Tag: Publishing

I’m in the process of making wine and it occurred to me, wine and writing have much in common! I’m not referring to drinking wine while writing – though that works well sometimes too. What I am referring to is the wine making process. Here’s why:

1)    Ingredients
Like all the ingredients that go into wine making, so do many pieces go into building a story. We all start with an idea, then another idea, then as the story is thought out, many ideas – all going into one masterpiece.

2)    Mix it all together
For wine, yeast is added. For writing, throw in some catalyst ideas to make things interesting. Mix it all up….juggle the ideas around….start writing!

3)    Take a reading
A tool is used for wine – a hydrometer. It measures sugar content to track how sugar is being converted to alcohol. What tools do we use as writers? There are many out there. Read what has been written and think about where the story is going. I like to write all my ideas and let the story guide me. Other writers may use outlines. This step is to evaluate the next steps in the story.

4)    Let it sit
The 1st draft of the story is complete. The wine is fermenting nicely – now time needs to take over to do the job.

5)    Racking
After a period of time, it’s time to rack the fermenting wine to another vessel. This removes the wine from the sediment of dropped yeast. A story needs to be revisited after it’s been setting for a month or so. New ideas will appear, errors will stand out. The story may seem like junk at this point. The wine doesn’t taste good either! Time to edit/revise!

Repeat….
Repeat…..
Repeat….

With each stage, the wine gets clearer, brighter, and smoother…as does the story.

6)    Aging
After numerous rackings, the wine is clear and smells great! A story has been honed and errors have been corrected. Now it’s time to reach out to agents or get ready to self-publish. This takes time. The longer wine sits in bulk, the better it gets. Did the story land a publisher or ready to self-publish? Time for step 7! If not, what’s wrong with waiting a little longer to make things even better?

7)    Bottling
This is the last step to the process in wine making. The wine is ready for bottling and is siphoned to smaller bottles. Labels are glued to the bottle and the wine is ready for drinking (or bottle aging). The story is with an agent or has been self-published. Now everyone can enjoy what has been created! (or hate it – we all have different tastes).

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I hoped to help those thinking about publishing their books online themselves, by sharing some of the pitfalls and troubles I have experienced with the process of publishing my novel with Amazon.  My first post related to forgetting to enter the author name.  I’m still amazed at how I managed to fall for that one but from what I’ve read online in the Kindle support forum, it’s a fairly common mistake.  At least that is what I keep telling myself.

Today’s post is not about forgetting names, but is about Amazon’s option to publish through their program, KDP Select.

What is KDP Select?

It took me some time to understand, but in summary, KDP Select is a large fund for authors who enroll their books in the program.  I believe that this month’s fund is $600,000.00.  The amount is adjusted every month based on how many participants have signed into the program.  What the fund covers are the books that are “borrowed”.  The books that are eligible to be borrowed are those where the author has chosen to participate in KDP Select.  Every time a book is borrowed, it is assigned a portion of the fund.  It is a very small percentage so to make any decent amount of money; a book would have to be borrowed a lot.

It took me some time to decide if I wanted to enroll in the program.  Not because I thought the earnings would be minimal on borrowed books – I believe that by participating in the Kindle library it in increases a book’s reach, but because Amazon requires that an author make the book exclusive to Amazon for ninety days.  This means that the author’s work cannot be posted anywhere else electronically for that period of time.

To help sway people to still participate after the exclusivity contract, Amazon adds in a five day promotional period that can be used at any time during the ninety days.  I read that section and thought, “Great! I’ll do it!”  That was until I read the next statement that any books bought during a promotional period are free.

A lot of people swear by the program and an equal number of people hate it.  So why do it?  I’ll save that for another post.

This is going to be a very quick note to let everyone know that my story, “Conduit: The Beginning“, is now available for purchase for the Kindle at Amazon.com.

I am of course very excited, but I’m also extremely busy trying to get the word out.  For those that read my novel and enjoy it, please let others know about my story.  Publishing a novel is but one step of the process, but the other step of getting the word out so that people know the story exists is probably the most difficult.  At least that it is what I have discovered.

I’m off to blaze a trail in cyberspace now.  Wish me luck!