I finally have SOME audiobooks. Prior to this it was WAY TOO EXPENSIVE. Now, Amazon/KDP is creating them for me for FREE. I am very grateful … but then again I am one of their more LOYAL & longtime clients. I have been with KDP for over a decade.
Very slick. Very easy. Some hitches.
KDP is looking into some of the issues.
I have listened to 3 of the titles.
They sound REAL, REAL good. Voices aren’t optimum, BUT 1,000% better than IF I tried to read them out aloud.
Some of my books are IDEALLY suited for AUDIO. So, I am THRILLED.
Particularly happy about the titles I HIGHLIGHTED.
I hate ebooks — both reading & producing them. I don’t read ebooks & only produce them because I have to. I hate ebooks. I like PRINTED books.
But, I appreciate that I have to keep up with the times.
And that is WHY ‘Vella’.
Vella is where you write content EPISODE-by-EPISODE. You don’t publish a complete finished book. Instead to publish one chapter at a time.
Vella has been around for a couple of years. I looked at it.
THEN yesterday, New Year’s Day, a chance, throwaway remark by a ‘Facebook‘ friend got me thinking. He, unintentionally, gave me an idea for a Vella Series. That led me to think of 3 MORE. So, now, today, I have 4 Vella books in my head. That is a good start.
So, I am giving you a heads up. Not sure HOW it will work out. I will start slowly.
I even got this last month SAYING that I would get ZERO, i.e., $0.00, royalty on some of my books. Yes, I had to increase the list price — as of last week. BUT, even with that. $0.96 on a $23 book — i.e., 4%.
Click to ENLARGE.
I am NOT complaining — not that complaining will get me anywhere.
I am VERY FORTUNATE that I don’t have to rely on any monies I make from my books — for anything. I survive trading options. {SMILE} It is hard life, but I have to make living.
But, I feed bad for those who want to make living as authors. IF you are mega-successful you are FINE. Very fine. If you sell 10,000 books, your .96 cents, will be $9,600. That is not bad.
Yes, royalties are better on eBook BUT I hate eBooks.
What cracks me up is that everyone makes MORE MONEY selling my books than I do!
That is kind of crazy. But, I am OK with that. I can ask for more money & insist that they make less. But, it is not in I to do that. Runs in the family.
I am, among my many faults, is NOT GREEDY when it comes to money (just food, wine & you know what {SMILE}). I am THANKFUL everyday that I am not greedy when it comes to money. From what I can see, those that are tend to be miserable, daily. That I am NOT. SMILE.
Click to ENLARGE.Click to ENLARGE. E-mail I got earlier today.
Yikes! NOT good news, certainly not for I.
To be honest I am not that bothered by a drop in my bookroyalties — mainly because I don’t make that much! SMILE. Kind of sour grapes.
But, NOT making anything from the sale of a paperback, i.e., ZERO ROYALTIES, just seems WRONG. Like a slap in the face. KDP, to its credit, did provide me, via a spreadsheet, a list of all my book that will fall into this dreaded ZERO ROYALTY category. I have no choice BUT to raise the prices. YIKES. And I am SORRY, very sorry.
This price increase, ALAS, also hits my ‘Bold Coast‘ books. Unlike my other books I do sell the ‘Bold Coast‘ books to outlets (i.e., gift shops & motels) so they can resell them. Now I will have to increase, ALBEIT NOT BY MUCH, what I charge them. They in turn will have to increase the prices they charge. Yes, overall, less books will be sold. DAMN! Not happy. Sad day. This did make me kind of sad.
This new archiving option allows you to keep your ‘bookshelf’, i.e., repertoire of KDP titles, TIDY. That is really all it is about.
If you have old titles or unpublished ones on your bookshelf cluttering it (& making quick browsing of it confusing) this is an option. The title, if published, will continue to remain published & for sale. It just won’t clutter up your Bookshelf. I already used it. Came in handy. My Bookshelf is finally TIDY. I am happy.
1/ Never start off by using this workaround because it is GOOD to make sure that your margins are within limits & noting will get cut-off. Got that?
You should ONLY use this ‘trick’ if you are 120% certain that there is nothing wrong with your margins (& gutter) that NOTHING, BUT NOTHING will get inadvertently trimmed off during production. Got that?
2/ The KDP Paperback Previewer is getting more crochety in its old age — or, to be kinder, as it gets more mature. It, literally, cuts you no slack. If you have anything that barely touches the trim lines, it flags the book as being unprintable!
This is where you need to use your experience, expertise & judgement. Check the pages. Are you well & truly outside the trim lines. IF so, you really should fix it. But, is it just the case that you have text & maybe some graphics that are JUST on the line. Not over it. Just on the line.
In cricket, the line ALWAYS belongs to the umpire.
Well, KDP doesn’t have any LIVE umpires you can appeal to for some mercy. It is binary. You have to fix the margins BEFORE you can go ahead.
3/ This overzealous Previewer really only starts to show its unpleasant side when you are dealing with BIG books, with THICK spines, i.e., books with over (say) 500 pages.
4/ Well I stumbled upon a workaround. ONCE I have triple ascertained that nothing is really outside the trim lines, I set the BLEED SETTING to BLEED! Smile. You work it out. That is all I am saying. Just trying to help. SMILE.
P.S., You can ONLY use BLEED with manuscripts submitted in PDF form. OK?
I remember when ‘Lulu‘ came to be {& I just checked to make sure that in was indeed in 2002}. I signed up quite quickly & was initially a huge fan. I did some small projects, including a ‘British Cathedrals calendar’ (below), which I TRIED to sell on their online store. I never tried to publish a book with Lulu. Those were the days when I still used outside publishers. When I got around to publishing my first book, ON MY OWN, I did NOT use Lulu! I don’t remember why. I used ‘AuthorHouse‘ — & that was a profound mistake. Eventually, by the time of my 3rd self-published book I had discovered ‘CreateSpace‘ (which eventually MERGED with KDP) & have never looked back since. ‘CreateSpace’ was GREAT & after about 18-months of teething-problems KDP Paperback Publishing has become as good.
Click to ENLARGE.
Well, after a 20-year hiatus I went back to Lulu yesterday. I am not THRILLED with the print quality, from KDP, of my 1sr PHOTO-BOOK, i.e., ‘Bold Coast, Maine — In Color‘. The paper is not glossy & heavy enough. So, after looking around I eventually went with Lulu. Compared to others, they were the least ONEROUS. I was, however, quite frustrated. Lulu wants HUGE margins to prevent the cover & inside pages getting accidently TRIMMED during production. So, I had to slightly condense all my pages. That did not make me very happy.
The print costs were much higher than KDP, but I opted for the highest quality paper etc. So, I can’t bitch about that. Print turnaround & delivery are ABSURD. 6-days to print a BOOK! 6-days. Then a week or more to get it to me. We will see. But, I hope the print quality makes it all worthwhile.
I discovered this, to my cost & horror, earlier today. I was rushing ahead to get a new paperback published. I had been working on the cover, heads down, all day, & now that it was done I wanted it submitted for publishing BEFORE the weekend. So, I was rushing, even more than I normally do when I get close to having a book ready.
This book, my 38th, was a FIRST for I. My first photo book. Yep, a photo book with a very few words! Who would have thought. It also happened to be the FIRST paperback I have published where the whole book (bar the cover) was in just ONE MS Word document.
All of my other paperbacks are split across MULTIPLE Word documents. These days I have, at a minimum, this set of Word documents per paperback book: front matter, TOC, Preface, Notes, body I, body II …, backmatter, Index, last_pages. I create a PDF from each & then use the PDF merge function to create the final book image PDF. {By the way, for the last 10-months — & as such last 3 books — I use, with great success ‘Foxit PDF Editor Pro‘.
In this case, with this short, i.e., 53-page, page I had all 53 pages in one Word file.
That was ‘the mistake’. In my hurry I forgot to create a PDF! YES. I forgot to make a PDF. I am still in disbelief & SHOCK. I, Anura Guruge, FORGOT to MAKE A PDF! Has to be dotage. I might have to stop this writing/publishing lark soon IF I continue to make mistakes like this.
KDP {happily} let me submit the Word file without a demur — or a warning saying “Are you sure you don’t have a PDF?”
My first intimation that something was different was when I launched the mandatory ‘Book Previewer’. WOW! It was quick. Like near instantaneous. I should have realized that something was wrong then. I didn’t. Old age.
Then to my horror the book was a MESS. Margins were off & that screwed up the pagination. The book was 59 pages long as opposed to my 53. SO, here is another strange thing. Though we are only talking FRACTIONS my cover size should have been wrong. KDP should have flagged me. I was beyond distressed.
Like a crazy person I started editing my Word file to resubmit WHEN it hit me. WHAT ARE YOU DOING? You don’t submit Word files to KDP, you submit PDFs.
It was a HUGE RELIEF to discover that the fix was simple. Just create a new PDF & submit that. That is exactly what I did.
The Preview process took much, much longer. But, my book looked like what it should. It was also at 53-pages.
So, I am doing this post as a HEADS-UP for you. Just make sure you submit the RIGHT file type to KDP. KDP is NOT going to flag you. {I think they should}
