Timelines and the pace of change

We like to think that the pace of today's world is so fast. When you write about World War II you have to be extremely cautious to match timelines of activities with real events - compared to today, they were all on a fast train to oblivion!

Take America's entry into the war - December, 1941. By VE day - March 8 - the entire drama of the European conflict was played out - 3 years, 6 months. Compare that to Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. The Battle of Britain began in August, suspended in September (sort of - it mostly died away over time, but not before the Blitz over London), followed by the invasion of Russia. By February, 1943 - following an assault that began in August, German forces were defeated at Stalingrad. A year later was the countdown to D-Day.

Events moved very fast, scattered all over the globe. Managing your novel timeline in that short time frame can be a challenge. What was a major objective in August could be discarded by November. You must keep your pace hot and lively, and plot every action against the historical background. It is easy to mess up - believe me!

I am struggling right now with timeline issues in The Black Sun - spring rains play a major part of any drama during war, and the same happens indirectly here. That compresses activity to very short windows, and may require a rethinking of one of the story lines.

Can you imagine what the actual wartime planners had to go through?

Good reading!

Making a living ... Northwest style

Making a living writing is great ... I am sitting in the lodge at White Pass, Washington, thinking up new ways to kill someone. What a job!

Writing tools are changing rspidly. Mobile technologies allow me a much greater sphere of trsvel while keeping me working ... and not carrying around a bulky laptop. I use Pages on my iPad to do most of my composing. It stores the document in the Cloud so it is always curretc at mt desktop. When I create my final manuscript I use Mellel. It is a word processor from a small software company in Isreal. It handles very large files beautifully, and puts MS Word to shame for power, features, and flexibility.

Christmas reading lists and other things ...

It's the night before Christmas ... I happen to have a beautiful original edition of The Night Before Christmas in a glass display case. It is one of my prized book possessions. I pull it down every Christmas and read it to the children, and now grandchildren. There is nothing more special than a great book, and this is the proof.

Finding a great book can be a little tough. There are some great new services now - subscription services like Oyster.com and Scribd.com that let you read as much as you like for a set fee per month. If you are an avid reader, take a look at these. My books are there, but that really isn't the point. Enjoy looking over a lot of new potential reads without having to pay for them all.

In a more traditional vent, I have a link on the website to a reading list of historical novels, from the Civil War to Korea. I'll be adding to this as time goes on. These are all titles of SMASHWORDS, my distributor. This retailer is worth taking a look at.

I am getting an evil look from "Mrs. Claus" right now - we have company coming and I am doing the cooking. So Merry Christmas, and good reading!

L.W. Hewitt

Cruise ships and other backgrounds ...

In "War of the Worlds" with Tom Cruise, in the middle of armageddon, death all around them, not a living soul anywhere except 1 man and 1 woman (biblical reference intentional, I am sure) if you watch in the background, top right corner of the screen, a cruise ship is sailing up the river. Pretty funny.

I have always enjoyed catching the odd editing errors in movies. Someone is always falling into the water, only to come out bone dry. Or their hair is parted on the left in one scene, the right in another. It happens all the time, and there are some pretty funny videos that document these "continuity" errors.

After publishing my first three books, I don't laugh at them any more. Finding that odd irregularity can be painful, embarrassing, and downright maddening. I edit my work very hard, but things get out of whack. Dates, sequences, timelines - I keep them all written down. But sometimes something changes that echoes through your book - and sometimes more than 1 book.

In The Juno Letters, the most intense and important scene is the death of Marianne. It is on Yom Kippur - the date is significant. Somewhere along the line, I moved the date of the death (which also is part of book 2, Cross of Fire - another important scene). I don't remember why. But after a dozen readings, editings, a few false starts, etc, I finally finished republishing as a series Book 1 and 2 - in print as well as ebooks. Sold a bunch of them, and put them all away to focus on Book 3 - The Black Sun (The Story of Ariele).

Except... in the middle of a writing session at my Oly Club office, I had a thought (a rare event) - I think got the date of Yom Kippur wrong. So I looked it up. In 1943, Yom Kippur was October 8. In my book, it was Sept 23. A little thing ...

WRONG! That would be like saying Christmas was in January. I had several hundred sales out there, 5 major ebook versions, and print version - all had to be changed. I did it last night, and just now approved the proof of the print versions. All is better.

No one else found the mistake - yet. It doesn't matter. I FOUND IT.

Maddening.

It helps to be a little mad to be a writer.

Audio Book #1 Done plus ...

Writing is a strange business. You imagine a world of creativity, endless hours with inspiration bringing world peace to the masses. Unfortunately, for every hour of truly creative writing you have many hours of hard work - editing, reediting, marketing, cajoling, screaming in the mirror - you name it. Writing is hard work, don't let anyone try and convince you otherwise.

Lately I have added audio books to my product line, and have just published the first one, a version of NOCK on Wood. Luckily, I have a great narrator - Gary Regal. He does most of the work. We will be starting on The Juno Letters series right after the new year, and plan to have all 3 finished by June.

I am back writing again after editing and publishing Cross of Fire, and revamping the website to accommodate the new book and new formats. The new story - book 3 of the series - is a lot darker, delving into the Nazi occult practices.

I have also repositioned my products price-wise, and my sales seem to have benefitted accordingly. Oddly, despite the low price and immediate availability of the e-books, I am selling more print-on-demand. I am not complaining - the margins and commissions are better -- and there is just something very compelling about holding the print book in your hands.

I am not going to make a big fuss about Christmas sales - it is more important to get the series completed and positioned correctly with all of the versions by spring. It is much like building a new business - don't open the doors till you got it right.

The web site has all the products for sale - I hope you will stop by and take a look for Christmas. But if you don't, there's always next year!

Have a merry Christmas and enjoy the time with family and friends.

Larry

Getting caught up...

I have been a little neglectful here lately. I have finished writing and editing book 2 of The Juno Letters series, Cross of Fire. It is the story of Gela Pientka who appears as a minor character but a major turning point in The Juno Letters, Book 1.

We also finished the first book in audio format - we, because it was Gary Regal, my narrator, who did all the work. What it did point out to me was there were some errors in NOCK on Wood, the first book in The Viper Chronicles, that had to be fixed. I took the opportunity to rework all three novels in a slightly different but standardized format. I also made some adjustments to Juno book 1 to make it match with the story as it emerged in book 2.

That meant reediting and reformatting for all of my media, including print-on-demand. It has been a huge task, but I just posted the revised editions online today. I'll put the POD versions up later in the week - don't want to miss Cyber Monday.

We are going to start the audio version of Juno after the first, and plan to have all three of The Juno Letters books done by June. That said, I have also started on book 3 - The Story of Ariele. I am toying with the story line and right now I think a great title will be The Black Sun, based on the story as I see it. That may change, however, so don't hold me to it.

That said, as I went to print on Cross, Apple pulled a fast one and gutted my favorite word processor PAGES, and took out the ability to do facing pages - critical for print-on-demand. I tried to do it in Word - big mistake. There were so many times that changes I made were not reflected in the saved version (I actually did a SAVE AS in three different file names and had 3 different sets of errors in the final product .. go figure) that I wasted almost 8 hours trying to format for POD. 8 hours is a lot, and at my billing rate ... well, that was the last time.

I switched to Mellel for my final product, a powerful word processor I had looked at once before. It is from a small software company in Israel, and the product is optimized for large manuscripts. It is NOT for the weak kneed, but once I got the rhythm of the interface, I fell in love. It is fast, powerful, and stable. I was able to reformat all 3 documents for print in 4 hours (as opposed to 8 hours for 1 in Word).

I still write in Pages - Cloud synced with my iPad, which is important to my work flow. I transfer to Mellel for the final document.

Google 'Mellel' if you want to see what a REAL word processor is like. They will give you a 30-day trial.

The D-Day 70th Anniversary Edition

The D-Day 70th Anniversary Edition of The Juno Letters is now available in all the e-outlets and Print-on-Demand. This is Book 1 of the series; Book 2, Cross of Fire, is going live by week's end. I have the copyright registered and received the Library of Congress number today so I can publish. There are always little thing that hold up completion - tomorrow I have to be out of town all day, so looks like Friday is publishing day.

Publishing Cross of Fire

The agonizing is finally over - the editing done (at least until someone finds another typo!). Cross of Fire is available online for free in iBook ePub format and PDF for a limited time while I complete the process of publishing. I hope to have the newest of The Juno Letters books on Amazon by November 12 and through SMASHWORDS to all electronic outlets by November 15. The Print-on-Demand version is expected by November 20. Cross of Fire was more difficult, mainly in carving down the story to fit within a realistic context. I hope you like the characters, and the story keeps getting a little darker with each new entry in the series. The next in the series, Ariele, will tear back the lid even more on the corruption of the French Holocaust... I hope to have it available by March, 2014. Download a free version for a limtied time at The Juno Letters - click on the CROSS OF FIRE icon.

Cross of Fire - Manuscript Completed

I have finished Cross of Fire (once titled The Money Train) and put the prerelease version out for comments and edits to a select list. Even though I have spent the past month editing, there are ALWAYS some things that slip by - speling erors, missing words that when read fill the blanks, and minor ædjustmënts that need to be mayde. I hope to be able to publish by mid-month. I am also waiting for permission to use one of several photos on the back cover.

Bonjour - Je m'appelle The Juno Letters

I just sent a shipment of The Juno Letters Print Edition to the museum bookstore on Juno Beach - The Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-sur-Mer. It will be on the shelves for the 70th D-Day Anniversay next June. Too cool!

Twitter in the age of Unsocial Media

My Twitter account has been the object of repeated hacker attacks this past month. I have reset my password several times to try and stop it, but I am concerned that this technology is so poorly implemented that it make represent more of a threat than an asset to my book promotions. If it continues I am going to probably drop Twitter altogether.

The Juno Letters on sale at The Juno Beach Center soon

I am pleased to report that I have just received a purchase order for The Juno Letters from The Juno Beach Centre, the Canadian museum honoring the soldiers who invaded Juno Beach on D-Day. I visited the Center last year at this time. It is in the commune of Courseulles-sur-Mer, one of the most delightful places you can visit on the Normandy coast. It also is the location of the climax of The Juno Letters. If you visit Normandy, please stop by The Juno Beach Centre and Courseulles - you will remember your stay always.

The Cross of Fire - First Draft

Draft 1 of Cross of Fire is completed. When you begin to carefully analyze such things as character development, timing, cadence, and continuity often some important truths appear - like the one that says its time to rethink the whole thing! This happenned with this book.

What I realized is that the three stories I have written and planned are really a series - The Juno Letters (book 1), Ariele (book 3), and this one... Cross of Fire. Why you ask? - you have to read it to find out.

I made a minor change in The Juno Letters to set up its Cross of Fire context, but it is one that no one will notice who already read the book. When all three books are completed, they will be republished as a series.

I have redesigned the prerelease cover for Ariele and have posted the prerelease cover for Cross of Fire. When the final draft is completed I will commission the cover artwork from my designer.

Buried in draft mode

I gave a talk the other day at a local community college about writing your first novel.  There were about twenty would-be writers in the room and all of them had great ideas, a desire to be a writer, and lots of question.  Not a single one has bothered to actually write anything.

Guess what - that doesn't work.  Telling people you are a writer is fun.  It illicits a lot of collateral conversations, and you find you are in great company.  But one of these days you actually have to put something on paper.  And that's where the fun begins.

Remember all those English classes you hated in school? - paragraphs, sentence structure, word usage.... blah, blah, blah.  When I discussed just how much work editing a draft of your own manuscript is, I was amused at the response.

Writing is creative - editing and publishing is about the craft of writing.  One cannot exist without the other.  Even if you job out the editing, you still need to be the expert, you still need to own your craft.

My best advice - get to work.  Talking about being a writier is not the same thing as being one.

Juno Letters on GOODKINDLES

10 Sept 2013 - I try to discover a new marketing platform once a month.  Today I submitted The Juno Letters to GOODKINDLES - a service that exposes the Kindel version of ebooks to readers specifically searching for Kindle editions.  It looks like a nice site, and I will be watching for results.

In addition, I secured the junoletters.com domain name and will begin the long process of migrating the branding of the trilogy from hewittmbm.com to junoletters.com - the same site, just a different name.

My own worst critic

Yesterday I completely gutted my new story, Cross of Fire.  One of the dualities of creation is the inescapable reality that you have to sometimes destroy what you create to make what you really wanted to create.  Kind of a Noah thing going on.

I reorganized Cross of Fire, and in the process realized I had written over 100 pages and just now was getting to the meat of the story.  When I had the thought - this should be two books - I knew I had to cut.  And cut.  And cut some more.

I eliminated one whole character - kind of like Back to the Future when the photograph changes - and threw away the entire WWI tie in piece.  This forced a change in the major plot vehicle, and elevated a minor character, Gela's boss, to star status.  Half of my research notes went into a holding folder as well as most of the 'snippets' I had already written.  Fodder for future work..

The good news is that it is a better plot.  Also, I have the makings of the next series... I had written about Case Yellow, the attack on Holland, as a part of the story of Mina Pientka, Gela's cousin.  That now will become a new story... a single event (the German assault on the low countires) and three unrelated mini stories stemming from that single event.  The first one is already written... Taunte Truss and Kindertransport (Google it- an amazing story).  I will put these pieces away until I am finished with The Juno Letters series, but will be looking for the other two plots as I go.

I feel good this morning!

The End-of-Summer/Glad to be Rid of the Kids Special!

The Juno Letters is only 99 cents at Amazon.com for your Kindle.

Don't have a Kindle?  Go to: SMASHWORDS and select ADD TO CART.  On the Shopping Cart page is a COUPON CODE box - enter WN96X to get The Juno Letters for 99 cents!

This offer will run through the end of October, 2013.

ONE MORE THING...
If you are an Amazon customer, and you write a review (see the Amazon link above for information or email if you have questions) I will place you on the list for a complimentary pre-release version of the sequel, CROSS OF FIRE - due out in late November or early December.

Email me at: larryh@hewittmbm.com

Cross of Fire Chapter 2 - A Polish Army - now on Wattpad

Chapters 1 and 2 of Cross of Fire are in beta on Wattpad; take a look and let me know what you think:
http://www.wattpad.com/23244225-cross-of-fire-book-2-of-the-juno-letters#.Ug_FbBbx-QZ

I have started a 99-cent promotion of The Juno Letters on Amazon.com through October.  I have requested a feature of PixelofInk to help promote this, but that is never a guarantee.

Last note - I have started getting reviews on Amazon.  Good to see.  If you want to place a review online, please go ahead:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Juno-Letters-ebook/dp/B00CQAU58O

Cross of Fire and D-Day

 © Bram Janssens | Dreamstime.comUsed under license.

Now that The Juno Letters is out and distributed, including the print version, I have been working on the sequel, Cross of Fire - the Story of Gela.  I have a great new cover and am about half-way through the first draft.  I plant to have the second book in The Juno Letters series published in December.

The third book of the series, Ariéle, will be out by late spring in time for the trip to Juno Beach in June.  2014 will be both the 100th anniversary of The Great War (WWI) and the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.  I have been in touch with both the Juno Beach Center and the commune of Courseulles and am planning to take part in the activities.

More information will follow.  Several readers have emailed me and plan to also attend.  While we will be doing all our own travel and hotel arrangements, I plan to have some sort of get-together in Courseulles.  It will be a lot of fun.

I will post snippets of Cross of Fire when they are edited here on the blog.  I will also take orders for a free prerelease version in exchange for a review, so stay tuned!

100/70 Anniversary Events

The Juno Letters - in print and
eBook formats from all major retailers.
Visit hewittmbm.com/juno_letters
for easy links and information

The Great War 

2014 will be the 100th anniversary of the war to end all wars - The Great War - World War 1.  The carnage that occurred as warfare models of the 19th century clashed with the onrush of technology and industrialization resulted in an unprecedented bloodbath.  The system of alliances that had governed political affairs was exposed as deadly in the new world of rapid communications and industrial warfare.

There will be opportunities to participate in anniversary events all over the world, and particularly in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium where the western front stagnated; and Poland, the scene of the bloodiest fighting in the east.  Keep an eye on this blog and I will keep you informed of events as I discover them.





Day-Day - 70 years old

The greatest amphibious assault in history will observe its 70th anniversary.  Events will be planned all over France, especially focused on the coast of Normandy.  The Juno Letters staff will be on hand in Courseulles-sur-Mer (Juno Beach) where the Canadians came ashore for a book signing and other activities - still in the works.  We will also be visiting the other beaches, and especially Omaha Beach where so many of our countrymen gave their lives for each of us.

If you want to join us in France, email me at larryh@hewittmbm.com.  Or keep an eye on this blog for more information.

Distribution in print - lessons learned

One thing I have learned in the past month is that the art of self-publishing is complicated.  You HAVE to pay very close attention to details.  Learn the craft - it will save you time and money.  I realized that I missed an opportunity to move my print books into general distribution by the options I selected the first time around.  So I had my cover redesigned slightly, reformatted the pages to a general distribution size, and posted the new version.  I have paid a premium for an expanded distribution.  It all went smoothly, but I could have done this the first time and saved one of my ISBNs.

I have checked - I am on Barnes and Noble and Sony, as promised, plus a host of smaller retailers.  Of course, Google, Amazon, and iTunes.  

Now, on to the sequel!

The Juno Letter is now available in paperback!  For those of you who long for the touch and smell of a REAL book, this is the ticket!  Go to the link at Hewittmbm.com.

I must admit, it looks real cool on my bookshelf!

Enjoy,

Larry

The Juno Letters featured on Whizzbuzz

Whizzbuzz is a listing of books available via the site through Amazon.  Visit http://www.derekhaines.ch/whizbuzz/

I am delighted to be a part of Derek Haines' collection.

Free Online Books

Great summer reading - for free - from Free Online Novels, including my thriller of renegade military and intelligence officers, NOCK on Wood.

New Juno Letters Cover

I just had a new cover for The Juno Letters designed, and I am ecstatic how it turned out.  I highly recommend:


Cover design: Tatiana Vila, Vila Design
http://www.viladesign.net


Look at her work:

Way cool...

Publishing with Apple's Pages word processor

If you are like me, the very though of using MS Word makes you cringe.  I have commented many times before on the issues with this, as have many other bloggers.  I prefer Pages from Apple - much simpler and very stable.  I have had issues, however, in converting a basic Pages file into the proper formats for publishing through some of the online distributors.  The ePUB export function makes an elegant book but can only be trusted to work with iBooks and the iPad.

I got turned on to Smashwords the other day, and successfully uploaded The Juno Letters to it with only a few modifications with the original publishing MS Word file I labored so long to create.  The conversions look good - I was pleased.

I decided to publish my novelette "NOCK on Wood" only through Smashwords to see how it goes.  The original file was in Pages, and formatted for PDF display, which had to be undone.  I had some reworking to do to make it generic, but it was pretty simply in Pages.

I decided to send the exported Word format file type rather than try to make a native Word version.  I expected the worst, but was very pleased to have Smashwords take the file without any corrections.

The conversions for ePub and mobi (Kindle) look very good.  In addition, every known format except the Enhanced eBook for iBooks only is supported by Smashwords.  Very cool.  Their interface was the easiest of all the publishers I have used so far, and the support was excellent.

So, if you are a dedicated Mac fan - stay with Pages.  Set your styles as Header 1, Header 2, Normal, etc. to maintain compatibility.  But write away knowing you will not have to wrestle with Word over formatting, styles rewriting, and other horrors I have encountered.

Reaching out...

I have been working to understand social media.  Guy Kawasaki had some excellent advice on the use of each of the major social media sites - I have been following him for years and trust his judgement.  Following on this, I spent a lot of time today getting to know Twitter, and expanded my reach to England and Canada today.  I made a connection with a historical researcher that could use my Strategic Bombing database, and met several members of the Canadian Parliament (it's like this whole 'nother country).  I passed on contacting the Canadian PM - felt a little uncomfortable (except it's probably run by an intern anyway).  Will be following these leads more tomorrow.

Working with ePUB files is hazardous to your mental health.  I have been struggling getting the various eBOOK devices to display correctly.  Invariably, there are some minor glitches.  Lulu.com attempts to resolve this by converting a DOC file to their desired ePub format.  I had early success with this, but still some minor issues.  I spent all morning trying to resolve them, and gave up.  Using Microsoft Word in styles mode is like going to the dentist.

I write in Pages for the Mac - a very elegant word processor.  The export to ePUB option produces an elegant file effortlessly that loads on the iBook from Dropbox easily.  The only thing you have to be careful of is to follow Apple's publication guidelines in the use of stles, and make certain you use page breaks and chapter number styles if you want the number to display.  Otehrwise, you may get a run-on chapter.

Uploading this ePub file to Lulu died.  That's OK - I took it directly to the iBookstore instead.  One issue - be sure UNCHECK the option to use the first page as a cover when you save the ePub for the iBook store.  You will be asked to provide cover art instead.  It caused an error in upload, but I found this tip online.

I will tackle Barnes and Nobel next.  However, any ePub should work with a NOOK - so I am told.  We'll have to see...

Today I got the word we are live on iBookstore.  That is good news.  The iBook Author program has some unique features that makes publishing on that platform a step above the rest.  This includes tight formatting of the book.  This was more time consumiong than the others, but we are done.  Hooray!

Apple's Dev Support team is top notch.  Thank you!

A word or two about retail "partner" programs.  In creating my retail accounts, I found Amazon.com and Lulu.com to be the best and fastest providers for the a new book product from those I have tried.  Both were online within a very short period, and I started taking orders from Amazon the same day.  I found Lulu later on, and although the upload file was more temperamental, their interface was the easiest to use.   I am new to Lulu and have not had any sales yet.

Google surprised me.  With all their resources you would think they would have a better system.  Uploading a change to a book cover - an essential element in tweaking the marketing campaign - is absurd.  You have to replace the entire book file.  After having some issues with this elsewhere, I am reluctant to do this, so have left my flat book cover in place instead of the very cool 3D version.

A word to e-book providers - the thumbnail used to illustrate your book should be a separate file from the cover.  Reading 'page 1' as your thumbnail is something I would expect from some techy programmer, not a marketing professional.

I set up a Pay Pal account to handle the PDF sales, and that went very smoothly.  I deliver the content from my own website.

Apple still is not in the game, and that is a disappointment.  The ability to create a strict format to my design specifications is the entire point behind the iBook Author program, and The Juno Letters is optimized for that platform.  We are in week 3 and still nowhere.  For some reason, they accepted the book as I submitted it on the free site, but still have not approved it for the pay site, finding some 'issues' to fix- which I did and sent myself back into stasis.  I will be calling tech support again tomorrow.  In my 30 years as an Apple customer I have never seen an application so poorly implemented as their book upload program.

I am going to start the email program without Apple iBookstore being operational - cannot wait any longer.

I have a letter going to the Apple board tomorrow, for what it is worth.

I have been busy setting up the marketing campaign for The Juno Letters, as well as starting the research for the sequel, Cross of Fire.  Many of you who follow my blog have received the sample email test.  Thanks for putting up with me on this.

I have signed up for Contact Contact to manage my email campaigns, and will begin to push these out in a week or so, as soon as I get the word of the latest version on the iBookstore.

Lulu.com is an independent retailer I have joined, and they are attempting to push the listing for the ePUB version to Barnes and Noble and iBookstore as well.  The format requirements there were extremely tough, especially trying to upload with a Word document.  Everytime I saved the file, my friends at Microsoft would graciously rearrange my styles for me - thank you, but I need them AS I APPLIED THEM - and what should have been a 1 hour change took over 4 hours.

The ePUB version I created directly out of Pages still looks the best on iBooks, but other platforms have different requirements, so they say.

Despite this, Lulu's interface and system is very user friendly.

The Cross of Fire

The next "Juno Letters" installment is underway.  It will follow the story of Gela from the rural farmlands of Poland in the depression years to France in the immigration wave that unsettled Europe and gave rise to a new wave of anti-Semitism.  In France the group of neo-fascists that tried to overthrow the government headed by A Jewish prime minister was called the "Croix de Feu" - Cross of Fire.  It is through this vehicle that I will develop the increasing anti-semitism that resulted in the deportation of French Jews, ultimately landing Gela in Natzweiler where she meets Marianne.

Target date - January, 2014.

Progress slow and steady

I am finally making headway at Apple.  The tech support person I connected with has been very helpful, and aside from a couple of minor changes I had to make, I am in process.  I used the word "iBOOK" to lable the ISBN number for the version - can't use the trademark.  Plus, I needed to enter my name as "Larry" insead of "L.W." - should have read the format rule more carefully.

I hope to be online by June 1 on iTunes.  I am beginning to drive visits to my site, and have some sales under my belt.  I also added a PayPal payment option so I can sell the PDF version directly through the website.  I now handle 4 file types: Kindle through Amazon, ePUB through Google, iBooks through iTunes, and PDF through hewittmbm.com

The best advice I can give to those like myself just venturing into these waters is to be patient and thorough.

The revised portrait version of 'The Juno Letters' for iBook was uploaded at the free Apple site today.  I will be offering a special - FREE to service members, veterans, service families, and friends until September 1 at the iBook Store and a PDF version on The Juno Letters website.  Visit  hewittmbm.com/juno_letters for more details.

Getting it ... just rightt

It is funny how the little things take so much time.  I have been formatting The Juno Letters for the iBook Author program - I can add an interactive glossary and it allows note management and many other advanages.  While doing the version, I discovered - yet again - some minor changes needed to the ePUB and Kindle versions.  It seems that editing never stops.

I had an iBook version, but after spending several days fine tuning the ePUB edition,I did not like the look, so... off into editing hell once more.  The end product ill be worth the effort, however.  I spent 8 months writing the story - spending two weeks making sure the thing looks good is a small price to pay.

My way or the highway?

It appears those who run Amazon, Google and other book sites did not learn the lesson from their kindergarten (kindlegarten?) teachers, "How to play well with others."

You get a link from Google to Amazon for your book, except it is not a link to the book, but a search - that yields nothing.  Seems these two don't like each other very much, at our expense.

For a more complete story, check out the Taleist blog, at:

http://blog.taleist.com/2010/12/13/amazon-blocking-sales-from-google-books-by-denying-ebooks-their-isbn/

Just one more roadblock to industry maturation.

Coming from the technology industry, where I owned my own firm for 20 years, I can tell you that these folks need a lesson in manners.

Jumped on Twitter

I did the unbelievable, and became a "Twitterer" - is that what they call them?  I remember when being a "Twit" was not such a good thing, but then there ya go.  I have already connected with several other writers which leads me to believe this may go somewhere after all the hard work!

After 8 months writing and editing...

Go to:  hewittmbm.com/juno_letters

I have spent the past 8 months writing and editing The Juno Letters - a labor of love, sweat, and tears!  I was excited to get it published online, but was not quite prepared for how much work it would actually be.  I wanted top share some thoughts:

BE PATIENT.  The publishing industry infrastructure is robust and slowly becoming a part of the electronic world.  Many components are not "plug and play."  So be prepared to wait long periods for things to be processed and approved, and pay attention to details.

Check and double check everything.

ISBNs - Get them.  Get 10 - you will need one for every version, and the cost for 1 was $125, for $10 was $250.  I used the site at myidentifiers.com/home and was very satisfied.  Again, be patient and follow the instructions carefully.

COVER ART.  You can change cover art.  All of the sites say so.  However, it is not that simple.  Take the time to design a cover that is readable as an icon as well as a book cover and get other people's opinions on it before you place anything online.  You will have to wait sometimes days to get a cover replaced otherwise.

AMAZON.  This was the easiest to publish to.  I simply made a RTF version (rich text format) and it translated to Kindle first time.  The book was available within a few hours.

GOOGLE.  I have a program (Pages on the Mac) that saves to ePub, so formatting was easy.  The processing period is more extensive than with Amazon, and you then need to prove your copyright status - having your ISBN handy for every version is a must.

ITUNES CONNECT for IBOOK - I optimized my book for iBook, then ran into a brick wall at Apple.  The issue is simple - they need the IRS to verify your payment reporting status with a SSN or EIN, which can take several days.  The problem is that they provide no feed back as to why you cannot log in to the iTunesConnect site - it simply returns an error.  It took a small act of Congress to get through to find out what was going on.  It makes perfect sense, but will take time.  Apple needs to provide a status page like Google does.  I told them so rather succinctly.

I am up on Amazon, and ready to sell.  I will follow up on the issues I find with the others.  After 8 months I was hoping for a quicker solution, but there ya go!