Authors Electric

Createspace is dead... long live KDP paperbacks! I've previously used Createspace to publish indie paperback editions of my titles, but CS has now been retired by Amazon so this month I tackled my first ever KDP paperbacks with two short story collections  Mythic & Magical and Weird & Wonderful , which up to now have only been available as ebooks. Each collection contains seven of my short stories, so they both come in at around 125 pages, plenty long enough for a paperback edition. Being the same length also meant I could use the same KDP cover template for both titles, which made the design a bit easier. I'm calling this series 'Ampersand Tales' because the collections are additional to my novels, as well as being for older readers who might have enjoyed my children's books as young readers when they were first published. Some of these short stories helped inspire my novels, and each carries an introduction setting it in the context of my writin...

Recently Amazon informed me, and you, and everyone who self-publishes, that they were closing their paperback arm, CreateSpace and shifting everything to Kindle Desktop Publishing (KDP) their original self-publishing operation, which, when it began, published only e-books. We were given the option of waiting for Amazon to move all our paperback books over to KDP for us or moving them ourselves. I opted to move my books myself. Since they were going to be moved anyway, why wait? The move was easy enough, unlike most moves, and it's quite convenient to have the paperback and e-book files for each book side by side on the same site but I can't say that I'm entirely happy about this development. I know a lot of others aren't either. Of course, everyone always grumbles about change but is there more to it than that? I feel that, okay, the whole site is Amazon's toy and they allow us to play with it at very little cost and are -- I've found -- enormously helpfu...

My first ebook Around 2007 I began to take interest in ebooks and started reading the reports of booming ebook sales. Seeing sales were increasing month on month I decided to join this revolution. So in 2011 I published my first collection of short stories as an ebook. Based on my sales I followed this ebook with others. Then came the print on demand (POD) revolution, where authors like myself and the Author Electric team could publish a physical book without holding stock. So in 2014 I decided to combine my two Anansi ebooks and release as a POD book. At first sales were slow, then they started to match those of my ebooks. Now they outsell my ebooks. This made me wonder if it was just my ebooks or if ebook sales were down generally. So I did a little research. I discovered sales of ebooks have been falling for the last couple of years. Some of the large publishers have given figures in the region of a 12% fall from 2015 - 2016. I found several reasons being suggested for this...

Part of the reason I've held off publishing print-on-demand paperbacks for so long was fear of the cover design process. Yes, I could have purchased such covers ready made, but the affordable premades out there - while undeniably beautiful - never seemed quite right for my books, and custom covers for my 12 backlist titles would require an outlay the size of my pension pot with no promise of earning it back... not a gamble I am willing to take! If you are on a budget, this is how I managed to produce the following paperback cover for my book I am the Great Horse for no financial outlay : I am the Great Horse - 2016 paperback cover I am assuming some familiarity with Createspace , so if you have not used the site before then see Susan Price's post on Createspace publishing . * UPDATE * Createspace is now part of Amazon's KDP . However, the process is very similar... The first thing you need to do is decide on your 'trim size' for the book (i.e. size of y...

It's taken me rather a long time compared to other authors here, but I've finally tackled Createspace and created a print-on-demand paperback version of my Spellfall sequel,  Spell Spring ... yes, look, it's a REAL book! Reasons I am so late to the print-on-demand party: 1. Nearly all the books I've published indie so far have been reverted rights backlist titles, which have already sold x thousands of paperback copies while they were with their traditional publishers. I didn't see the point of producing a new print edition, while secondhand and 'new' copies of my backlist titles are still available on Amazon Marketplace and elsewhere for as little as 1p (plus postage). No way can a print-on-demand edition compete with that on price! 2. The cover looked tricky. Not only would I need to come up with a front cover design (a whole trick in itself), I'd need a spine of exactly the right width and a back cover with an ISBN barcode thingy  a...

Three Billy Goats Gruff - Susan and Andrew Price At last, Three Billy Goats Gruff is available on Amazon, both as paperback and ebook, after much cursing on the part of me and Andrew Price, the illustrator. With apologies for the length, here's what Andrew and I have learned about the process. How To...Olsen This blog is going to be about Createspace . If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. After going to the mat with Createspace, producing the Kindle is cake. But don't let me put you off, if you have a spare picture-book. Lash out a couple of quid on How To Format Your Picturebook For Createspace Without The Frustration and get stuck in. We found Olsen's book invaluable, but worked out a few wrinkles for ourselves too.  Graphics Programme You will need a graphics programme, such as PhotoShop (which you can now rent annually or monthly) or the free Open Source programme, Gimp . There are others, such as Canva and one recommended by our o...

It seems that Amazon.com just can't help screwing over indie writers. I don't mean to imply that Amazon has it in for indie writers. It would be self-defeating to set out to undermine such a significant source of revenue for one of your important subsidiaries. After all, without indie folks, Amazon's CreateSpace program, one of the primary venues for self-publishers and many smaller independent presses, would essentially be dead in the water. No, the problem lies in Amazon's perhaps overzealous pursuit of quality control. More particularly, trying to ensure that its merchandise is not offensive, its book reviews are relatively unbiased, and royalties are obtained honestly. Maybe Amazon should consider this as a motto for its quality control. This is not a new thing, and we here at Authors Electric have certainly discussed Amazon's problematic relationship with independent authors ( and with traditional writers, too ) before. However, I'd like to...