Kim Culbertson's Blog - Posts Tagged "ebook"
Max McTrue Flash Fiction Contest!
Calling all writers!
On February 3rd, I'm joining Figment for a whirlwind weekend of Flash Fiction to celebrate my new ebook, The Liberation of Max McTrue!
Enter the Max McTrue Flash Fiction Contest!
There will be a Total of three prizes: Each winner gets a free download of The Liberation of Max McTrue as well as a custom-made “beautiful things” journal. The first place winner will also receive a 30 minute manuscript from me.
All you have to do is write a super short story under 500 words that follows one of the four prompts below. Submit your entry between 11:00am on February 3rd, 2012 and 11:59pm on February 5th, 2012. The Figment editorial staff will choose the top ten entries as finalists, and I will choose the winners from those finalists.
The Prompts:
(1) Write a story set against the backdrop of a scavenger hunt.
(2) Write a story confined to the periods of a school day. The character can be in school or out of school.
(3) Write a story in which a character is deeply afraid of something.
(4) Come up with a totally ordinary character and then set him/her up to have an extraordinary day.
How to enter:
1. Go to www.figment.com and sign up.
2. Once you have received your confirmation email, go to your Figment profile page, click “My Writing,” and “Create Something New.”
3. Before you start writing, read the full rules on the Max McTrue contest page, which you’ll be able to find under the “Contest” tab on Figment on February 3rd, 2012.
4. Write an original story, under 500 words, that follows one of the four prompts above.
5. Go to the “Details” tab of your story, and put maxmctrue in the “Tags” section.
6. Wait the 2 hours it sometimes takes to see your story appear on the contest page.
On February 3rd, I'm joining Figment for a whirlwind weekend of Flash Fiction to celebrate my new ebook, The Liberation of Max McTrue!
Enter the Max McTrue Flash Fiction Contest!
There will be a Total of three prizes: Each winner gets a free download of The Liberation of Max McTrue as well as a custom-made “beautiful things” journal. The first place winner will also receive a 30 minute manuscript from me.
All you have to do is write a super short story under 500 words that follows one of the four prompts below. Submit your entry between 11:00am on February 3rd, 2012 and 11:59pm on February 5th, 2012. The Figment editorial staff will choose the top ten entries as finalists, and I will choose the winners from those finalists.
The Prompts:
(1) Write a story set against the backdrop of a scavenger hunt.
(2) Write a story confined to the periods of a school day. The character can be in school or out of school.
(3) Write a story in which a character is deeply afraid of something.
(4) Come up with a totally ordinary character and then set him/her up to have an extraordinary day.
How to enter:
1. Go to www.figment.com and sign up.
2. Once you have received your confirmation email, go to your Figment profile page, click “My Writing,” and “Create Something New.”
3. Before you start writing, read the full rules on the Max McTrue contest page, which you’ll be able to find under the “Contest” tab on Figment on February 3rd, 2012.
4. Write an original story, under 500 words, that follows one of the four prompts above.
5. Go to the “Details” tab of your story, and put maxmctrue in the “Tags” section.
6. Wait the 2 hours it sometimes takes to see your story appear on the contest page.
A Quick Chat with Tammara Webber, YA eBook author
I’m just now dipping my toe into the expanding waters of the eBook world with my novella THE LIBERATION OF MAX MCTRUE. It’s given me a wonderful opportunity to showcase a short piece that might have struggled to find a traditional home; it’s no secret the midlist is ebbing in traditional publishing. And while e-publishing gave me this opportunity for MAX, it also brought some questions about what team I was playing for. “Wait a minute,” a reader wrote me, “are you indie now? What happened?”
What happened was I had a choice. Turns out, I’m not alone. Plenty of authors are choosing to put their books out as eBooks and many are thriving.
This month I wanted to highlight one such author, Tammara Webber, who writes a series of YA contemporaries. I read her first, BETWEEN THE LINES, and found it fun, sharply-written, and engaging. Tammara’s had great success with her books so I contacted her and asked her how she came to find herself in the eBook world. I think her story is one of great optimism – a sign that authors can thrive in this changing market.
She was humble, of course, and suggested she “hit the ebook market at a very good time” when it wasn’t quite as “flooded” and this let her build a readership, build relationships with bloggers, find her footing early on. The cool thing about her story is that she didn’t have a long list of rejections from agents. This eBook move wasn’t done in despair. It was a choice. And her books have hit a sweet spot in a waning contemporary market.
Tammara would blush at this, but I think her success has mostly to do with Tammara. Yes, she had a good story to tell, but she also did her homework and made sure the manuscript was polished and professional. “I didn't write in a vacuum. I had critique partners (other writers/authors for whom I in turn critiqued manuscripts), and beta readers.” And she made sure her covers were bright and engaging. This, I think, is the key to indie publishing: going about it with grace and professionalism as part of the writing community at large – not a secondary part, an important part. Tammara, for me, represents the very best of an online writing presence: thoughtful, hardworking, kind. When two of my Goodreads covers suddenly vanished, she emailed me to let me know so I could fix them. Yeah, she’s that nice. She participates in the writing community in a helpful and supportive way. She writes without some sort of chip on her shoulder. It’s refreshing.
Hers is the community I want to be a part of as a writer, the community that knows the value of having a mix of good, polished work out there. I don’t know if I’ll write another eBook. In my typical Gemini way, I don’t want to have to choose a team – traditional or indie. I just think it’s nice to have options. The irony isn’t lost on me that Max McTrue, the MC of my novella, finds out that simply making a choice is greatly liberating, another example of art imitating life. Mostly, though, this eBook choice for MAX gives me the opportunity to meet cool writers like Tammara who have shown me the kind of wide choices authors currently have. And that feels like a success story to me.
From my February Point of View Newsletter:
http://www.kimculbertson.com/newslett...
What happened was I had a choice. Turns out, I’m not alone. Plenty of authors are choosing to put their books out as eBooks and many are thriving.
This month I wanted to highlight one such author, Tammara Webber, who writes a series of YA contemporaries. I read her first, BETWEEN THE LINES, and found it fun, sharply-written, and engaging. Tammara’s had great success with her books so I contacted her and asked her how she came to find herself in the eBook world. I think her story is one of great optimism – a sign that authors can thrive in this changing market.
She was humble, of course, and suggested she “hit the ebook market at a very good time” when it wasn’t quite as “flooded” and this let her build a readership, build relationships with bloggers, find her footing early on. The cool thing about her story is that she didn’t have a long list of rejections from agents. This eBook move wasn’t done in despair. It was a choice. And her books have hit a sweet spot in a waning contemporary market.
Tammara would blush at this, but I think her success has mostly to do with Tammara. Yes, she had a good story to tell, but she also did her homework and made sure the manuscript was polished and professional. “I didn't write in a vacuum. I had critique partners (other writers/authors for whom I in turn critiqued manuscripts), and beta readers.” And she made sure her covers were bright and engaging. This, I think, is the key to indie publishing: going about it with grace and professionalism as part of the writing community at large – not a secondary part, an important part. Tammara, for me, represents the very best of an online writing presence: thoughtful, hardworking, kind. When two of my Goodreads covers suddenly vanished, she emailed me to let me know so I could fix them. Yeah, she’s that nice. She participates in the writing community in a helpful and supportive way. She writes without some sort of chip on her shoulder. It’s refreshing.
Hers is the community I want to be a part of as a writer, the community that knows the value of having a mix of good, polished work out there. I don’t know if I’ll write another eBook. In my typical Gemini way, I don’t want to have to choose a team – traditional or indie. I just think it’s nice to have options. The irony isn’t lost on me that Max McTrue, the MC of my novella, finds out that simply making a choice is greatly liberating, another example of art imitating life. Mostly, though, this eBook choice for MAX gives me the opportunity to meet cool writers like Tammara who have shown me the kind of wide choices authors currently have. And that feels like a success story to me.
From my February Point of View Newsletter:
http://www.kimculbertson.com/newslett...
