Tom nodded and started forward, gathering his energy for moving them about fifteen feet up and across. Just as he was about to do so, Septimus grasped his shoulder and pointed to a window at one end of the top floor. The frightened face of a young woman had appeared at it. For a brief moment, she looked into Tom’s eyes and then turned away and disappeared into the building. Did he hear a male voice calling her name: calling “Mary”? Fleetingly Tom recalled the dream: now was the moment.

“Got it, mate, right let’s go!” Tom grasped Septimus’ hand and Walked them both upwards and forwards. In his mind, he passed through the raging flames that engulfed the ground floor and up to the first floor. There, he and Septimus appeared at the end of the landing. Tom heard voices and turned to see a family group standing facing away from him at the far end. He spun round looking for a hiding place, but then jerked backwards as his companion tugged him by his collar into a room at the front of the house.

“Hush, we must not be found,” Septimus whispered, holding his finger to his lips, “at least, not yet.”

Tom looked about him; they were apparently in the baker’s bedroom. There was a large low bed in the room with a cot at its foot, but otherwise it was pretty bare and Spartan; not even a rug on the bare floorboards. He thought back to his own room full of books, games, clothes and junk and was amazed at how little these folk had.

They heard a clattering on the wooden landing as the family came towards them, then halted at the top of the stairs leading down to the ground floor.

“What do we do?” A frightened woman’s voice asked; “We can’t get out. We will all be burned!”

There was the sound of children crying. They were terrified. No wonder, thought Tom – he was too. Then, a young man’s voice shouted out.

“Quick, out the back of my room!” and there were more running footsteps as the family moved away, searching for an escape route.

“Right, come on!” Septimus ordered. They opened the door and went back out onto the landing. At the top of the stairs in the rear wall was a door leading into another room. From it, they could hear the voices of the family. Moving quickly to the door and peeking round it, they could see the children being passed up to a young man who was outside the window, balancing on the roof of the next house in the row. Only then did Tom recall that in his dream Mary had called the young man Jack. The baker and his wife moved past Jack and up onto the roof. As soon as they were safe, he came back to the window and was now encouraging Mary to join him. She stepped forward, but then appeared to lose her nerve and backed away from the window.

At that moment, fire surged up the stairs towards the two Walkers. Septimus cried out, then stumbled and fell hard onto the wooden floor, pulling Tom with him. Weakened by the fire from below, the wooden landing collapsed and they both fell through the hole.

Tom managed to catch hold of a ceiling beam as he fell, leaving him dangling down into the room below. Septimus landed with a crash on top of the baker’s table in the middle of the room on the ground floor. Despite the inferno all around it the table was as yet intact. It was, however, smouldering.

“Septimus!” Tom yelled, but his friend did not respond and appeared to be out cold on the table below. The flames advanced on them both from all sides. Tom tried to Walk, but could not concentrate enough to focus on the Flow of Time. With a growing sense of despair, he felt the heat rise. His hair crackled and his shoes started to smoulder. Below him, one leg of the baker’s table caught fire. The table creaked then, with a snap, the leg gave way and the whole thing collapsed, throwing Septimus’ limp form onto the floor.

There was another roar and from the ends of the room two huge waves of fire swept towards them; at any moment it would surround them. This was it, Tom thought. Who would have reckoned he would die in the Great Fire of London? He braced himself, the muscles in his arm screaming at him to let go of the beam.

“STOP!” yelled a female voice from beside him.

What happened next, Tom would not have believed possible, had he not been hanging there waiting to be incinerated. It was as if someone had pressed the pause on a DVD: the banks of flame just froze. From the roaring further back, it seemed this effect was very local but, for a moment at least, they had a reprieve. What, Tom asked himself, had stopped the flames in that extraordinary way? He looked round and saw that right next to him, kneeling on the landing and peering down through the gap, was Mary Brown. Her face wore an expression of intense concentration. Still gritting her teeth, she slowly turned her head and looked into his eyes.

“Cannot hold it … much longer,” she finally said, sweat running down her face.

Tom nodded. Explanations could wait until later. So, hanging on with one hand he reached down and pulled the long iron chain out of his belt and threw the end of it to Mary, who caught it and then stared down at him.

Tom yelled, “Hold this a mo!” and letting go of the beam he dropped down into the room below. The chain had enough slack so Mary could hold one end; the other end with its globe of water was still tucked in Tom’s belt. He felt the searing heat from the wall of flame, halted in its tracks, but beginning to waver. Bending down he grabbed Septimus by the lapel then reached out to the Flow of Time, relieved to feel its presence once again. Just then, Mary, overcome by fumes, gave a grunt and fainted to the floor, the chain still clutched in her hands. At the same moment, the fire surged forward once more, reaching the table, which now erupted into flame.

As Tom pulled all three of them away, the landing above them collapsed and showered the ground with burning rubble. In the nick of time they had gone from the seventeenth century, forward three hundred and fifty years, away from the Great Fire and into the present day.

Tomorrow’s Guardian is a Time Travel adventure for Young Adults:
Time Travel Sounds like fun until you try it.

 Watch the Trailer:

On October 30th 1938 one of the most dramatic mass panics caused by the mass media occured in the USA. Orson Wells who was only 23 at the time broadcast “War of the Worlds” – a realistic dramatization of HG Wells classic novel. These days we are used to similar undertakings – The Blair Witch Project for example. But in 1938 it was ground breaking and turned one of the most developed nations in the world into gibbering wrecks.

Welles had not intended the programme to be a hoax but the way it played out was very different. At the start of the show, at 8pm,  an announcement was made.  “The Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in ‘War of the Worlds’ by H.G. Wells.” Nice and clear you might say. BUT as it happened MOST Americans were listening to another popular station at the time and only tuned into the Columbia 12 minutes into the broadcast.

When they tuned in, listeners would have heard dance music. Suddenly an announcer broke in with a report from an Observatory which had supposedly detected explosions on the planet Mars. Soon after another  reporter related the fact that a large meteor had crashed into a farmer’s in New Jersey. This reporter went on to describe finding a metal cylinder at the site. Next he told of grey tentacles emerging from the cylinder and soon after the creature’s body.

Soon afterwards the programme described the  ‘Martians’ building warmachinces and attacking National Guards. Welles used modern (at the time) sound effects and the ‘reporters’ were of course actors who made a good job of being dramatic, terrified and excited.

It was enough the convince as many as a million listeners that a real  invasion was underway. In New Jersey the highways were gridlocked by locals desperately trying to escape the aliens. Around the country people started praying for survival or calling the police for gas masks.

Eventually Welles went on the air and told listeners that it was all just fiction. Afterwards Welles was worried that the episode would destroy his career.  In fact, the publicity helped land him a contract to make Citizen Kane.

I have to say that to me Welles must be praised. To be able to make a show THAT convincing deserves admiration.

For a self published author of Paperbacks or e-books via Kindle setting up an Amazon Author Page should be part of your overall author platform.

It is a focal point where all your books are listed, there is a bio about you, you can link to twitter and other social networks and upload video.

Amazon UK and US have different Author pages BUT there are very similar.

Getting Started

You will start by going to

https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk

Here you can use your existing Amazon user name and password to login.

Once in you have several options:

You can edit your profile.

This page allows you to

• connect to Twitter (so your feed shows up)
• upload videos
• upload pictures
• write a bio
• list events that you are attending – book launchings etc
• and in the US (but not yet UK) link to your blog so posts appear.

List Books

You can now list all your books. This will involve clicking the add book button and supplying the required data (ISBN etc)

That is about it. If you do the same on USA (and I imagine German and French sites although I have not done that yet) you now have a quite details page that means readers can find out more about you.

My Amazon page is here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Richard-John-Denning/e/B003CUUJM4

What I learnt on my first Virtual Book Blog Tour

by Richard Denning

From 31st January until the 17th of March I embarked on a Virtual Blog Tour. Now it is over I thought it might be worthwhile feeding back some thoughts on how it went. Here then is a quick guide to what I did.

1. Finding the blogs. Tomorrow’s Guardian is Young Adult  Time Travel Fiction so What I did was to google terms such as Young Adult Fiction Blogs , Sci Fi book blogs etc. So firstly you need to identify your target audience. There is no point having the blog tour take in gardening books blog sites if it is Sci-Fi as the readers of those sites wont be interested. I then trawled through the sites looking for appropriate ones that matched the sort of book I was promoting.
   TIP: There is a useful site that lists Blogs willing to review books. On the site he lists many blogs but also sells a 99cents pdf which is well worth the download as it  contains a nice little reveiw of each blog with an idea of their policies and numbers of followers. http://www.stepbystepselfpublishing.net/book-reviewer-list.html
2. So now I looked over the sites and established how many followers they had. I had no problem doing a blog on a small site or new site as I saw it as me helping them as well as them helping me BUT it makes sense to focus your tour on sites with hundreds of followers (or more). Many of these sites list the numbers of followers they have on Facebook and Google Friends or Twitter.
3. Find the policy page. Most blogs will somewhere have a page that states what their policy is on doing book reviews, giveaways, hosting guest posts etc. They may also say whether they have any problems looking at self/independently published authors. Some get snooty about this. Others are open to looking at anything. Some will say that they are busy at present and can’t take new books till they clear their backlog. If in doubt locate an email address and send them a query. This can at times be hard as some blogs make it difficult to contact them.
4. Email the Blog. I sent a press release about the book with short blurb, cover image and if possible some existing reviews or links to the Amazon page if it has reviews on. I politely asked about the possibility of them reviewing the book. Then I offered to take part in giveaways (ebook giveaways cost you nothing if you have done your own conversion, paperbacks cost you a few quid but I see this as an advertising expense) and also to provide them with content by way of a guest post. Most blogs will lap up guest posts. Make them interesting but linked in some way to your book.
5. You can tell a lot from how quickly they respond to the email and if you send a follow up query how quickly they come back on that. Some site owners just put up a site, review 2 or 3 books and loose interest. Some owners agree to review your book and then fail to post a review or even to reply to emails. There is no easy way to pick this up apart from trial and error and I have already started drawing up my own list of good sites and bad sites. Once you do have communication going back and forth I offer a few dates to the blog owner. Try and give them at least 4 weeks notice and probably more like 2 months. Everyone has busy lives and people need time to read and review a book. I also agree about giveways, deadline on any guest post submission and also try and get an undertaking for the reviews to go up on Amazon and Goodreads as well as the owner putting it out on facebook.
6. I collect the various blog dates into a tour itinerary and when it is fairly full publicise the dates. Get that on your website, Facebook and Twitter.
7. Write all your guest posts. Try and get them done way before the actual tour itself. Tuck them away and when called for email the Blog owners. They will often come back and say “all set up and scheduled to run”. A few days before each blog post/ visit I email them and check all is ok.
8. On the day of the post I see that it is up and then link to the PERMALINK. That is the actual individual address of the post NOT the Blog’s own URL. Usually if you click on the title of the post and save that address this will be a permanent link. I put that link on my website as well and now drop in a mention on Facebook and Twitter.
9. I follow up the visit with a thank you email and keep the channels open for a return visit.
10. Ideally I would then make some notes about each site so I can remember what went well and what not so well. Sometimes a Blog NEVER appeared on the agreed day. I usually follow that up with a polite “hope everything is OK” type message. If I hear nothing I send another similar message. Then I drop it and leave it to them to come back and make a note not to use them again.

Does it cost?

Well the short answer is “it depends”. There are a number of sites that now ONLY take e-books. If you have done your own e-book conversion it costs nothing other than your time. If you need to supply paperbacks to say 20 sites then that will cost a bit BUT just think a moment. If you place a single advert anywhere you will spend quite a bit of money. £7 to £8 to post a paperback to some one (including the book cost) should be seen as advertising expense in my opinion. I treat giveaways the same. Keep the numbers manageable though. I usually offer 1-2 paperbacks and 5 e-books.

So was it all worth it?

Time will tell. I have had reasonable (if not stellar) sales of paperbacks and e-books during the blog tour. Reviews you gathered and guest posts sit on the internet and provide ongoing advertising for you.

TIP: set up Google Alerts. You can specify various words and phrases such as “Tomorrow’s Guardian” or “Richard Denning” and then each day you get an email telling you if and where those terms come up. Many are not relevant but I find I pick up on many mentions of topics I want to know about and find reviews and comments and even forum posts and discussions. That way you can automate some of the monitoring of the internet but still keep an eye on what is going on.

Promoting and selling books is an on going and very hard task. The new world of publishing that the internet and ebooks allows has made it possible for small press, independent authors to get their books out there. But we need to be onto everytrick there is to help that process. Doing a Virtual Book tour is one of them.

Check out my own tour here:

http://www.richarddenning.co.uk/blogtour.html

The defeat that shook the Victorian World

The Anglo-Zulu war of 1879 started with a great defeat for the British invaders. On the 22nd January 20,000 Zulu’s overwhelmed a force of 1800 British and allies on the plain beneath the mountain of Isandlwana and destroyed it. An entire battalion of British Infantry was wiped out to the last man. It was a defeat that stunned a Victorian Britain which was used to victory and conquest.

This battle, along with the stubborn and heroic defence of Rorke’s Drift the following night by the British garrison there, has always been of interest to me as it seems to exemplify the heights of human heroism (exhibited by both sides) coupled with the depths of folly and horrors that only war can bring.

Background

The origins of the conflict with the Zulus in 1879 have strange parallels with the conflicts in the gulf and the Middle East. In fairly recent times the US and allies’ interventions in the gulf have been seen by some as spurred on by a concern about access to oil. Whether that is true or not the British government in Cape Town back then did not take much interest in the interior of South Africa and much less Zululand until diamonds and other resources were discovered there. Suddenly in the 1870s efforts and policies were introduced aimed towards confederation of the various colonies under a strong British rule.

Amongst the territories brought under the British Crown was Natal and the Boer’s homeland of Transvaal. The Boer’s main enemy and rival was the strong and powerful independent nation that had arisen under Shaka Zulu in the 1830’s. A nation that could put 25,000 warriors in the field was a threat to the security of Transvaal and so ultimately all of South Africa. Or at least THAT is the way that Sir Henry Frere – the British governor – looked at it.

Frere sent Cetshwayo – the Zulu King a series of demands and ultimatums insisting that he disband his army and allow a British governor into his capital Ulundi. Frere knew that Cetshwayo would never agree to that and when the Zulu King declined his demands, the British general Chelmsford was ordered to invade.

Chelmsford’s original plan envisaged splitting his army into 5 columns which would invade and converge on Ulundi. Chelmsford himself accompanied the central columns (II and III). They marched to the mission station at Rorke’s Drift and on 11th January began the invasion. It would have been better to have waited a few weeks as in January there was heavy rain and as a result moving a large army with baggage and artillery would take a long time. However Frere was eager to have the matter resolved and so the British went in. The result was that it took many days for the central column to assemble fully inside Zululand at a base Chelmsford has established beneath an odd shaped mountain called Isandlwana.

What Happened

Cetshwayo heard of the invasion soon after it had begun and on 17th January ordered 24,000 men to move towards Isandlwana, although some 4000 splitt off to move towards Column I. On 21st January the Zulu Impi had arrived near the British camp. Chelmsford’s scouts had seen it approach but could not fix its location precisely so on the 22nd Chelmsford decided to take half his force away on a march to try and locate the enemy.

This left Major Pulliene – a staff officer and administrator in the base with his 1700 men. Chelmsford had refused to order the camp to form into a laager – a reinforced camp with wagons around the outside, trenches and thorn bushes pulled into impede attack. He did not feel it was neccesary and was scathing of threat posed by the Impi.

This mistake would prove to be costly for the Zulu commander had out maneouvered Chelmsford and whilst the British general was chasing around trying to locate him, the Impi moved forward in redinness to fall on Pulleine.

The crunch happened when a patrol of Natal mounted trops attached to the British command moved out of the camp to scout some valleys to the north east. There in a valley within a couple of miles of the camp was the entire Zulu army. As one the zulus rose up and attacked the fleeing horsemen and followed them up and out onto the plain.

Pulleine formed the 24th Foot up into firing lines and the British Infantry began puring volleys from their Martini Henry Rifles into the enemy ranks. The zulus fell in droves but still came on- massing and waiting to charge. Actually the redcoats held the vast numbers away for a long time but then something went wrong.

Around 1.15 pm that day the Natal irregular companies out on the British right wing were outflanked and fell back. More or less at that moment Pulleine was ordering the Regular companies to pull back to shorten their line. There was also a shortage of ammunition reaching the forward companies. There was a vast supply in the camp but for some reason these were not being handed out quickly enough. A combination of these factors meant that the previously pinned Zulu Impi was able to charge the British line.

Gaps appeared in the companies, then the gaps widened as the warriors surged through them. In a matter of fifteen minutes the Zulu army overwhelmed the British and the wings of the Impi swung into deny escape to all save a lucky 80 or so men. The colour party with the regimental and the Queen’s flag wrapped the flags around the chests of two officers who made a bid to reach the Buffalo river. Their bodies were later found in the river, where they had fallen.

It was all over in a flash and the British had suffered a huge defeat.

Aftermath

Cetshwayo had ordered that the Impi should NOT invade Natal and should stop on his side of the border. However a few thousand Zulus who had not fought at Isandlwana decided to attack the British base at the mission station of Rorke’s Drift. Throughout the night of the 22nd to 23rd January they led repeated attacked against a single company of British that fortified it. 11 Victoria crosses would be handed out for the bravery of officers and men on the 24th Foot stationed there. The Zulus broke of the attack in the morning.

Cetshwayo had missed two opportunities to inflict a decisive defeat. His Impi had not attacked the column under Chelmsford, nor captured Rorke’s Drift. As a result, the war was not yet over.

News of the defeat at Isandlwana reached London on 11th February and caused an uproar. It literally stunned the nation and even the Queen demanded to know why her soldiers were fighting the Zulus.  It  is small wonder then that the subsequent news of Rorke’s drift arriving hot on the heels of the disaster was greeted with enthusiasm.

Nevertheless the defeat lead to a calling off of the of the January invasion. It would be June before the British army would be in a state to resume the war and July before the Impi was defeated at the battle of Ulundi. Cetshwayo was captured by the British in August but, perhaps in recognition of the bravery of his army, was treated pretty well, became something of a celebrity in London and was allowed to live on a pension for the rest of his life. His Kingdom, however, was absorbed into the British Territory of South Africa.

So then, a terrible battle and a tragic outcome for a brave warrior people. It remains a dramatic moment in history.

In Tomorrow’s Guardian, Edward Dyson – a officer in the 24th, is believed perished in the battle. Tom and his companion Septimus travel back in time to rescue him and bring him to the present day.

Find out more about Tomorrow’s Guardian as well as listen to an account of the battle and the rescue of Edward here:

http://www.richarddenning.co.uk/tomguard.html

How to self publish your own e-books – a brief over view.

In many ways 2011 is the year when e-books will come of age. Last year saw record sales of Kindles and Ipads and other readers and also saw e-books outstrip hardbacks on Amazon.com. Sales in the UK are not yet at the same levels as in the States but it is likely that this next year or two they will only increase. If you are an author – published or self published – you need to be aware of these little devices and be looking to get involved in this revolution.

My previous post talked about how to make your book into a Kindle format e-book and how to go about uploading it on to Amazon Kindle. Kindle’s are only one of the formats available and so it is important to be able to get your book into various file types and to make sure they look good and work on the readers.

A word about formats

There are many e-book formats out there. The main ones are:

Making your E-books The Easy Way – Smashwords

Smashwords is one of the most important routes into E-book publishing

Based in the States, Smashwords is a way to get your e-book out there. It is an online site that will take a word document and convert it into multiple formats. It then houses all those ebooks on a page for the author. The author can set the price of the ebook, offer discount coupons if they want and decide which of various distribution channels to use. Via Smashwords you have access to Amazon Kindle, Apple ibook, Diesel, Kobo, Sony and Barnes & Noble. Any sales on those sites for your book eventually materialise in royalties to you. Likewise any sales on Smashwords itself earns you income.

This is what my Smashword page looks like for Tomorrow’s Guardian.

Good Points: You format your book once and Smashwords does the work converting it into all these output files. You can set the price you want, offer discounts etc. There is a free sample (you can decide how much of the book to allow for free) which allows readers to try the book. You can add videos and reviews and links to where your physical book is sold.

Bad Points: You do need to be able to handle the technical instructions of the Style Guide – a pdf you can download. I printed this off and worked through it next to my screen. You have to be able cope with changing various settings inside Word, removing formatting and cleaning the file. You have to be patient. This takes time. But if your file passes the Smashwords Premium Catalogue requirements you have access to those distribution channels AND what is more your can be sure the same file will be acceptable on Kindle etc if you want to have ebook sales direct from your own site. There is a strong argument for starting with Smashwords, getting the ebook out there and then maybe moving on.

Another issue is that Smashwords is in the US and if you are outside the US it will hold back a big chunk of Tax. To get this back you will have to apply for a US tax number (a whole other subject but which involves much paperwork). This is only worth doing if your have substantial earnings. IE Not me!!

In conclusion you REALLY need to be on Smashwords. It is the portal to the world of e-book retailers. BUT it is not the only option. There are other e-books sites and it is a good idea to have a look about but you cant go wrong starting with Smashwords.

Making your e-books the Harder Way – DIY.

It is not actually that hard to make your own e-books but it takes time and involves using different programs to make it all work. You may have to experiment with different options and try out conversions multiple times until it works. For example I struggled to get images into my file and I also found some of my books added spaces between paragraphs.  So there is a technical aspect to this which will not suit some. There are companies who you can pay to do this BUT if you are confident with PCs and happy to experiment it is certainly possible over a few days to get your e-books converted.

So here is a starting point: you will already have a properly formatted e book version of your word doc because you have worked at it in order to get onto Smash-words.

Option 1 Take that document and load it onto a free to use online converter called http://www.2epub.com/. This is really easy to use and will output Mobi, ePub, LRF and other files.

Option 2 Save the Word DOC as HTML (TOP TIP: save as web page filtered. This cuts out many Microsoft Office tags in the HTML code and for example is what fixed by extra line between paragraphs issue).  Save the HTML file in its own folder where you know where it is. This HTML file can now be read in a browser and is one of the formats you may want to offer anyway. Now download and install a programme called Calibre. This is also free.
http://www.calibre-ebook.com/

Calibre is great because it not only converts to many many formats but it also acts as an emulator of pretty much any e-book reader. (See later)

Your screen may be a bit different - depends on the version but the buttons will look like this

Once installed you click add books and go get your HTML file. (If you have internal images I advise that you zip the HTML file AND the accompanying folder with the images in that you will create when you saved that word doc to HTML. If you saved the HTML file in its own folder like I told you two you should find a sub-folder alongside your file which has all the images in. Then add the zip file to Calibre.

Once you have the book added you can click on the metadata button and make sure all the info like author and title are correct. Now click on Convert. At this stage add your cover image. (You want to make sure the use source file check box is UNCHECKED and browse and add the cover file for each conversion you use. Otherwise the cover file does not get added) Select the output format (Mobi etc) on the right hand side and the ebook is created. You can open the ebook and it will look like it should in a compatible e-book reader. In fact you NEED to open the book and take a look at it. This is important Make sure it looks right before you publish it. That said it is not a disaster if you find errors later. You can republish the file and let your buyers know a new version exists.

Now save to disk.

Selling the book

This is a whole other subject but what you now need to do is setup a webpage with Paypal Buy now buttons on. When the buyer goes through Paypal you can set it up so that they will get forwarded to a hidden download page upon which you put your ebook files. Here is my buy page with that button on: http://www.merciabooks.co.uk/buying.html#TGebook

and here is the page you get sent to from paypal:

This is a shot of my own download page. You can configure Paypal to direct you to the download page.

I will do another more detailed article on the subject of selling the books along with marketing them.

I am the author of 2 ebook versions of my novels:
Tomorrow’s Guardian
and
The Amber Treasure

Further Reading:

I would suggest buying a very detailed guide on this subject:

A self help guide to publishing your e-book on the World’s biggest bookstore.

A few days before Christmas 2010 I put my first two e-books on Amazon Kindle. As I have been asked how you go about doing that I thought I would do a short “How To” guide.

E-books sales are rapidly expanding. Sales in the US are booming and in fact in July, sales of e-books there outstripped sales of Hardbacks for the first time. Paperbacks still have the biggest market share and many people would find it hard to believe that e-books will replace paperback versions BUT the trend is towards e-books.

In the UK e-books sales are still at a much earlier stage and only about 5% of ebook sales are mainstream fiction. Most e-books sold are academic books. This however is likely to change with many retailers reporting bumper sales of Kindles and Ipads this Christmas. As there are far fewer e-books titles than traditional books available there is a much smaller market for authors to compete in.

Whether we like it or not e-books are here to stay and authors and publishers need to adapt to the new marketplace it creates. One thing it does do it make publishing even easier for self publishers.

In traditional publishing it is impossible for small press publishers or self publishers to compete on price with big companies who can print thousands of books at a pound or two each when Self Publishers are printing a few hundred at maybe £4 each. When you consider the discounts that you need to offer book traders and the 60% discount you give to Amazon, this pushes the price of the books (Its R.R.P.) to £10 or more. When most paperbacks are about £6 or £7 this makes it hard to get your foot in the door of bookshops.

With e-books, the playing field is more level. It costs little or nothing to convert your book to a Kindle ready format. You also get to select the price of the book. In the case of Amazon you must choose 35% royalties or 70% royalties. Selecting 70% means the minimum price for a book is higher than at 35%. In either event 35% or 70% represents a much high share of the sale price than would expect from a paperbook. Amazon might reduce the price IF it finds it cheaper elsewhere.

How to do it
So then how do you go about getting your book on Kindle? Firstly you need to make sure this is your book of course. If you have a publisher it is they that should be doing this. But if you are self published like myself and you have full worldwide rights to the book then you can put it on.

1. Go to this site (The digital text publishing site at Amazon):
https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin
You can login using your existing Amazon account or create a new one.
Once logged in you will at some stage have to check and set up details such as name and address and how you want paying. At present DTP will only send cheques to UK users but in the US you can be paid electronically. As Amazon advantage (used to sell books) and associates (Used to be paid for any Sales on Amazon originating from links to products you place on your site) both pay electronically then hopefully soon DTP will do so.

2. Take a look at this control panel:

At the top of the page for DTP there are links to
a)Bookshelf – where you add books and maintain the ones you have
b)Reports – where you get to see sales and income.
c)Community – forums and guides to what you need to know.
The guides on DTP are pretty easy to use. They do rely on some techie knowledge but certainly if you have setup websites, mucked about a bit with HTML (the language used in web pages) you wont have too much difficulty. I had a problem with a map not appearing on The Amber Treasure. I went into the FAQ and found under IMAGES the info I needed to fix that.

3. If you click on bookshelf you get the screen shown above. You will notice that I have already put on two books. You get updates here on the status of the books. Tomorrow’s Guardian is online whilst The Amber Treasure is ‘publishing’ – in this case updating since I made that change to fix the map. To add a new book click on “add a new title”.

4. You then get this screen:

Add new title

which carries on down:

Add new title continued

You now start typing in all the metadata stuff – book Title, author, description, language etc and then upload the book cover file. Finally you upload the book (see below).

5. Uploading the book.
You need to now work on your book file. There are extensive notes on how to do that within DTP but the bottom line is you need to forget much of what you learnt when setting up your paperback. Paperbacks need margin sizes, gutter widths, mirrored pages and page numbers. E-books need NONE of that because you can change the font side yourself in a Kindle (and other readers). So rip out the page numbers and headers and footers. You are best completely removing formatting and going back to plain text and then reformatting using only the formatting types Kindle likes. Don’t have too many fancy fonts. Don’t have blank lines. Use page breaks to separate chapters and fiddle with line spacing in the paragraph formatting controls to create spaces between for example your title and the first sentence, or sections of text.

There are professionals who will do all this for you at a charge BUT to be honest it is not that hard if you have patience, are happy to read help files and spend a few hours formatting. Actually it is not a disaster if you muck it up. All you do it download the file, edit and upload again. This is the beauty of e-books.

Now, DTP prefers to use a HTML file. Ideally this should be a zipped file with any internal images and tables all zipped together. It CAN handle word. I found that it lost my paragraph indents when I just uploaded word. When I went into word and saved it as HTML and uploaded the HTML file I was ok. If it is NOT OK download the HTML file, open it in an editor like dreamweaver and edit the HTML code (TECHIE ALERT!). You can try editing in WORD but if you can’t see the code you can’t see what you are doing wrong. I would suggest bringing the file into a HTML editor so you have more control over the code. DTP has full files on permissible code.

DTP will take pdf, mobi and other file types but warns that formatting might not be good. Best to use WORD and save as HTML.

6. Once you have uploaded the file you have the ability to preview the book or download the HTML file if you wish to (enabling you to edit it). You then go on to set the price:

Set the price

You will be able to decide WHERE the book is sold and whether to take 35% or 70% royalties.
You might think you would always take 70%. However the minimum price is higher with 70% Royalty (Amazon wants its smaller share to be a smaller share of a bigger price). So if you want to put up a nice cheap book at say 99p you will only be able to set this at 35% royalty.

7. Save and publish. OK now you hit the save and publish button and in 24 hours the book will be online on Amazon. You will then want to go on to DTP and perhaps add more details to the book description and also go onto the Amazon page and add tags which enable users to find the book. Tags are phrases like “Sci-Fi”, “Historical” or “Teen” that people might type into the Amazon search box. There is more you can do to enhance the page and once you identify yourself to Amazon as the publisher or author you can go on and add more details and reviews if you wish.

8. Now try and get some reviews on the book. Adding reviews on Amazon helps it show up on searches. You want these to come from OTHER people and not you. However you could add a video to the page of you doing a reading.

To see how the book finally appears on Amazon take a look at :

You will see I still need to get some fans to review it!

9. Promote the book. A whole subject but get out on the net and research book promotion.

When I started reading this Sci Fi novel I took a while to get into it. I was expecting a heroic tale of daring do set in a future British Space Empire – a sort of Space 1899 type adventure. And in a way that is what I got. We have a future world where the nations have spread out into space and the UK has carved out its chunk of territory very much like the 19th century expansion of the empire under Victoria.

However whilst that is the type of background world Toby Frost has created the style of this book is a comedy. We Brits have carried with us stiff upper lips, cold showers, traditions and tea. The hero, Captain smith has a crew consisting of a sex mad android pilot and a blood thirsty warrior alien who collects his victims skulls.

The story is actually pretty straight forward – alien race who want to wipe out humanity are after the passenger on Captain Smith’s ship for reasons it is best to read the book to find out.The crew get into a series of adventures before winning the day.

As a story it is nothing that special but the humour is entertaining and the banter between the crew amusing and at times laugh out loud funny. It is a light read and whilst maybe rating say not more than 3.5 to 4 stars out of 5 (in my opinion) I would be up for a sequel.