Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

It may be too late, but since I was mostly offline over the Thanksgiving weekend, I'll add my two cents.

As a general rule, I wouldn't "react" to reviews, although in some cases I might thank reviewers for their input. If I happen to know the reviewers sufficiently I might interact with them, but not otherwise.

There was one case where I commented on a so-so review, but that was a special case. The reviewer had posted a message to me saying he hoped I wasn't too disappointed. I told him I wasn't, and that in hindsight I actually agreed with some of his comments. I didn't take issue with those comments with which I disagreed, however.

Alex wrote: "Hi Dale! Are you still doing this, because I have a book out which is REALLY slow moving and I'm wondering if the problem is the blurb. Can you do anything with this?

Hi Alex! Yes, I'm still willing to do this, but Faith beat me to it and did a better job of it than I could have. One thing, though: I found the second paragraph a bit hard to read. It may be because I've spent the day traveling and the evening surrounded by grandchildren with far more energy than myself. However, I think that paragraph might need a bit of tweaking. Maybe something like:

"As if conventional war wasn't enough, Ben now confronts a few other minor concerns. Like, will his mate Geoff return from Elfland astride a fire-breathing dragon? And can mere firepower hope to defeat a hoard of pointy eared invaders? Our hero knows of only one group eccentric and unemployed enough to answer the call: Chris Gatrell and his Paranormal Defence Agency."

Alex wrote: "I like the Fibonacci Murders, but that could just because I like maths (not that I can recall exactly what the Fibonacci sequence is; 1,1,2,3,5,8 etc I think) and I know there's an Arnie movie call..."

Yep, that's it. Each number after the first two is the sum of the preceding two. (The sequence can be started as 0, 1, ... or as 1, 1, ... In the book I use 0 as the first number.)

Happy whatever to whoever!

Amy wrote: "It's not easy..."

Oddly, I don't have too much trouble with titles. Although, if I were releasing "The Fibonacci Murders" today, I might have called it "Collateral Damage." That option didn't occur to me until just a couple of months ago. I'm not sure which is better; they both have their points.

I'm not in it this week, so it's okay to vote for Ted this time. ;-)

The next installment in my blog posts on Howard County, MD (setting for my mystery novels) is available: Clarksville, Maryland: A Wealthy Crossroads.

Denise,

No problem, we all have our preferences and strengths/weaknesses. I'd probably be a lousy judge of romance novels, myself...

Alex wrote: "I had another idea earlier, Lesser of Two Evils. ."

Or maybe turn it around: "The Greater of Two Evils."

Thanks, Denise. We appreciate it.

Actually, I just today finished what I hope will be my last round of major revisions on my SF/humor novel Space Operatic. If you have time to do a beta read yourself, maybe we could do a swap? If not, or if the genre doesn't suit you, that's okay. I'm still willing to help out with yours.

Hmm . . . just noticed I got the old saying turned around. Must need more sleep. :-P

Two author interviews for you. First, I interviewed Laura Kroeber (aka Jill Kearney) about her wonderful short story collection The Dog Thief and Other Stories. You can read my review of her book and my interview with her at https://www.daleelehman.com/2017/11/i....

Second, I was interviewed by S. T. Sanchez (one of our group members here). I really like how she took my emailed answers and put them into a more conversational setting. See http://authorstsanchez.blogspot.com/2....

Thanks!

I might be able to help with this, depending on how my wife is doing by then. If you can line up other readers go with them, but if not feel free to send it to me.

It's always a bit hard coming up with a title based just on a synopsis. Are there any themes in the book? Any clever turns of phrase that might relate to a theme or the big questions posed by the crime?

That said, based solely on what you've provided so far, some possibilities might be:

"Burned" (simple and probably used a lot before, but hey, it's easy to remember and carries multiple meanings)

"Out of the Fire" (which is both descriptive and can invoke the old saying, "Out of the fire and into the frying pan," which might describe the situation faced by the detective(s), if the guilty party can work out a plea agreement to escape punishment.

I started of thinking about things falling and knocking over other things, which led to those falling domino designs, which led to ideas like:

"Domino Theory" (probably too mundane)
"Chain Reaction" (likewise)
"Ripple Effect" (hmm)
"Cascade" (kinda plain, but maybe something based on it?)

I tend to like short, punchy titles, but you might be able to spin something longer and more original off of one of these.

Thank you!

Congratulations!

My book info looks good. Thanks!

Other people can talk about some of these online services. I do things a bit differently. My wife and I run a small publishing house. Most of the books we publish are written by other authors. We publish something like 3 - 5 books a year, most of them in both print and ebook formats. We use Adobe InDesign to set up print books, then I copy those files and reformat them for ebook purposes. InDesign exports to epub.

Once I have the epub book looking good, I use a free program from Amazon called Kindle Previewer to convert from epub to mobi. This also does some validations and allows you to view your book as it will appear on different Kindle devices.

At this point I have the book in both epub and Kindle format. I can use the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) site to upload the mobi file and put the book on sale on Amazon. I can use Barnes & Noble's Nook site to upload the epub file and put it on sale on B&N. I also put the print book and both ebooks on sale on my own company website. It would probably be possible to also put the epub file on sale on Smashwords, etc., but I've never looked into that.

We use a local printer to print books. We typically do short print runs of 200 or less, unless we think there will be a larger demand for a title. We don't do print on demand. This allows us to sell print books through B&N (although we don't sell many there). We do not sell print books through Amazon right now because their terms are terrible. With B&N, we get to set our discount at 40% and tell them that because they're big and we're small, they pay for shipping. Amazon wants a non-negotiable 55% discount, requires us to pay for all shipping (including on returns), and charges an annual fee on top of it all. It would be a loosing proposition unless I could sell a reasonable number of copies through them.

I hope this helps.

Thank you both!

Voting is open at https://www.indiesunlimited.com/2017/.... Ted's not in it this week, so if you wouldn't mind, pick me. Thanks!