Richard Gradner's Blog, page 10
October 23, 2014
October 22, 2014
For Sale!
Hello peeps! Return To Lemuria is now officially for sale. Please visit my site and follow the buy now links for 3 purchasing options. Megabooks is the company that’s printing the book locally (South Africa) if you want a paperback edition. Otherwise the book is available in the Kindle store (and via Amazon for paperback orders outside SA). Happy reading. Feel free to leave reviews and comments!
October 21, 2014
Dreams do become realities
The day has finally come. The first proof copy of my first novel, Return to Lemuria, has just been delivered!
The book will soon be available as a paperback and in digital. Links to follow soon.
October 11, 2014
Selfie
It’s been 35 days since my last post. Way too long I hear you saying but it’s not without good reason. The editing process is tedious. After a professional editor’s review of the first five chapters, I printed the entire novel and then manually went through it, making changes and corrections based on her feedback. I followed this up, by updating and then editing the original, digital manuscript another couple of times. Whew!
You soon come to realise that editing is a never-ending task. Each time you look at a paragraph, you see a way to change it, make it better. The time finally comes when you say to yourself: OK. This is it. This is the best that I can do. I know it will never be Shakespeare and there will always be room for improvement, but I’m happy to have completed my first 100,000 word novel.
Next steps? Self-Publishing via Amazon. It’s the fastest-growing form of publishing and it’s cost-effective. (See attached stats). I’m also using an on-demand digital printer to produce paperbacks.
Coming soon…
September 5, 2014
New Title
OK. So after mulling over dozens of ideas for a new title for my novel, a decision has been reached! With valuable input from Adele, the book title is…
Return To Lemuria
Intriguing, don’t you think?
September 3, 2014
Title
When I first started writing my novel in September last year, I registered www.thelemurianprophecy.com. It was only several months later that I decided to change the title of my novel to The Lemurian. Tonight, I thought I’d register thelemurian.com but found that it had been registered already by another author who had published a novel by the same name. The eery thing was, his main character’s name is Mya where mine is Mala. And the story, of course, is also based on the mythical continent of Lemuria. At first, I thought that he had stolen my idea (from part of the story that I had released an an author-sharing site) but then, upon closer inspection, I found that his novel was published in 2008. Here is his website: www.thelemurian.com. I just tried emailing him to share my story and to offer him a complimentary copy of my novel when published but my mail to him bounced…
I am still in the middle of editing (thank goodness) otherwise I may have published the book under this title! Oh well, now it’s back to deciding on a new title… any ideas?
August 12, 2014
Legal
OK. I’ve officially finished writing and editing THE LEMURIAN. Next steps are to research a whole lotta options: professional editing, self-publishing vs traditional agent route, legal issues such as copywriting etc. Meeting a self-published author tomorrow so that’s gonna be interesting… Busy arranging a merchant account so I can sell via my website. Checking out Amazon’s Createspace…Watch this S P A C E…
July 27, 2014
Goal
So when I first decided to write my novel (in September of last year), I researched the numbers. An average novel is between 80 and 120,000 words. So right then and there, I set myself a goal of 100,000 words.
In the early hours of this morning, I reached and surpassed that number. 11 months later and hundreds of hours of writing and I have completed my first book! Whoop! Whoop! There are still several weeks worth of editing, proofing on my side etc until I’m happy and then it’s the next step – publishing!
