Emerald City Comicon 2012

My wife and I went to the Emerald City Comicon this past weekend in Seattle. I commissioned a few sketches of Bozabrozy, from The Elemental Odyssey, by some cool artists. We saw a lot of nerds (like me) and quite a few costumes. The 501st were there, of course, and a trooper arrested Shari, as you can see below.

We also got autographs from a few celebrities (Wil Wheaton, Christopher Judge, Jason Momoa, James & Oliver Phelps, and Eddie McClintock), who were all most kind and gracious. Eddie McClintock from Warehouse 13 was totally into the event, wooting at other celebs' entrances and working to make sure everyone had a good time. He did a short Farnsworth message for someone's Farnsworth emulator on their smartphone. How cool is that? And he designed his own W13 tshirt!

Here are some images:

Bozabrozy - a quick sketch by Tony Dela Cruz of The Sketch Crew. Tony is a local Seattle comic book artist. He created this sketch of Bozabrozy in less than an hour. Awesome work!

Here's Tony Dela Cruz himself.

A bit more aggressive Bozabrozy by DJ Welch. DJ does some really cool work!

A quick sketch by Travis Hanson that he did literally in 1 minute. And for free! Travis writes a cool webcomic called The Bean, about a kid who finds a sick sword that he seeks to cure. I really like the artwork and he's won some awards for it. You should check it out (sample below:)

Shari and I with Jason Momoa (Conan, Ronon Dex from Stargate Atlantis) and Christopher Judge (Teal'c from Stargate SG1).

Shari is apprehended by a trooper.

The Empire is recruiting from daycare, apparently.

A mob of Mandalorians.

John Carter: great movie!

My wife and I saw John Carter at the Crossroads theater on Friday. We both thought it was an excellent movie. The special effects were great, action was great, right amount of humor. We'd love to see a sequel.

And, thankfully, there is no shaky cam, rapid zoom, or lens flare. Plus, the fight sequences are not chopped into quarter-second shots.

Unfortunately, John Carter isn't doing too well at the box office. We can't figure out why. There's no reason all the Star Wars fans wouldn't like this movie.

Anyway, if you like aliens, special effects, extraterrestrial vistas and cities, action, and cool sky ships, you should go see this movie!

NOOK formatting guide now available!!

If you liked my Kindle formatting book, you should check out my new Nook formatting book:

Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours

BUY IT NOW!

73 chapters and 4 appendices! Check out the full table of contents below.

Yep, it takes a lot longer than formatting for Kindle, and is much more annoying. But if you've got the guts you can do it yourself and save $75-$150 that you might otherwise spend on professional formatting.

Plus, the intermediate NovelCleanup.docx file that you create in this guide is compatible with Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour 2012 Edition. So, you can do a bunch of work once that works for each platform. Of course, there is more work that you must do for each.

The guidebook includes a link to a zip file that contains a bunch of template files for the following ePUB files:

·         mimetype

·         \META-INF\container.xml

·         \OEBPS\Abouttheauthor.html

·         \OEBPS\Acknowledgments.html

·         \OEBPS\Books.html

·         \OEBPS\ChapterTemplate.html

·         \OEBPS\content.opf

·         \OEBPS\CoverPage.html

·         \OEBPS\DedicationPage.html

·         \OEBPS\stylesheet.css

·         \OEBPS\TableofContents.html

·         \OEBPS\TitlePage.html

·         \OEBPS\toc.ncx

With the debut of this new guide, I've also created a forum where you can ask questions about each of my formatting books: http://www.derekjcanyon.com/phpBB3/index.php

Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours is currently available on Kindle. I'll be publishing it for Nook within a couple weeks.

One annoying thing about the conversion tools for Nook is that they often mess up the page breaks. My formatting book fixes that problem. Each one of your chapters will start on a fresh new page with nice white space above the title.

If you use this guide, your novel will be formatted for Nook like my novels, The Elemental Odyssey and Where Magic Reigns.

Here's what your pages will look like:

Here's the table of contents:

Chapter 1: Do not buy this book if...

Chapter 2: Why you should buy this book
Chapter 3: Introduction
Chapter 4: Isn’t this book the same as Derek’s other formatting book?
Chapter 5: Why not just sell both sets of instructions in one guidebook?
Chapter 6: Contacting Derek
Chapter 7: What your book will look like
Chapter 8: How long will this really take?
Chapter 9: Tools and files you’ll need
Chapter 10: What else you’ll need – patience!
Chapter 11: Instructions and conventions
Chapter 12: Overview of the entire process
Chapter 13: Show file extensions in Windows Explorer
Chapter 14: Overview of the ePUB file structure
Chapter 15: Download the template files to your computer
Chapter 16: Save your novel file to the working folder
Chapter 17: Save your cover image
Chapter 18: Overview of the OPF file
Chapter 19: Update the <metadata> section of the OPF file
Chapter 20: Update the ID line of the <metadata> section of the OPF file
Chapter 21: Update the <manifest> section of the OPF file
Chapter 22: Optional: Add more images to the OPF file manifest section
Chapter 23: Update the <spine> section of the OPF file
Chapter 24: Done editing the OPF file
Chapter 25: Overview of the NCX file
Chapter 26: Update the <head> section of the NCX file
Chapter 27: Update the title and author sections of the NCX file
Chapter 28: Overview of the <navMap> section of the NCX file
Chapter 29: Delete extra chapters from the <navMap> section of the NCX file
Chapter 30: Add extra chapters to the <navMap> section of the NCX file
Chapter 31: Fix the end matter sections in the <navPoint> sections of the NCX file
Chapter 32: Edit chapter titles in the <navMap> section of the NCX file
Chapter 33: Done editing the NCX file
Chapter 34: Take a break!
Chapter 35: Overview of updating the front matter files
Chapter 36: Edit the cover page
Chapter 37: Edit the title page
Chapter 38: Edit the dedication page
Chapter 39: Edit the table of contents page
Chapter 40: Overview of cleaning up your Word document
Chapter 41: Delete the front matter from your Word document
Chapter 42: Remove double spaces from your Word document
Chapter 43: Remove blank lines from your Word document
Chapter 44: Clean up italics leaking between paragraphs
Chapter 45: Clean up bold text leaking between paragraphs
Chapter 46: Clean up underlined text leaking between paragraphs
Chapter 47: Overview of replacing Word formatting with code tags
Chapter 48: Replace the & (ampersand) character with XML code
Chapter 49: Replace greater than and less than characters with code in your Word document
Chapter 50: Add paragraph tags to your Word document
Chapter 51: Fix problems with bulleted lists
Chapter 52: Fix problems with numbered lists
Chapter 53: Tell Word to use straight quotes instead of curly quotes
Chapter 54: Fix lonely paragraph close tags in your Word document
Chapter 55: Delete extra paragraph tags from your Word document
Chapter 56: Add code for centered paragraphs in your Word document
Chapter 57: Optional: Add carriage returns
Chapter 58: Add tags for all the italic text in your Word document
Chapter 59: Add tags for all the bold text in your Word document
Chapter 60: Add tags for all the underlined text in your Word document
Chapter 61: Replace other special characters with code
Chapter 62: Optional: Add more images to your novel
Chapter 63: Tell Word to go back to using curly quotes
Chapter 64: Done editing the Word doc
Chapter 65: Copy chapters from Word document into HTML files
Chapter 66: Edit Acknowledgments page
Chapter 67: Edit the About the Author page
Chapter 68: Create the Books By page
Chapter 69: Done formatting your ebook!
Chapter 70: Compress your source files into an ePUB file
Chapter 71: Validate your EPUB file
Chapter 72: Fix validation errors
Chapter 73: Review your novel in PubIt’s review window and Publish!
Appendix A: Efficiency shortcuts in Windows
Appendix B: Efficiency shortcuts in Word
Appendix C: Troubleshooting
Appendix D: Nook formatting resources on the web

So, don't wait! Go see what all the excitement is about! Buy Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours now and get your novel up on Barnes and Noble!

2012 edition of Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour now available!

I have written a new edition of my do-it-yourself guide Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour. You can buy it for just $2.99.

It includes the following improvements from the previous version:

• Restructured chapters are in bite-sized chunks, making it easier for you to stop when you need to.

• Compatible with my upcoming guide, Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours. You can clean up and tag your novel in Word, then use that Word file in both the Kindle process and the Nook process. It will save you some time this way if you want to publish on both devices.

• Italics, bold, and underlined text support. Instructions on how to do a global find and replace to add appropriate code to all italics, bold, or underlined text in your novel. It's now easy to convert such text to the code required by Kindle!

• Template code for cover page, title page, table of contents, dedication page, chapter title pages, acknowledgments page, about the author page, and books by the author page.

• Cover image and other images. Instructions on how to add the cover image to your novel. And also how to add other images to the rest of your novel.
• Link to dedicated forums for all the formatting books! Formatting Forums!

Here's what the formatting of your enovel will look like after using this guidebook:

Full table of contents of the 2012 edition:

Chapter 1: Do not buy this book if...

Chapter 2: Why you should buy this book

Chapter 3: Introduction

Chapter 4: Why are there other editions of this guide?

Chapter 5: Isn’t this book the same as Derek’s other formatting book?

Chapter 6: Why not just sell both sets of instructions in one guidebook?

Chapter 7: Contacting Derek

Chapter 8: What your book will look like

Chapter 9: How long will this really take?

Chapter 10: Tools and files you’ll need

Chapter 11: What else you’ll need – patience!

Chapter 12: Instructions and conventions

Chapter 13: Overview of the entire process

Chapter 14: Show file extensions in Windows Explorer

Chapter 15: Download the template HTML file

Chapter 16: Save your novel files to the working folder

Chapter 17: Replace the placeholder text in the template

Chapter 18: Include a dedication page (or not)

Chapter 19: Include a clickable table of contents (or not)

Chapter 20: Overview of cleaning up your Word document

Chapter 21: Delete the front matter from your Word document

Chapter 22: Remove double spaces from your Word document

Chapter 23: Remove blank lines from your Word document

Chapter 24: Clean up italics leaking between paragraphs

Chapter 25: Clean up bold text leaking between paragraphs

Chapter 26: Clean up underlined text leaking between paragraphs

Chapter 27: Overview of replacing Word formatting with code tags

Chapter 28: Replace the & (ampersand) character with XML code

Chapter 29: Replace greater than and less than characters with code in your Word document

Chapter 30: Add paragraph tags to your Word document

Chapter 31: Fix problems with bulleted lists

Chapter 32: Fix problems with numbered lists

Chapter 33: Tell Word to use straight quotes instead of curly quotes

Chapter 34: Fix lonely paragraph close tags in your Word document

Chapter 35: Delete extra paragraph tags from your Word document

Chapter 36: Add code for centered paragraphs

Chapter 37: Optional: Add carriage returns

Chapter 38: Add tags for all the italic text

Chapter 39: Add tags for all the bold text

Chapter 40: Add tags for all the underlined text

Chapter 41: Replace other special characters with code

Chapter 42: Optional: Add more images to your novel

Chapter 43: Tell Word to go back to using curly quotes

Chapter 44: Done editing the Word doc

Chapter 45: Copy chapters from Word document into the HTML file

Chapter 46: Replace chapter titles with formatted chapter titles

Chapter 47: Paste your acknowledgements into the HTML file

Chapter 48: Paste the about the author section into the HTML file

Chapter 49: Edit the Books By This Author page

Chapter 50: Optional: Add page breaks

Chapter 51: Done formatting your ebook!

Chapter 52: Compress your book files into a zip format for upload to Kindle KDP

Appendix A: Efficiency shortcuts in Windows

Appendix B: Efficiency shortcuts in Word

Appendix C: Troubleshooting

Appendix D: Kindle formatting resources

Before buying the new guidebook, you might want to consider the following reasons NOT to buy it:

·         Do not buy this book if you are happy with the automated conversion provide by the Kindle Direct Publishing site. If you like the results you get from the conversion tools, you don’t need this book. I found that the conversion tools resulted in some strange formatting behavior with page breaks and line breaks, among other things, which is why I prefer to use the method explained in this book.

·         Do not buy this book if you already own Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour 2011 Edition. If your copy of the book does not indicate an edition, then you have the 2011 edition. The 2011 edition still works, but the 2012 edition has instructions on a few more things, and is compatible with my other book Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours. So, if you're happy with the 2011 edition and don't want to worry about Nook, then don't buy this book. If you want to put your book on both Kindle and Nook, then you should get this book and the Nook book.

·         Do not buy this book if you want a comprehensive explanation of Kindle formatting. This book is a precise, non-comprehensive step-by-step guide to format your ebook for Nook in ONE way. This book does not tell you every detail of Kindle formatting, nor does it explain why things are done. This is not a classroom textbook. This is a rigid method for formatting your ebook in ONE way. If you pay attention and know a bit about coding, you could figure out additional options, but that is not the purpose of this book. The purpose of this book is to get your ebook formatted as quickly as possible with very few decisions to make on your part.

·         Do not buy this book if you don’t want your future ebook to be formatted like my novel The Elemental Odyssey. I used these instructions to format that novel. So, go download a free sample from Amazon and see if you like the page, paragraph, and text formatting enough to have your book look the same. If you don’t, then don’t buy this book.

·         Do not buy this book if your novel has tables or lots of lists.  This book explains how to format novels with basic text (including normal, italics, bold, and underlined). This guide also tells you how to format numbered and bulleted lists, but it is a laborious process, so if you have lots of lists it’s probably not a good idea to use this guide. This guide does not include instructions on how to format tables.

·         Do not buy this book if you only use Mac. This book does not explain how to do anything on the Apple Mac or any other operating system besides Windows. If you only have a Mac, do not buy this book. I’m a PC user, and so this book does not support Mac. If you don’t feel comfortable self-converting these instructions from PC to Mac, do not buy this book.

·         Do not buy this book if you are not comfortable using Microsoft Word. These instructions assume you are using Word. If you aren’t, you’ll need to know how to do the same things in your word processor.

·         Do not buy this book if you are not comfortable renaming, copying, and moving files in Windows Explorer.

·         Do not buy this book if you are not comfortable doing Find and Replace in a text editor (such as Notepad or Microsoft Expression).

·         Do not buy this book if you can’t follow step-by-step instructions, in order.

·         Do not buy this book if you are easily frustrated by complicated, boring work. Manually formatting your book is a chore. If you put a quotation mark in the wrong place, it could mess things up. If you are easily frustrated by computers, coding, debugging, or boring repetitive formatting tasks, do not buy this book. Instead, you should use the conversion tools or hire a professional to do the work.

·         Do not buy this book if you only want to upload your book to your own personal Kindle. This book tells you how to publish your book to Kindle for other people to buy from the Amazon website. If you just want to upload your book to your own Kindle, you don’t need this book. Check your Kindle user’s guide to learn what is possible.

Does the old edition still work?

Yes, the 2011 edition of the guide still works. So, if you like it, you don't need to buy the new edition. But, you get a lot of new options in the new edition, so you might like it better.

If your copy of the guide doesn't indicate what edition it is, then it is the 2011 edition.

PS: Format Your eBook for Nook in Four Hours will hopefully be published within a few weeks. It will be available at an introductory price of $6.99, because it was so difficult to write. ;)

Guest post: Successful author says be prepared for change

Here’s another guest post from another author, Ty Johnson. He’s a step up from the likes of aspiring authors like me: he’s actually earning enough to work full-time as a novelist! Congrats, Ty! I’m guessing all my readers are looking forward to that day. I know I am.

Fantasy author Ty Johnston is touring the blogosphere this month to promote his new e-book novel, DemonChains. His novels include City of Rogues, Bayne’s Climb and Ghosts of the Asylum, all of which are available for the Kindle, the Nook and online at Smashwords. To learn more about Ty and his writing, follow him at his blog tyjohnston.blogspot.com.

I’ve been writing fiction for more than two decades and I’ve been an indie writer for going on three years, which is a longer time than some. None of that makes me an expert or a guru, nor does it mean I’m rich and famous. You won’t see my name listed among the stars of indie publishing. But this is how I make my living nowadays, which makes the wife happy because the bills are paid and I get to stay home instead of going to an office somewhere.

Still, I’ve been around long enough and feel I’m experienced enough, that I can offer some little advice to fellow indie authors.

One piece of advice I feel today’s fiction writers need to hear is, “Always stay on your toes.”

What does that mean? That writers need to be prepared for change.

There has long been a tradition that fiction writers can write and that that’s all they have to do. That tradition is a lie. Even before digital publishing, writers had lots of work besides simply writing. There were editing and formatting, then query letters to be written, contracts to be considered, literary agents and publishers and editors and sometimes intellectual property attorneys who needed attention. There were conventions to attend, anthologies to edit for editor pals, communications with fans, slush to read for a friend’s magazine. It could go on and on. And again, all that was before digital publishing came along.

Today, indie writers are just as busy as traditionally-published writers, maybe even more so. I won’t go into the lengthy laundry list of things that can legitimately take up an indie author’s time, but let’s just say there is a lot to do other than writing.

Which brings me back to my point: Writers need to be prepared for anything. Part of this means writers can’t stick their head in the sand and ignore the rest of the world, especially the publishing world.

Everything is in flux in this business, especially in this day and age.

Writers who think they are immune are fooling themselves. Digital technology combined with today’s economy are bringing about daily changes in book publishing, both in the traditional business and for indie publishers.

An independent who ignores those changes will soon find him- or herself not only behind the times, but backpedaling to retain their readers, to be published, to be noticed.

I’ve been vague so far, but what kind of changes am I talking about?

Well, for instance, there’s the new KDP Select program that allows Amazon Kindle authors to give away their e-books for free up to five days during a three-month period. To some this might not seem like that big a deal, but KDP Select is already bringing about change in the publishing industry. If nothing else, all those free e-books have brought some upheaval to the Amazon rankings, not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Another thing KDP Select has done is it has caused many authors to pull their books from other digital publishing sites because Amazon demands exclusivity for the months an e-book is enrolled in the program. That means thousands upon thousands of e-books are temporarily not available for e-reading devices other than the Kindle. There are both good and bad arguments for all this, and here I’m not voicing an opinion, but let it be said this is the kind of change I’m talking about.

KDP Select is just one example, and the most noticeable recently, of developments that can affect indie authors. Technology, legislation, the market, all can have an effect. If we don’t keep up, we risk losing out. We could lose sales, readers, fans ... and possibly a career.

I don’t mean to scare anyone. I don’t mean to sound all doom and gloom. But indie authors need to pay attention nowadays. We are not just artists, but also entrepreneurs. We need to watch our world as it spins, or it will spin away from us.

Derek: Thanks a lot, Ty! And good luck with the latest book!

Is 99 cents the best price for your ebook?

Over the past year I’ve been doing some experiments with pricing for my ebooks. I’ve collected about 15 months of data on it and I thought I’d share it with you.


I have priced my cyberpunk novel, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance at 99 cents, $2.99, and $3.99 (that's about 35 cents, $2.00, and $2.70 in royalties, respectively). The chart below shows the daily royalties at each price since the 11/23/2010 publish date.

As you can see there is some significant fluctuation.


I priced the book out of the gate at $2.99 (about a $2.00 royalty), and it slowly built up sales to 9 copies a day, or $18.


After a few weeks of that peak, I decided to experiment with dropping the price and see if I could improve my Amazon sales rank. I dropped the price to 99 cents in late February 2011. You can see the significant drop off in royalties.


However, the lower price did result in a stead and steep increase in number of units sold. On April 25, I hit a record daily sales of 126 units, earning $44. At this point, Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance hit #333 in the Amazon Best Sellers rankings, and I was in the top #10 of a couple genre lists.


I decided it was time to raise the price and see if I could benefit from that good rank. I raised the price back to $2.99 and you can see the stratospheric increase in royalties on May 27 to $140! Excellent! My plan was working.


The increased sales continued through May (I earned $2,289 for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance in May).

However, the Amazon Sales genre rankings worsened, and the book dropped out of the top 20 lists. I decided to lower my price again to try to stay in the genre top 20 lists.


I dropped the price back down to 99 cents on June 9. You can see the deep decrease in royalties.


Unfortunately, my plan did not work. The novel continued to decline in sales. I was at a loss to explain this. Was it a Summer slump, altered Amazon ranking algorithms, the Amazon $2.99 sales? Whatever the cause, my sales never recovered.


I kept the 99 cent price for the rest of 2011, hoping to see a resurgence. But that was to no avail. Even Christmas sales didn’t help much.


So, I decided to raise the price up to $3.99 in January 2012. As you can see in the chart, royalties jumped up quite a bit. For the 33 days before the price increase, I made an average of $2.12 per day. For the 33 days after the price increase, I've made an average of $6.07 per day.



So, what’s the best price?



I think 99 cents might sometimes be a good price to help you improve your sales rank so that when you subsequently increase your price you can sell more units.



But I don’t think 99 cents is always the best price. You have to play around with it. If it’s helping your rankings, it might be a good idea. But if not, raise that price!


You should also go over to Lindsay Buroker's blog and read her recent post on this exact same issue: Ebook pricing: Why 99 cents might be a mistake for you.

January 2012 sales report

January was my 16th month selling ebooks.

I sold 484 copies of 8 different titles. Without counting the freebies, my sales volume decreased by about 17% from December.

On the other hand, my royalties increased by 28% from $721 to $925. This is mostly due to a 168% royalty increase for Dead Dwarves Don’t Dance. I raised the price from 99 cents to $3.99 and I’m making a lot more money. I’ll talk about that later this week.

Average sales per day decreased from 18.3 (not counting freebies) to 15.6. Average daily royalties went from $23 to $30.

  

I also have some data on the KDP Select program. I put Format Your eBook for Kindle in One Hour in the program and I’ll report on it later.