-publishing. Thankfully, most people seem to realize that ‘being successful’ at self-publishing is both a vague metric and a lot harder to tell people how to do!

Last night I sat down and finally wrote it. I used the same style I’d use for a basic office process manual, so it gets pretty simplistic at points.

For the curious, the text is after the cut:

Pre-Upload

Write the novel.
Review novel formatting. Chapter and title headers should be set up as styles in Word. Paragraphs should be indented via formatting instead of spaces, etc. (See Smashwords Style Guide: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/52 for hints)
I generally dis-recommend KDP select, but take a look at it. It provides the following benefits:

Ability to do promotions on Amazon (either free days or ‘countdown deals’)
Inclusion in the Kindle Lending Library. (This allows members of the Kindle Unlimited Program and the Amazon Prime program to read your book for free. If they read more than 10%, you are paid an amount based on the number of borrows over the month and the funding Amazon provides (this is currently ~$1.50, and seems to be trending downwards)


At this point, all spellchecking, formatting etc. should be complete. This version of the file is what I call the ‘GOLD’ version (term stolen from the music industry).
Save two copies of this file – label one Amazon, one Smashwords. (I do some others, but these will cover almost all of your bases). The Smashwords file must be a .doc, not a .docx.

Smashwords Upload

In the Smashwords file, add the following copyright disclaimer (required by Smashwords)  (Replace my name with yours, obviously)

By Glynn Stewart

Copyright 2014 by Glynn Stewart

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Go to Smashwords.com. Click the ‘Publish’ button in the top bar.
Fill in the name, long synopsis and short synopsis. Make sure both the long synopsis and short synopsis are complete back cover text you think can sell the book. (Many of Smashwords Vendors only post the short synopsis)
Set pricing. I currently use $0.99 USD for novellas and $3.99USD for novels.
Set categories. Primary AND Secondary – any way that you think people will search for the book.
Set the tags. Same as above, any phrase, word or collection that will bring people to the book. I use this list (from Amazon, it will be important when we do that upload): https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2G3ZMYDPB9VRM
Review the e-book formats. This should not require any changing.
Under ‘Cover Image’ click ‘Choose File’ and select your cover image.
Under ‘Select file of book to publish’ click ‘Choose File’ and select the Smashwords version of the file we prepared earlier.
Read the Terms and Services if you haven’t already.
Click “Yes, I agree” and “Publish Immediately”
Smashwords will grind on the book for a few minutes. You don’t need to remain on this page.
You may receive ‘auto-vetting errors’ from Smashwords. These are, in my experience, relatively clear and easy to fix. Do so, then re-upload. (It’s usually wise to duplicate these fixes in the Amazon file).
Go to the Dashboard for a few final steps.

In Channel Manager, tell Smashwords not to distribute to Amazon. (They don’t unless you have over $2,000 in sales with them, but you don’t want to have to worry about it)
In VAT Manager, turn on the tool. This adjusts your prices in Europe to account for their VAT rules.
In ISBN Manager, find your recently uploaded book and click ‘Assign ISBN.’ Smashwords pays for this ISBN and it is required to distribute to several of their retailers.


Smashwords is now done. They will sell directly on their store and distribute to Apple, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and a bunch of minor retailers that almost never sell anything.

 

Amazon Upload

In the Amazon file add the following copyright notice (this is not required, and can also be included at the end of the file).  (As with Smashwords, obviously use your name)

Copyright 2014 by Glynn Stewart

All rights reserved. This eBook is licensed for the personal enjoyment of the original purchaser only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons— living or dead— is entirely coincidental.

Use Word’s automatic table of contents generator to generate a table of contents from your chapter headings. This creates a set of internal bookmarks that Kindles recognize and use for navigation. I put this at the end of the novel.
Go to kdp.amazon.com. Sign in and go to the ‘bookshelf’ page.

Note that Amazon is fine with you connecting this to your current personal account, or setting up a new Amazon profile for it. I use my personal account to avoid confusing myself.


Click “Add New Title”
Enter your book name and description.
Click ‘Add contributors’

Under title select ‘Author.
Add your name, then click ‘Save’


Under ‘Verify Your Publishing Rights’ click: “This is not a public domain work and I hold the necessary publishing rights.”

(As the author, you hold all publishing rights unless you have contractually surrendered them)


Click ’Add Category.’ Navigate down to the category for your novel (I’d suggest clicking the ‘Fiction’ bar at the top.

Select two categories, then hit save.


Add keywords. Here’s where https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A2G3ZMYDPB9VRM comes in handy. That page is for SF&F, but you can navigate to similar ones for most major genres.

The page tells you what keywords will put your novel in which browse-able sub-categories.

THESE ARE VITAL on Amazon.

For example, Starship’s Mage has rarely been past #20 on the Space Opera list on Amazon.com, and has rarely been in the Science Fiction list at all – but the last couple of episodes have spent a long time in the top twenty of Space Exploration, where they have clearly caught attention.

Under ‘Upload or Create a Book Cover’ select ‘Browse for Image’ and select your cover image.
Under ‘Upload Your Book File’ click ‘Browse’ and select your book file – the docx file we have prepared for Amazon with the active table of contents.
There is an option to enable Digital Rights Management. Since I don’t want to make life harder for my readers for very little reduction in piracy, I don’t activate it.
Click ‘Save and Continue.’ This takes you to Amazon’s pricing page.
Set your USD price the same as on Smashwords (Amazon will reduce their price to match any lower price their spider programs find on the internet).
If your price is over $2.99, select the 70% royalty option at the top.
Do NOT leave the prices to auto-calculate. If you leave them like this, the final prices in each country look extremely
I usually go through and round each price to the nearest 0.49 or 0.99 (or equivalent in the local currency). European prices are inclusive of VAT, but the page will show you the VAT exclusive price (this is what the royalty will be based on)
The last two options are Kindle Matchbook, which is irrelevant unless you are also putting out a physical copy; and Kindle Book Lending, which allows people who have purchased the book to lend it to friends and family.
After deciding on Matchbook and Book Lending, read the terms and conditions if you haven’t already, then click the “By clicking Save and Publish below, I confirm that I have all rights necessary to make the content I am uploading available for marketing, distribution and sale in each territory I have indicated above, and that I am in compliance with the KDP Terms and Conditions.” radio button.
Click Save and Publish.
Amazon will chew on the novel for between two and twelve hours, and it will become available for sales in various markets effectively at random. You will receive an email once it is 100% live in all markets.

 

Final Notes – Tax & Payment

For Smashwords, you will need to set up a Paypal account that is able to transfer funds to your bank account.

Smashwords pays quarterly, and will require you to provide them a physical copy of a W-8BEN form (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf) or they will withhold 30% tax for the IRS.

Thankfully, due to recent changes in US Tax law, you are no longer required to have a US tax identification number to access tax treaties. The Canadian withholding rate is zero.

For Amazon, you will need to provide them the same tax details, but you can fill out the W-8EN form online with them. From the bookshelf or reports page, click the ”X’s Account’ link in the top left corner and complete their ‘tax interview’.

If you do not provide Amazon with banking details, they will send you funds by check once you have earned in excess of $100 USD in an individual market. For EFT, there is no minimum payment, so I strongly recommend providing bank details.

The post The Glynn Stewart How-To Guide for Self-Publishing appeared first on Faolan's Pen.

Starship’s Mage: Omnibus no longer on Google Play

Hi everyone,

Just a quick announcement that Starship’s Mage: Omnibus is no longer available on Google Play. It is still available at all other vendors.

I realized this morning that Kindle was selling the Omnibus at a significantly reduced cost that I was not expecting, and started to look into it. After digging through all of my retailers, I realized that Google Play had, without notice or permission, arbitrarily cut the price of the Omnibus by 25%. Kindle, as is their stated policy, matched this.

Given that this discount on Google has, by my rough estimate, now cost me more money than I have ever made on Google Play, I have removed the Starship’s Mage: Omnibus from the Google Play store.

Going forward, I don’t plan to release any more noel-length projects on Google Play, but I’m keeping the individual episodes of Starship’s Mage up there for now.

Glynn Stewart

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Happy Holidays / 2014 Round-up

First of all, I hope everyone has had / is having a Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Blessed Yule, or general Happy Winter Holiday!

2014 has been an incredible year for me from a writing perspective. Late 2013 I launched Starship’s Mage: Episode 1, and the response by the beginning of 2014 had been pretty lackluster. I figured this was not entirely unexpected for a single novella lurking in the lost depths of Amazon, so I continued writing the other Episodes. They have slowly but surely grown all along the way, finally exploding this December with the release of Starship’s Mage: Episode 5 and Starship’s Mage: Omnibus.

As of Christmas Day, I had sold over 10,000 e-books, and given away another 2,000 copies of Starship’s Mage: Episode 1.

While this is no threat to my day job (yet…), its certainly gratifying and definitely motivates me to continue writing and self-publishing into 2015!

For 2015, I’ve set a few goals – some are fixed, and I’m ninety-plus percent sure I can make them, and some are a little more out of my contorl.

1. Complete Space Carrier Avalon and release for the announced date of May 2015.

       (Space Carrier Avalon is a space opera about cold war, honor, and the prices soldiers pay to defend their homes.)

2. Complete Mage King’s Hand and release for the announced date of September 2015.

       (Mage King’s Hand is the next Damien Montgomery novel.)

These two I’m pretty confident on, or I would never have announced the dates in public XD

3. Complete a third novel for my agent, probably a sidequel to one of the two urban fantasy universes that he is already shopping around.

4. If the stars somehow, miraculously, align, write a fourth novel. I have a specific idea for this one, but its waay out of genre for me (a westerns-inspired epic fantasy), so we’ll see.

Lastly, I’m still hoping for a publishing contract via my agent, though that is sadly beyond my control.

Going forward, I’m hoping to get to three novels self-published in any given year, which may happen in 2014, if those stars align.

Happy reading, happy holidays, and Happy New Year everyone.

Glynn Stewart

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Starship’s Mage: Episode 1 Now Free

I realized prior to releasing Starship’s Mage: Omnibus that on a lot of sites, the available preview of the Omnibus was roughly equivalent to the entirety of Starship’s Mage: Episode 1.

It’s also highly recommended on some of the non-Amazon sites to have at least some free content to help drive readers to your books there.

So, as of a couple of days ago, I made Starship’s Mage: Episode 1 free in all of the retailers I have the ability to do so directly in (ie, everywhere except Amazon). Amazon appears to have price-matched it in most places as well.



Amazon

Smashwords

Google Play Books

Kobo Books

iBooks

Barnes & Noble Nook

You can now find Starship’s Mage: Episode 1 for free on your favorite platform. Feel free to send your friends to check it out!

In other news, the mailing list giveaway is done, and a copy of Starship’s Mage: Omnibus is winging its way to a lucky winner via the vagaries of the Christmas postal system. The Goodreads giveaway for Children of Prophecy is also done. I will probably write more on these when I have a chance to assess the results.

Children of Prophecy is now onto my next experiment with it and is going through a Countdown sale on Amazon as we speak. If you were curious before, it’s much cheaper now – but it won’t stay that way for long!

Happy reading and happy holidays everyone.

-Glynn Stewart

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Starship’s Mage: Episode 5 Live!

Starship’s Mage: Episode 5 and Starship’s Mage: Omnibus are now live everywhere (Amazon and Kobo may still have pre-orders up, but should release them as it hits midnight in your time zone).

Check out Starship’s Mage: Episode 5 on:

Amazon

Kobo

Smashwords

And check out Starship’s Mage: Omnibus

Amazon

Kobo

Smashwords

Also check out the Omnibus paperback at CreateSpace (coming soon to Amazon and many other online retailers!)

CreateSpace

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Starship’s Mage Episode 5 & Omnibus Preorders!

I’ve hit the upload button for pre-orders of Starship’s Mage Episode 5 and Starship’s Mage: Omnibus for Amazon and Kobo.

Amazon pre-orders are up!

Starship’s Mage: Episode 5

Starship’s Mage: Omnibus

Kobo will be up sometime tomorrow I think.

Smashwords and Google Play unfortunately don’t give me a pre-order option this close to the target release date, so those will go up for full availability on December 15 – as will the CreateSpace paperback.

I will leave you with a reminder that I am giving away a single signed copy of the Starship’s Mage: Omnibus paperback to one lucky member of my mailing list on December 14, and the gorgeous cover art for Starship’s Mage: Episode 5:

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UK & EU – Heads up on VAT and 2015 Pricing

Others have gone into this in some detail (See Kal Spriggs post on How I Learned to Hate the VAT, for example), but I think that it behooves us self-published authors to advise our readers and fanbases of what’s coming down the pipe.

Bluntly, Amazon is getting their fingers slapped for tax evasion in the EU, and they’re passing the stinging sensation on to reader’s wallets. Up to this point, they’ve been able to apply the VAT of the country of the seller in the European Union – in Amazon’s case, this is Luxembourg at 3%.

As of January 1, 2015, however, a purchaser on Amazon must pay the VAT of their own country – as high as 23% in Ireland and several other countries.

To make up for this, on January 1, Amazon will apply a one-time modification to all prices on the various EU Amazon sites to bring them up to VAT inclusive amounts – and to bring them to new minimum prices including VAT.

Notably, the minimum price (which applies to Starship’s Mage) is going up in both regions, to £0.99 in the UK and €0.99 in the rest of the EU. While I have some flexibility in the cost of Children of Prophecy and Starship’s Mage: Omnibus, the Episodes themselves will go up to those minimums at January 1st.

Prices for the Omnibus and Children of Prophecy will also increase slightly, though probably not enough to remove the impact of the VAT change on my royalties – my current thought is to drop the price somewhere in the middle so that neither I or my readers is feeling the full pain.

This kind of change is the inevitable consequence of the “stop tax evasion” policies and programs we hear a lot about, and I’m generally in favor of companies paying their fair share. There will be some adjusting, but I think we’ll reach a new equilibrium.

That said, if you’re in the EU and feel like buying Christmas presents, my e-books can be considered on sale till January 1 now XD

-Glynn Stewart

Featured image via Faolan's Pen.

Starship’s Mage Episode 5, Omnibus, and GIVEAWAY

Starship’s Mage Episode 5 is complete and wandering it’s way through my beta readers as I type this.

I finished off the author’s note for the Omnibus this morning, which means that the Omnibus of all 5 Episodes is also complete!



I’m still waiting on covers to get the pre-orders up, but I can now formally announce that Starship’s Mage Episode 5 will be released on December 15, 2014. Alongside Episode 5, I will also be releasing the Starship’s Mage Omnibus.

The Omnibus is primarily targeted at new readers of Starship’s Mage, as it has no new content. However, it does have one quality that may draw the attention of those of you who’ve been following all along – the Starship’s Mage Omnibus will be available in a print-on-demand trade paperback.

And one lucky reader will get it for free.

On December 14, we will randomly select a member of the mailing list (…excluding myself, my wife, and the test email, for obvious reasons) to receive a paperback copy of the Starship’s Mage omnibus.

If you’re a member of the mailing list, you’re already entered!

If you’re not… well, now is a perfect time to sign up XD

-Glynn Stewart

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Children of Prophecy Give Away on Goodreads!

You can now win one of three signed (!) copies of Children of Prophecy by entering the giveaway on Goodreads!

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Goodreads Book Giveaway







Children of Prophecy



by Glynn Stewart

Giveaway ends December 15, 2014.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

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