My tryst with self-publishing

I've been busy lately in experimenting with self-publishing. And that's the reason you haven't seen any blog updates for a while (can't think of any better excuse at the moment!) :-)

Since the novel has been eating my head I thought it better to get it published soon; this novel has been running around my mind for a while. And it gets hard when you have another story also fighting for space and time in your mind. And so I decided, enough with the amount of revisions and let's go for it. Is this novel then a half baked product? Well, I hope not - considering the amount of revisions that have been made.

I decided to do the ebook publishing first and later with the help of my friend Prem will try the print edition (if there is any interest in the book!) eBooks are easy to publish and if you haven't read a book on a eReader device like the Kindle or haven't used the eReader apps to read books then do try it out - it is a lot lot better than reading PDFs.

The reason for this blog - just wanted to list some of the things that new authors might find useful so that they don't struggle like I did for a few small things in the ebook space.

1.) Microsoft Word

Seems to be the most popular document format liked by Smashwords (who can help you distribute your ebook to many retailers like Apple's iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Flipkart etc.) Even Amazon likes Word documents.

What if you don't have MS Word - OpenOffice seems to be a good alternative.

I tried the Apple's Pages but since the format accepted was a *.doc file it is easier to use Word/OpenOffice.

What Smashwords does is take the doc file, run it through their engine to produce multiple ebook formats like epub (very popular with all ereader apps), mobi (used by Amazon's Kindle device) etc.

2.) Follow the rules

I never knew about using styles in word processors; Smashwords has a comprehensive guide that tells you how to format your book, what styles to use, what font sizes to use etc.

If you confirm to that format, it is very likely that Amazon will also be happy with your file - Amazon has a much shorter guide about what they expect.

3.) Beware page breaks

So after editing on OpenOffice and submitting the file to Smashwords I saw one strange output - there were extra blank pages appearing before every chapter. After a lot of trial and error I discovered that after you give a page break, on the new page just hit an Enter and start content from the next line (like the Chapter title). This ensures that no extra pages appear. I assume you might not need to do this if you are using MS Word.

4.) Beware guides on the Kindle

The Kindle reader for every book will provide guide links (called guide items) on the tool bar; like Go to beginning, Go to end, Table of Contents etc.

The Table of Contents requires a TOC bookmark within your file else it will be disabled when people read your book. This is mentioned in the Amazon guide; I didn't notice it when I first when through the short guide.

Table of contents guide item will just link to the TOC page; it won't list all the chapters under the guide list; to get all chapters listed in the guide list I think we need to edit the metadata of the doc which isn't probably worth the effort.

There is a guide item to go to the 'beginning' of the book; I found that when we provide a bookmark for that, Smashwords doesn't like it and throws a formatting error (tried this from OpenOffice by giving the bookmark named 'Start' because that's what Amazon says they look at).
The same file uploads fine in Amazon. No harm even if this particular bookmark isn't given because by default 'Beginning' will take the reader to the first page of the ebook.

5.) Book sales/downloads/marketing

For people who've never read any of my writings, I felt it would be good to give a free ebook. So that they can read that and if they like it then (hopefully) they would purchase my novel. And so I did that on Smashwords - unless you market, don't expect the download count to fly high even if it is a free book. I just saw my download counter for the free book hit 100! Not bad without any marketing having started yet; but that gives you an idea. After around 10 days it's hit 100 and this was a free book. If it is a paid book, the count will surely be at 0! And that was confirmed because my novel 'The Fake Mask' was available for pre-order in Amazon but not one person had ordered it, even though the price was a modest $1.5

6.) Free ebooks on Amazon

Amazon doesn't let you price a ebook at $0. What you need to do is get it published on other sites like iBooks, Barnes & Noble and then inform Amazon saying that it is available for $0 elsewhere. Just drop them a mail from your author account; their customer service is extremely helpful - I never expected quick replies from such a large firm to my queries.

7.) Pre-orders and region differences

Pre-order mechanism is not available in all ebook stores and even within the store it may not be available across countries. Ex: As of now, pre-order is available in Amazon US site but not in Amazon India site.

And from region to region, even your ebook listing might differ; Ex: iBooks India doesn't list any ebook other than literary classics.

Oh yeah; and I obviously should mention about my first couple of ebooks here (marketing!).

• "WakeUp - Food for Thought" - the free ebook
• "The Fake Mask" - my first fiction novel as an ebook

Please look at http://www.sstutor.com/book.aspx for downloading/ordering them.

WakeUp 102 - An artist's view might differ

Sometimes you find people being severely critical about movies; they bash it up as if the whole thing were created in a matter of minutes. I guess to an extent it is fine - because the viewer does spend some money to watch the movie and also spends their time. But still, considering the time and money we spend on watching the movie, I don't know if it is fair to be so critical to trash a movie - maybe it wasn't to our taste or liking; that's fine; but we can't generalize saying "it's crap; no one will like it." They say literature and movies are about specific individuals while psychology tries to explain generic traits as to why humans in general behave in a particular way. So the way someone acts in a movie or book need not match with what majority people would do; so do give the director and writer some liberty for that. And it really does take quite an effort to create a movie or a book or any piece of art - why, even this WakeUp takes a lot of time and effort and sweat and what not! :-) The problem with art is that the creator might have developed the whole thing having something in mind - but the viewers/readers might not interpret it the way the creator meant it to be. I thought of this after reading the book Life of Pi; lot of people question which story is the real one; the one with the animals or the one with humans.  On a related note is the movie Inception. The last scene goes like this: Leonardo DiCaprio spins a small top; the camera shows the object spinning and wobbling while DiCaprio walks off towards his children. If the spinning continues then it means he is still in the dream world; if the spinning stops it means he is in the real world. At this point the screen goes blank and the movie ends! Voila - Hollywood style; and most people in the end wonder, "was he in the real world or was he in a dream world?" I happened to stumble upon an interview with the director Christopher Nolan. The director didn't cut the scene for the sake of creating suspense. He cut the scene because he felt that it was the apt ending; in the start of the movie, DiCaprio was worried about whether he was in a dream or in reality and he'd keep watching the object till it stopped spinning; in fact he’d even have a gun in his hand to shoot himself in case he discovered that he was in a dream. But at the end of the movie, DiCaprio didn't care if he was in the real world or dream world; all he cared was being with his children. That's why he didn't bother looking at the spinning top; it didn't matter and so the director stopped there to get that message across. I'm not sure how many people would have seen it that way; but Inception was a movie that people still liked even though they might not have understood the ending. But I wonder how many other movies or books or pieces of art we might have trashed because we didn’t understand the point of view. So if you didn’t get any meaning out of this WakeUp edition, it’s not the writer’s fault :-)

WakeUp 101 - The young kid

Picture this… There's a young boy, around 12 years old, who is heavily tanned with his black hair slightly ruffled but exudes brightness. You can literally see the glow on his face. He is wearing a clean white shirt and brown pants - like a school uniform. He is lying relaxed on a bed, supported by a thick pillow, with his back at an inclined position as if resting on a beach chair. There's a television on the wall in front of the bed on which some movie songs are playing. His left knee is bent while his right leg is crossed with the ankle resting on the left thigh. He keeps shaking his right foot to match the beats of the song on television. Once in a while he changes the position of his legs. After about a couple of hours, he leaves the bed.

Once outside the room, he is met by his mother who takes a close look at her son's face to see if everything is fine; mothers have a penetrating way of looking through the eyes. Once she is satisfied that all is well, she hands the boy a plastic bag from which he pulls out a comb. He slowly combs his hair neatly with a boyish grin while looking at his reflection on a window. Few minutes later, mom and son leave the premise to catch a bus back home.

Everything seems to be normal till you realize what was being done to him when he was on the bed. His left arm was pierced in two places with thick needles to draw blood out of his body for purification. The boy’s kidneys failed a couple of years ago and he has to come once in three days to the hospital for dialysis which takes 4 hours each time. A school going kid having to put up with so much and yet having such optimism in his outlook… some might say that he didn't know the gravity of the situation he was in but I think he did. And he was trying hard to take it as part of his stride. It was the same hospital where I saw the mediocre attitude of the nurses (described in the previous WakeUp).

You get goose bumps at odd times and weird places; and I got it there in that hospital on seeing the resilient young school boy battling every day for survival.

WakeUp 99 - there's a lot to see…

Did you know that there are about 190 to 210 countries in the world? I'm not quoting an exact number because some countries are under dispute and not recognized by all countries as being a country! North Korea doesn't recognize South Korea and South Korea doesn't recognize North Korea.

Leaving aside the minor difference, that's about 200 countries out there - so many cultures, sights, sounds and experiences out there. We are so caught up in our day to day work that we hardly think of stepping outside our locations of comfort. When kids, we don't have the money to spend. But once we start working, we are so worried about accumulating wealth for us, for marriage, for the next generation, marriage of the next generation and providing a king's life for the next ten generations that we forget about ourselves and the time right now.

It's the same with vacations - if vacations can be piled up to be encashed, then many people focus solely on that. And if they can't be piled up to encash, then many people have this guilty feeling about asking for vacations; common reasons cited - "My boss doesn't give vacations, my boss is strict, my boss says that he himself doesn't take vacations so how can I  ask him?" If the focus isn't on the boss, then the usual reasons are, "There is no one else to do my work, only I can do this work, I am in a critical project and can't leave, if I leave then the team will not be able to handle it…"

I sometimes wonder if we think a little too much of ourselves - maybe we get into this illusionary state that without us the world won't move on and without us the office won't move on. But the truth is if not employee number xyz then it's employee number abc! It is understandable if you have to perform a surgery in which you are a specialist and your presence could make the difference between life and death of the patient; but I don't think many of us fall under that category. I do wonder how many of us use the entire allocated vacation time we have every year?

If you are still worried of money, how much money do we really need to accumulate? And wouldn't the next generation be able to take care of themselves?

Relax and step out - there's a lot to see. Explore the world with your loved ones, friends, siblings and family.

We tend to think travel is too expensive; but even Antartica isn't out of reach - a trip to Antartica would cost about $3000 to $4000. The day isn't far off when you'll get to see the Moon and Mars; right now a ticket to space costs about $40 million. But before exploring the universe, do explore Earth!