A Month From Hell!

Hi Guys,

As usual, it's been a while since I last posted. But once more I have an excuse - sort of! Or maybe just an apology!

Anyway, I thought this time I'd tell you about some of what's been happening in my life this past month, which sort of explains why I haven't been posting. I've been too busy pulling my hair out!

Anyway, this month began for me when I finally got Roar done and put it up on Amazon as a Kindle Edition. And as always when I got to that stage, I was overwhelmed with happiness. Writing is fun. But that last part of editing, formatting and publishing is a true nightmare for me, as I'm sure it is for most authors. But enough of that complaining. The important thing is that I got Roar out on the 7th of October and spent a couple of days relaxing.

Then my poor cat Tabby (Yes a tabby cat - and yes I'm terrible at names!) went missing, and I took my eyes off things for a while. She turned up nearly a week later with a dislocated hip and I won't even begin to tell you how much she loved my taking her to the doctor. The good news is that my stitches were self dissolving!

But while I was busy worrying about Tabby, I wasn't checking on the progress of my new book. So the first I knew that there was a problem was when my sister rang me up to tell me it was missing. And strangely, that's actually an accurate description of what had happened. It was no longer on my author page, and when I searched on Amazon's search bar it told me that no results were found.

Naturally, thinking that some varmint had stolen my book I sent a desperate email to Amazon and got the usual form letter - we'll get back to you in three days - back. As it happened, the book returned by itself a few days later (like my cat!). Obviously it had just wandered off somewhere. So relieved it was back, I sort of forgot about things and went back to dealing with my cat and my injuries.

Then a week later it vanished again. And this time it wasn't gone for just a few days. It was missing for nine or ten. I can tell you there were multiple frantic emails to Amazon after that, multiple replies - mostly more form letters - and a lot more hair pulling as I sat there thinking that the book had violated some of Amazon's TOS and they had simply withdrawn it. A thought that was supported when I discovered that I could actually find my book by searching not through Amazon but rather Google - and when I did the book page simply said Roar was unavailable for sale. The only thing I couldn't understand was why Amazon had withdrawn the book.

Anyway Roar finally came back, no explanation given, and I crossed my fingers that it was going to stay. So imagine my lack of surprise when three or four days later it vanished again - and this time it took half a dozen of its friends with it!

After that - you guessed it - more frantic emails, more requests for information about what had happened, and more silence in return.

The good news is that it finally came back, and most of its friends showed up as well. (Currently one is still missing - Banshee Hunt which is now only available as a paperback, but I've sent off another email!)

The bad news is that Roar is no longer being promoted as a new release. The authors among you will understand this. Amazon gives new books when they're first released a month when it keeps getting flashed in reader's faces as a new release they might be interested in. Unfortunately that month is up and the book is now just another of the old releases no longer being pushed. Never mind that for half of that month Roar was never available to be bought, or even seen. As I said in one of my emails - worst new release ever!

I've since found out that my troubles weren't unique. And I would guess that some of you reading this post have enjoyed a similar experience. Lots of books have been vanishing from Amazon for a while now. They clearly need better fences!

Anyway, as always I've tried to learn from my experience, and this time I think I've discovered a valuable lesson which I will now happily share with you in the hopes that it will help. 

Cut your hair short - it's harder to pull out that way!!!

Cheers, Greg.

CreateSpace and Me - The War of Words (And Images)

Hi Guys,

Thought I'd update you on how things are going in my quest for world domination (err - literary success?) Well the big news is that as of today two of my books have been approved for publishing in paper, Maverick and Alien Caller. And a third book Thief is now in the process.

It has been an epic battle getting the books through this process, in part because of my own limitations in all things computer related. But there have been some other problems arise which I did think I might mention for any of you considering taking this route.

1) PDF - CreateSpace demands PDF documents (or so I thought, however experience has proven that it ain't necessarily so). So because I don't have Acrobat, and really don't want to shell out the readies for the programme I went online to get a PDF conveter. The first one I found was Word to PDF by Abdio, which cost me forty bucks. It didn't work, producing documents that were poorly formatted and with great big gaps in words here and there. Naturally I wasn't impressed, especially when I sent off an e-mail asking for either a fix or my money back and heard nothing back. That, despite their promise to get back to me within 24 hours, was over a week ago. So that's my first DON'T of the process.

However it leads to my first DO as well. Or actually two DO's. The first is that when I reached out for help I went to the CreateSpace Community and got answers within hours. Useful answers. And the second is the answer itself a print program called Do - PDF, which was free and has worked absolutely faultlessly.

2) File sizes - for those of you like me the files you need to upload are not small, and conversion to PDF just makes them larger. Much larger. Word files doubled in size. Graphics files trebled and more through the conversion process. And if any of you are on dial up like me, that's a major pain. Fifteen megs, the size of the one piece file I created to do the book, takes an hour or so to upload. And then, as if to help me pull my hair out, CreateSpace itself kept logging me out after an hour and not saving the uploads. By the fourth time I really was screaming at the computer and threatening it with bodily harm.

However, again there is a solution, it's called cover creator. Initially I tried using it and it fell over and I couldn't understand why. It also didn't seem to have the layout I wanted, which was essentially only a bair template for the front cover, back cover and spine, all of which I had already prepared. But a more detailed search revealed that as you go through the available formats there are other layouts, and one of them 'PALM' was perfect for my needs. Better yet,the file sizes were already reduced since I could cut down my single large graphic into two pieces and throw away the spine since it was included as part of the template. And they were reduced even further because Cover Creator does not require the files to be in PDF format. JPEGs are fine. The result, one fifteen meg upload became two uploads of around two and a bit megs, and no logging out.

So for me the next DO - is cover creator.

3) There are of course fishooks in even this, and the main one is graphic sizes. With my layout being for a six by nine inch book and the requirements for the graphic being three DPI, I figured that the correct graphics should be 2700 by 1800 pixels. Silly me!

In fact the correct size for a six by nine cover is six and a quarter inches by nine and a half. They do mention this, but foolishly I ignored it. The upshot of course was that my graphics were slightly too small, and I didn't realise it. So my next DO is read the instructions for graphic file sizes and plan accordingly.

The second fishook is not mine though, unless my eyesight is really that bad and I am going colour blind! So I went through the process uploade my undersized files and it told me they were undersized, 295 DPI instead of 300. But as you go through the process little buttons turn green as you complete each step, and those buttons did turn green. So I assumed the undersizing was of no matter.

Then of course you get to the end having uploaded and twittered around with everything, a process that might take an hour or so, and you hit the button that says submit cover for approval, and I clicked it with transcendant joy. Only to go directly to hell as my cover vanished and I was told by the programme that not all parts of the process had been completed and so it was start again. The message wouldn't even tell me which parts were incomplete and of course I had no clue. After all the seven buttons had seven green colours on them which said they were complete.

So I did it again - same result. It was about then I started to consider taking to the computer with an axe! However I digress.

It turned out after careful detailed study that in fact only five of the seven buttons were green. Two were yellow. Unfortunately green is actually greenish yellow in this programme while yellow is infact yellowish green. In short they look almost identical! I am so glad that these people did not have a hand in designing traffic lights!

After that however, somewhat balder than before and hoarse from screaming at an innocent computer, things went more smoothly. Which leads me to my last DO.

There is absolutely nothing like having a paper copy of your book in your hand, and that is an experience that no reader or tablet can give you. So my final DO.

DO absolutely get a proof copy of your book sent to you in the mail.

Cheers, Greg.