Authors Electric

So you've written an ebook? What next? A few people ask me this. I always reply saying you don't write an ebook. You write a book. There are several types of media you can distribute it on - one of which is an ebook. But don't ignore print, audio etc - they all have their merits. But let's assume you've written the best book you can. You've put it away to gestate for a while, then edited it several times (and preferably at least once professionally). Now you need to clothe your baby with a cover. Don't assume it's easy to slap some text on a picture and upload it. You've sweated blood and tears in delivering this baby and it deserves the best clothing you can give it. Design skills are every bit as valuable and respected as writing skills, and just because you can write a book does not mean you can design its cover. Your cover is your biggest marketing tool; it's the first thing a reader will see. Make it work for you. Look at other cov...

One of the first things you learn when you self-publish a book is that writing a story and designing a cover for that story are completely different skills. Since republishing my backlist as ebooks, I have certainly felt much more sympathy for my publishers! Because the truth is, getting the right cover on a book is HARD, and yet it's one of the most important elements in selling that book to its readership. So I thought it might be interesting to chart the cover history of my book SPELLFALL, for which I am trying to find a new cover for the ebook edition… at the end of this post I’ll show you some of the premade covers I'm thinking might work, and since the author is not always the right person to judge I hope you’ll help me decide! Spellfall is an interesting book to cover, since it contains a lot of different elements. It’s urban fantasy and takes place at Halloween with covens of Casters (i.e. witches and wizards) living among us. But there’s also a parallel world calle...

          Earlier this year, we, the Authors Electric, produced a Cooking the Books by Authors Electric collection of pieces called 'Cooking the Books.' Tasty treats and unusual eats from Authors Electric blogging collective!...Here’s a chance to cook from our books with e-readable recipes, or just get the not-so-skinny on what keeps authors stoked while they scribble: some of it yummy, some of it funny. An ebook to binge or snack on, where the calories are certified virtual. Dig in!                      As it was my suggestion, I did most of the production work - compiling the pieces sent to me by the others, formatting it, uploading. Though I should mention the help provided by other Electrics, especially Ruby Barnes , when the formatting all went pear-shaped. The title was supplied by Julia Jones , and the blurb above by Valerie Laws .           A...

One of the excitements of ebooks is that rather than having to fathom Amazon's sometimes bizarre rankings system, or trying to get figures out of your publisher (!), you know exactly how many books you sell, every day, every hour, every minute. You can go to your dashboard on Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, wherever and see how it's all coming along. Or not. As I am responsible for publishing other authors as well, I have to keep a tight rein on records of sale for the monthly royalty payouts. This has always been an enjoyable exercise because month after month sales figures have been on the rise. Of course this had to fluctuate sooner or later, and in the past couple of months I have seen the first of the 'dips' across the board, especially with US sales. Thankfully there were reasons. On a couple of days with no US Amazon sales at all (major panic) it turned out there had been a technical glitch at Amazon HQ. General elections and natural disasters also took their t...