Finding Lost Books and other friends

Do you have a book that you’ll never forget but you can’t remember the name of it, or the author? I like to try new (to me) authors and different types of books and those that have stuck in my mind tend to be by authors I haven’t read before. One that I only remember a little of was about people travelling to another planet by hot air balloon–I know, right? Sounds ridiculous but I enjoyed the weirdness, the fresh ideas of that book. I had no idea until yesterday even who the author was, since it was at least 2 decades ago that I read it.

I love Google and look up all sorts of things so I tried a pretty random search for a book ‘about people travelling to a different planet on a balloon’, without much hope, and found it! https://biginjapangrayman.wordpress.com/2017/09/26/the-ragged-astronauts-1986-by-bob-shaw/  Apparently I have quite good taste as it won an award and he was quite a prolific author. It’s probably one of those books that people either love or hate and I wouldn’t read it again because I might hate it now. I just really appreciate writers who can come up with bizarre ideas and somehow make them work.

Another book I loved years ago, for the same reason, and wouldn’t read again, for the same reason, is The Watcher. The name, strangely enough, popped back into my head a few years ago and that made it easier to find, although it’s not the only book by that title. It’s too weird to describe but well worth a read if you like horror/fantasy/psychological thrillers. https://www.amazon.com.au/Watcher-Charles-MacLean-ebook/dp/B006C3Q13O

There’s another book stuck in my head, something about people living on the edge of a chasm, but I can’t find it. There’s a number of books with Chasm in the title but I don’t remember enough about it–it may not even have that in its title.

I’ve also found, not on Google, but on Facebook, two people, one a cousin and one a friend, I haven’t seen in over 40 years, so the internet’s working well for me!

When I’m not on Facebook or Google, or learning French on Duolingo, or writing, I like making new covers for my books. Here’s the latest. You can find all my books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Christine-Gardner/e/B00AY80A08

 

Advertisement

Building Your Own Book Covers

If you’re an indie author you’ll know how important covers are and how expensive they can be. I’m a stingy indie author and a control freak so I like to do as much as possible myself. I also quite enjoy working with pretty pictures and I do have some background in art and design.

The most annoying thing about POD covers with Createspace has been the difficulty I’ve had in fitting the text into their requirements in the cover creator.  It always seems a bit squashed into the middle to me and when I had someone from fiverr do the text for my last book, The Letter, I was amazed at how close to the edges they were able to get away with. Passed through the system no problems and it’s beautiful! My artist daughter-in-law did the rest of the cover and I couldn’t be more pleased.

But–I wanted to go back and re-do some of the covers I was never completely happy with–they look fine as ebooks but the text on the PODs was a bit meh. Every now and then I’d have a look at different types of software that would enable me to use the Createspace template and I eventually downloaded GIMP. It sat on my computer and I stared at it for months. Well, not all the time. Every now and then I’d open it and try to make sense of it. I looked at youtube instructions and although I refused to admit it, I pretty much gave up. I’m one of those people who needs someone right beside me to take me through it one step at a time and if I’d known of a local class I’d have gone.

Fortunately I have five sons and one of them happens to know how GIMP works–unfortunately he doesn’t live nearby, but he spent 15 minutes with me and GIMP on his last visit and I’ve been working through it for a few weeks now. It’s not easy and I’ve made mistakes but learnt from them and refused to give up, so now I’d like to show off my new covers for my Red Dust Series. Stony Creek, by the way, is still free for Kindle, new cover and all! Check them out on my Amazon page. 

 

 

Designing your own covers.

I’ve always designed my own covers and to be honest I’ve not been completely satisfied with all of them. But the beauty of self-publishing is that I can change them whenever I like and as my capabilities improve I continue to do that. My best cover so far is the last book I published, ‘The Letter’, which I had very little input in! The idea was mine but my artist daughter-in-law took over the design and since I’d already paid someone on fiverr to do the text I went with that. It looks much more professional and I’m very pleased with it.

Not everyone has an artist in the family though and I like a challenge. I always found the worst thing about creating Createspace covers to be the space limitations–trying to fit the text inside the lines. I finally realised they have a template for cover design which allows much more freedom but you need editing software to use it. Photoshop is the obvious one of course but I’ve been looking into free software and GIMP seems to be the most popular.

I don’t know how many times I attempted to understand the written directions or youtube instructions but I’d almost given up until my son was here for a weekend visit. I tend to need to see things done rather than just read instructions. He spent around 15 minutes going through it with me and although I’m still learning I know the basics now and it’s not so scary! My first completed GIMP cover is a re-do of ‘Stony Creek’, the first book in my rural romance series, which is free as an ebook and also available as a POD. It might still be showing the older cover on Amazon but will show the new one when it’s downloaded. I’m pretty happy with this and now slightly obsessed with the whole design process and want to re-do all my books!

You can’t take it with you–or can you?

This post has nothing to do with the joys of self-publishing, unless we consider the freedom aspect. I can take time off from writing whenever I like, and I’ve just spent most of last week in and around Mildura, in the north of Victoria. I grew up there and most of my family still live there, including my mother, who’s nearly 98. I spent most of my time there with her, but one of the few things my husband and I did together was drive around and see what was new to us. Somehow we ended up at the cemetery.

History has always fascinated me, so no surprise that I find cemeteries interesting, especially old ones. I love reading the old headstones, especially when they say something besides the date of birth and death of the occupant. Even if that’s all they say they’re still interesting though, and some of the graves at the Mildura cemetery are unbelievable. There’s an Italian section with row after row of amazing graves, or perhaps more mausoleums. One even had a locked frame around it, which I assume was to keep vandals out rather than to keep the occupant in.

We didn’t walk around the lawn section at all–it’s vast and modern, but there was a small Chinese section next to the Italian section, maybe a dozen graves with simple headstones. The writing on those is Chinese so I don’t know how old they were or where the occupants were born. There’s something very poignant about them though, in contrast to the extravagant Italian ones. Personally, I’d opt for the lawn cemetery myself, although I kind of like the idea of a tomb I can walk out of, just in case they make a mistake about my condition . . .

Indie Authors and Typos

I have written about this before but I’m one of an enormous number of authors who are self-publishing now, for various reasons, and I’m continually disappointed at the lack of editing in a lot of the self-published books out there. Yes, it’s true, almost any book you pick up at the library or a bookshop will have errors. I just finished reading one and I found one typo, in over 300 pages. I think that’s forgivable; I also presume my own books have errors in them, but I hope not. If they do I’m pretty sure they’re minor. The odd typo will get through many rounds of editing but honestly, some authors don’t seem to edit at all.

If you can afford it, of course you should hire a professional editor (Yes, I am one, but I’m only taking on Australian clients) and maybe, instead of putting out a book a month, take a little more time and make sure it’s as good as you can make it. Presuming you have Word or something like it, you’ll have Spellcheck etc., which is at least a start. There’s a lot it can’t correct though, and apostrophes in the wrong place are a major annoyance for me. I’ve been writing weekly hints on my Facebook page, so please take a look:  Editing Indies.

What really bothers me is when I start reading a book and I find a thankyou or some sort of mention of an editor who has worked on the book, followed by page after page of obvious errors. If you’re able to hire an editor, take your time and have a good hunt around. There’s plenty out there and some even have qualifications. Check references and ask for a free sample. Look at their books if they’re also writers. Before you send your story off to be edited make sure you think it’s perfect. Use Word’s Text to Speech–hearing your story read out aloud, even if the voice is a bit robotic, is fantastic for picking up those little typos that are almost invisible–like whole instead of while–one I found in my latest story. It’s a slow process but well worth it.

Take your time. It doesn’t matter if you write 5000 words a day or 500. What matters is that they’re your best words.

 

 

Sharing my interview on Fiona McVie’s blog.

via Here is my interview with Christine Gardner

The Letter

It’s been a major effort but my new book is finally done and dusted and available on Amazon. ‘The Letter’ took me much longer to write than any of my other books thus far, partly because I had a lot of research to do and partly, I think, because it was the book I’d wanted to write for years. I’ve always been fascinated with history; loved it at school and also at university, but mostly I loved reading historical fiction. And still do. I don’t mind if it’s romantic or mystery or one of those family sagas. History at school was mostly about our British heritage–English royalty, which I would never write about myself but still love to read. At university I studied Australian history and in my Honours year I concentrated on Women’s History. That still sounds a little odd to me because of course it’s not only about women, but it was more a social kind of study–about people, rather than dry old politics.

I’ve written two books based on, or inspired by, my research on women who killed their children in the early 20th century, one fiction and one non-fiction, and I wanted to write a book about women on the goldfields in the 19th century. I studied that as well and had done heaps of research so a novel should be easy peasy, right? Ha! I spent hours researching specifics like what they ate on the goldfields, what they wore, what the town (Bendigo, where I now live) was like in 1855 and so much more. Of course every time I looked up something I’d find something else of interest and spend far too long reading irrelevant history, but that’s one of the benefits of indie publishing. No deadlines or if there are they’re self-imposed, so who cares?

I also had drama (of course) with the cover. I had an image I loved and a background I liked and managed to put that together, but decided to get someone else ( https://www.fiverr.com/) just to do some nice cover text for me. I quite like creating covers but Createspace covers are difficult and it was worth the few bucks I paid to get that done, but yes, drama. The morning after I sent the cover off to Germany for the text I woke up and realised I hadn’t checked the resolution of that background image. I jumped out of bed and ran (okay, now I’m just being dramatic) to my computer to check it. Not good enough!

It just so happened that my son and his artist wife were here for the weekend and I asked her to check the photo for me because I wasn’t sure. Anyway to cut a long story slightly shorter, she offered to do another image with one of her own photos and I emailed my German cover person and asked her to wait for the new image. There was some difficulty in communicating with her, mostly because she’s in a different time zone of course. We’re pretty used to that in Oz but when you really need some back and forth communication and you have a book ready and waiting for that final step it’s frustrating to say the least. I’ve been a wee bit stressed. So anyway the cover is beautiful and I’m happy with the book, so check it out. It’s available as both an ebook and print on Amazon.com, Amazon.UK and the new Australian store.

Farewell Kindle Unlimited–Hello World

I’ve been taking all my books from Kindle Unlimited, one at a time as their exclusivity runs out and they’re now all done. Kindle Unlimited, for those who don’t know, is an Amazon service readers can join, for, I think, a monthly payment, and then borrow ebooks rather than buy them outright. For anyone who reads a lot it’s probably a good deal and a good way to check out new authors. For the authors it’s not such a good deal and seems to be paying less every month. It’s not a set amount but depends on the number of readers. It worked out at less than half what the royalty was for most of my books and it seems to me that as KU became more popular my actual sales went down. Also if you want your books in KU they have to be exclusive to Amazon, which mine have been for years, and I decided it was time for a change.

I was particularly interested in making my books available on iTunes because I know lots of readers like the convenience of reading on their phones. Draft2Digital distributes to Apple, as well as Barnes and Noble, Kobo and many others, including Amazon. It’s all pretty easy although it took me a few attempts to get the formatting right. You have to make sure your chapter headings are different to the rest of the page–larger font and bold seems to work well–otherwise the computerised formatting doesn’t recognise them as headings. After the first two or three I finally got the hang of it and found it simple. I loved the options of creating different effects as well; depending on the type of book there’s little motifs you can use in your chapter headings, and drop caps, which make the whole thing look that little bit more professional.

It’s Spring here in Oz and I’m sitting in my office with the heater full bore. Much warmer weather is forecast for next week and I know it won’t be long and it’ll be too damn hot!

books2read.com/StonyCreek                                                    books2read.com/Karinya

Blasting Pirates

I don’t plan to start advertising businesses, apart from the unavoidable popups, but if I come across something I think is worth sharing, I will. There’s a company/program/app/whatever you call it, that’s still in the beta stage and is, I think free for now. It certainly cost me nothing, which will surprise no-one who’s been reading my blog for long! Anyway what Blasty does is find out where an author’s books are being pirated and then send alerts. All you have to do is go through the list and press the orange blast button. Fun! I was resigned to the fact that my books were vulnerable to piracy, but I had no idea how many there were out there. Blasty found over 100 and I blasted them all! This is my invitation link which is a little weird and I’m pretty sure I don’t get free Tupperware or anything else (if I do I’ll let you know–full disclosure!) but it might mean you get it free.

Please don’t assume I know anything about the safety of this or any other program/app or whatever. I did do a little research but you should do some too. I can tell you I haven’t had any problems: https://www.blasty.co/invitation/2DRw3RpU

In other news, I’ve decided to ditch Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited and am taking all my books off when their exclusivity runs out. I’ve already put several across to Draft to Digital, which makes them available on iTunes and Barnes and Noble, and more. They’ll still be on Amazon, for sale only on Amazon.com and Amazon.UK

 

Buying Reviews

I’ve recently come across this phenomenon via Facebook and personally I find it sickening: people offering to review books for self-published authors for money, guaranteeing 5 star reviews. I saw one a couple of days ago stating they could put several reviews on the one book on Amazon, using different names and addresses! I have no idea how long this has been going on nor how many authors actually buy such ‘reviews’, but it makes me think differently now about those books on Amazon with lots of 5 star reviews. I know Amazon pulls reviews they’re dubious about and, like most self-published authors, I complain about that, but I sincerely hope they can put a stop to this practice, which makes those of us who only have honest reviews at a disadvantage. As a reader I’ll disregard reviews now.

I’m not so adamantly against the common practice of authors providing free copies to readers in the expectation they’ll write a positive review but it still seems a little off to me. There’s also quite a lot of trading going on–review for review–and I confess I did that once, trading a review for an app with one for a book of mine. Never again! The ‘reviewer’ clearly read only the outline and while the review was certainly positive it was totally out of whack and I have asked Amazon to remove it. Like all self-published authors I very much appreciate hearing from readers, and 5 star reviews certainly help sell books, but I’ll stick to the honest reviews from those who actually read and enjoyed my books! For info on any of my books please visit my Author Pages at Amazon.com and Amazon.UK.