Signing with a Publishing Company

TodToday I signed a contract with California Times Publishing, a new book publishing company that supports the independent writing community. Like many writers, I lose a lot of creative time when I have to promote my books, so it is helpful to partner with others to achieve our mutual goals. Sure, you give up some degree of control, but no venture is ever successful doing everything by oneself. I look forward to seeing how this works out. Another chapter, another set of good stories, another adventure. What a job!

Writing like any other work is ... work

I just finished publishing The Clan of the Black Sun - book 3 of The Juno Letters. It seemed a good time to reflect on the story and the versions of the print and e-books, especially since my audio producer, Gary Regal, just finished the audiobook of The Juno Letters - Book 1. Let's face it - e-books are just plain **** ugly. They appear like one long text message. It is difficult to put much formatting in one - I struggled to get the block quote of the letters and journals working for a long time. You cannot control the line spacing very well, and mixing things such as first line indents and flush lefts are trouble. I have a template now that allows me to safely do the three formatting things I need to tell the story, but I dare not change any of it. Every time I produce a book, I cross my fingers and pray to the SMASHWORDS gods. I still cannot get the Table of Contents to work right in Kindle and ePub. But they work well enough - given the state of the eBook world. I decided I could still create a beautiful book in print, so I redid the format of my books on CreateSpace. I use Trajan Pro for the headings, the same font I use in the covers, and a more readable text font. I have far more control over the layout, and get to use 'fleurons' - those curlycues and flower-like objects used as separators. The result is wonderful. Like I have written many times, a book SHOULD BE a work of art in form as well as writing. Apple make a program called iBooks Author that allows a writer to create an enhanced e-book using discrete formatting - plus a host of embedded gizmos - available only in landscape mode. In portrait mode it flows like an ebook - the best of both ... almost. The templates for the program are not well formatted for novels. I struggled with this for a log time, and gave up last summer. But I took another look - determined to create a solution. I jury-rigged a template to work in both portrait and landscape, and still produce the correct TOC. The result is an enhanced iBook version of the entire series on iTunes, and I am pleased how they turned out. There are some improvements I can make, I am certain, but compared to the average ePub, it is a work of art. Changes to iTunesConnect have made it easier to publish despite a couple of bugs I discovered and reported (it's a curse), but it still takes way too long for the books to go live. Such is the fun of being on the cutting edge of a new media revolution. Check out the iBooks version when they finally go live - available only on an iMac, iPad, and iPhone (probably iPod too). It is the closest thing to holding a real book you will find in e-format. If you have any other version of one of my books (not including NOCK, sorry) just email me and I'll send you the enhanced ibook version for free. I have reformatted all of the versions with some minor format improvements, and will replace any kindle or epub files as well. Email me at larryh@hewittmbm.com

Ascendency of Digital Publishing

Digital publishing has risen to seriously affect the traditional print market. Tradition print is dominated by a select few publishers who exercise undue influence over who gets published, how long titles remain in print, and royalties. That world is beginning to crumble. Harlequin Romance novels are published by Torstar, a holding company. That division saw a considerable loss of profits last year. If you want to read a very boring corporate financial report that details this, go to http://www.torstar.com/images/file/2013/2013MDA%20030414%20final%20v2.pdf For a quick synopsis, I quote: "... a number of digital-only publishers and other digital distribution models are emerging and authors have greater opportunities to self-publish, often at lower prices than traditional publishers. The proliferation of less expensive, and free, self-published works could negatively impact [sic - the corrrect word is 'affect'] Harlequin's revenues in the future." (see link, p. 36) Read Mark Coker's summary analysis on his blog as SMASHWORDS:http://blog.smashwords.com "10 Reasons Indie Authors Will Capture 50% of the Ebook Market by 2020" Cheers

Juno Letters featured on "Fly High"

Fly High is a blog from Rome, Italy about art, literature, and movies published by Maria Garza. She featured The Juno Letters in her most recent interview ... take a look at BRINGING THE PAST BACK TO LIFE - AUTHOR INTERVIEW: LARRY HEWITT, THE JUNO LETTERS SERIES.

Book 3 - Clan of the Black Sun will be published this week! Hooray! I will post a link to the Prerelease Edition when it is ready - probably Friday. You will have a period of time to download a free copy - you can email me with all my typos! (I have been editing for 3 weeks - there'd better not be any)

Trouble in River City (it's raiing here again ... we flood) etc.

I have a knack for getting into trouble - what I prefer to call "issues." I spent several weeks trying to get information on a license for the music to "Somewhere in Time" to include it on my video. The music industry, despite iTunes, is still mired in antiquated ways of doing business. If anyone had the cash, you could reinvent commercial access rights in an iTunes format and destroy the existing multi-tiered and inefficient commercial music industry - worth billions. A thought for another day ...

I gave up and posted it. Guess what? They found me ... real quick(ly). Pretty funny. The video now is without the soundtrack, but I have 10 (yes, 10) different brokers, agents, and 'consultants' all asking me what my budget for the music is. NOT 'it'll cost you $XXX for that' but how much I can spend.

Imagine going to the Wal-Mart and when you go to check out, they say "How much can you give us".

We'll see how this plays out. In the meantime, the second draft of Clan of the Black Sun (notice the title change) is completed, and the fun part starts - rereading until my eyes drop out of my head.

Music video for Book 3 - The Black Sun at YouTube

Ariéle Farewell is the music video for the ending of book 3 of The Juno Letters - The Black Sun. I am about a month away from publishing, but I wanted to give you a sneak preview. If you have not read books 1 or 2, Ariéle is the main character whose life journey is the background for The Juno Letters. A child when the saga starts, she ends the series by saying goodbye to her love, Richard Soullant who has passed away decades back, and meets her long-lost friend, Lanval, now that they are both in their final years.

I hope you like it. It is to the theme music of "Somewhere in Time" by John Barry (used under Creative Common license). See junoletters.com/movie for credits.

Holes ... part trois

In a fit of writing fury, I wrote the entire attack/retreat/escape scene today - 20+ pages. It actually turned out great for a rough draft.

However, Captain Charest was written into the attack scene in Muizon - 90 minutes away from Paris. The ending has him at the chateau and being killed there, as all really bad guys should be. So ... I simply tracked back through the story and eliminated his participation in the Muizon raid. After all, Les Police Nacionale's jurisdiction is the major French cities - not the countryside, sort of.

Never write anything cut in stone until you are done, finis! Like Steve Jobs said, if you are not willing to kill your cash cow, someone else will ... or something like that.

Lanval, the wanna-be boyfriend in the very sweet and innocent love triangle, is at police HQ, not at the chateau where he is the only who actually kills Charest. So, I wrote in a small scene where he overhears Charest (in Paris ... good thing I changed that) say he is kidnapping the lovely Ariele. He then finds where the maquis will meet before the attack and braves being killed himself to warn his rival, Richard. Brave guy ... he becomes in the eyes of Ariele the man he wants her to know. Important for the ending!

That leaves the venerable Paris security forces garrison. They need to be gone, but NOT at Muizon, one of the deceptions. I reverted back to Book 2's story and have them raiding the transport company (read the book!) to get them out of the way, leaving room for the maquis to attack ... EXCEPT, Charest leads the police force instead into the fray ... SO I wrote a scene where the communist maquis called the FTP ( a real group) join the attack to balance out the numbers and ensure they get guns and ammunition from the armory ... which is NOT the objective of Richard's attack.

Confused? Good. The point is, all these details can be changed as long as you have the courage in your own work to write an ending that makes no sense - then make it make sense. And then edit like crazy!

Read the book - it all makes sense now (I hope).