Books

Books
Books written by Ray Sullivan

Thursday 25 July 2013

Tripped up by Amazon, Saved by Smashwords, Free Book To All

Although I can see there is a fair amount of interest in Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning from the Amazon listings, there is a glaring oversight on the page - the eBook isn't being listed!

I've had an email from Amazon stating that the book is live in all regions and they also sent me a link to the page it's on - the page exists somewhere in Amazon and the link opens it, but there is no pricing information so I suspect there's been a hitch there.  I've emailed them so the book should appear soon, I hope.

In the meantime can I suggest you check the book out on Smashwords, instead?  I've broken with convention and ignored Smashwords' ruling that if there is adult content then to indicate it - there are profanities, lots of violence and the merest suggestion of sex if you're averse to those topics, but looking at the content that removing the 'prude filter' reveals shows me that actually, there is a lot worse on Smashwords.  It has become a bit of a dumping ground for - ahem - explicit erotica.  I've previously tended to list my books as containing adult content and I know a lot of people struggle to find them on Smashwords as a result, but not this baby!

Anyway, here's a link to Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning

And here's a reason to go there today. XY33F     This code, when used when purchasing a copy of the book, will render the price to zero.  That's right, for a limited period I'm giving the eBook version away.  But not for long, so you'll need to act fast.

Feel free to share this link with your friends.

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                                                          Visit my Book Website here






        Visit Project: Evil Website here                                        Visit DLF Website here

        Follow me on Twitter  - @RayASullivan

        Join me on Facebook -  use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Monday 22 July 2013

Journeymen II is Published

The publishing process gets, I guess, easier each and every time I do it, yet paradoxically makes me feel it could be slicker than it is.  Anyway, as I mentioned in my last posting I did this the opposite way to my previous attempts, starting with CreateSpace.  That went better than I thought possible and despite my assumption that I'd have to wait until the week started before the book would be reviewed it was up on CreateSpace's website for sale within a couple of hours and by Sunday UK time it was on Amazon.

One feature I haven't looked at previously is the one on CreateSpace that lets you publish on the Kindle using the same files and images.  It's not that I don't think it's a good idea, it's just that until this attempt, I'd done all that before going to CreateSpace.  Well, part of the routine doesn't seem to work in that it implies that when you push the button your file will whizz off to Amazon and will appear as a formatted eBook in due course.  Perhaps it will, but I'm not that patient.  But what it does do on that particular page, probably always has done and I've just not noticed it before, is that it allows you to download an 'Kindle ready' copy of your book which actually looks a heck of lot like the CreateSpace ready version I uploaded to them including page numbers that you wouldn't expect in an eBook and it lets you download a copy of the CreateSpace book cover for use on your Kindle submission.

Now for aspiring self publishers, this is a really useful feature, especially since Apple and Amazon upped the requirements for book images in the last year or so.  As long as you can make a cover you're happy with using the CreateSpace tools then you can re-use it across Amazon and Smashwords, and therefore Apple, B&N, Sony etc.  I've just used it not only for Journeymen II but also for a couple of my other books to standardise my images.  The downside is that CreateSpace haven't improved the range of images and features in the last two years.  This really is one area that they could look at improving, but perhaps that's the idea as I kept tripping over offers to produce book covers starting at 'only' $299.

But the long and short is that it is worth looking at publishing with CreateSpace before the eBook versions just to get a cover you can use.  After that it's your choice whether you work on the Kindle version or the Smashwords version.  As usual Smashwords is pickier than Amazon, but to be fair Amazon only has the one version to worry about, Smashwords tries to accommodate all formats at once.  Hence if you look at my Smashwords version you'll notice I don't have a first line indent, but on Amazon I do.  I prefer the first line indent, but Smashwords aren't keen and although they say it can be achieved, it ain't easy.

Pricing across the three media isn't consistent, which I know is considered a big no-no, but I can't do much about the cost of CreateSpace books, unfortunately.  Most of the price is split between them and Amazon, a few grains left over for the author.  Quite a bit like conventional book publishing, I guess.  Amazon have an irritating habit of forcing the price of eBooks up, which may surprise many newbie authors and general readers as I'm sure you know they have a lot of low price eBooks on sale.  But drop below $2.99 per book and they take 65% of the purchase price; make it $2.99 or more and they only take 30% of the price.  This forces authors to price higher, especially when they try to recall where Amazon were when they were struggling with a plot sequence.  Smashwords takes a trivial cut if readers buy direct from them and  you'll end up with about 60% as a worst case scenario through the channels they distribute to.  Hence authors can afford to market their books for less and not feel dirty after every purchase.

Anyway, if you want to take a look at Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning you'll find it on Amazon and Smashwords right now.  If you want to see it on Apple and the other eBook publishing sites then you'll have to wait a few days while Smashwords ports it across.  Take a look, I hope you enjoy the yarn.
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        Visit Project: Evil Website here                                        Visit DLF Website here

        Follow me on Twitter  - @RayASullivan

        Join me on Facebook -  use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

Saturday 20 July 2013

Journeymen II is on its way

I've reviewed the text until I'm cross-eyed and tweaked my tweaks until my eyes watered.  So now I've taken a deep breath and started the publication process.  In a break from tradition - well it is my seventh novel so I can claim to have established some sort of tradition by now - I've decided to go for the CreateSpace paperback form first.

In my previous books I've produced the eBook version first, then added the bits needed for a paperback.  This time around I've chosen to do the paperback first in part because converting for eBook format is largely subtractive from a paperback formatted document - I remove page numbers and blank pages that are there to format the book for print.  The other reason is that CreateSpace reckon that they will arrange for the book to be formatted as an eBook on Kindle automatically, transferring my book cover at the same time.  I've never tried this approach before and decided it was time I did if only to report back to the writers who follow this blog on how effective it is.

However I have to wait at least 24 hours for the print review, and as I submitted on a Saturday I'm expecting the reply to arrive early next week.  Assuming that my efforts are deemed acceptable then the paperback should be on Amazon and Createspace's own website by the end of the week.  It should, all being as advertised, be on the Kindle store in eBook format pretty soon after that..

I did try to upload a photo depicting London's cityscape for the book cover - the majority of the book takes place in London - but the cover designer didn't seem to like it.  It kept telling me that my upload was fine, that there were no errors in my submission, but it wouldn't let me complete with that picture. So I took a lazy approach and used the same image as I used for the original Journeymen paperback but changed the text background to brick red.  As this is the second Journeymen book I guess I now have a series, albeit a short one at present, so having a common cover with different colour schemes seems reasonable.

So for those who haven't read the original book - it's very accessible and a darned good read if you're interested - here's a potted explanation about who and what the Journeymen are.  I'll try not to spoil the first book and you can read the second book without reading the first or this potted description, but you may find yourself scratching your head over some of the terminology if you do.

The Journeymen are the descendants of aliens from a planet 9 light years away that have been walking the Earth for the last 6000 years or so.  They arrived with a group that has chosen to break away from them, now known as the Sons of Arlgon, or the Sons.  Same species, different attitudes, mortal enemies.  The Journeymen are here because their ancestors formed a settlement here tens of thousands of years before they pitched up.  Their journey, taking three generations aboard a spacecraft housed on a comet that circles both Earth and the home planet every two thousand years, was undertaken to secure the DNA of their ancestors to help redress the ravages of a terrible war sometime between the original Journeymen and the second batch.  Those original Journeymen are known as Colonists, and by the time the Journeymen arrived here 6000 years ago they had become the controlling entities on Earth.  Many think they still are.  The Journeymen undertook to help preserve the purity of the Colonist bloodlines while driving the technology on Earth to reach a state where it could be used to transport the Colonist DNA back to the home planet.  To do this they inserted themselves into the fabric of society, manipulating the human race so that it developed the technology needed while keeping a close eye on the Colonists.  To complete the naming convention, those humans who are not Journeymen, Sons or Colonists are named Interbreds, or IBs.  That's almost certainly you or me, by the way.

In Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning we find ourselves in the situation where robust DNA cultivating technology has been developed, as has deep space travel.  The Journeymen decide they don't need the Colonists anymore, but realise that the Sons won't want the Journeymen wielding any more power than they do right now.  Their solution is to take the Sons out in a mass cull, starting in the United Kingdom where one of the last truly influential Colonist lines still exists.  If you can't work out who I'm talking about, then send me a stamped addressed envelope.  But look at the stamp before you post it and you many work out who the Colonists are.

I still have to do the leg work for formatting for Smashwords so that I can get the book out to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, WH Smith etc and of course CreateSpace may not be 100% happy with my submission.  Either way, I'll keep you informed.

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        Visit Project: Evil Website here                                        Visit DLF Website here

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Monday 15 July 2013

Journeymen II is Completed

As reported in a recent posting, I've been finalising the sequel to The Journeymen, a book I wrote several years ago.  The second book in the series is now written and is undergoing the final reviews, the formatting for the various outlets, principally CreateSpace, Amazon and Smashwords, and I've got to produce the cover artwork.

This is the first time I've attempted to write a sequel.  Anyone who has read my books will know that I'm not afraid to kill the good guys if the story requires it and the one thing I don't do is compromise the ending to allow a convenient in for a follow on story.  However when I wrote the Journeymen I was aware that what I was writing was one episode in a long sequence of stories and wondered if I could plunder real history and retell it using the Journeymen back story.  That is still an option. 

But I realised nearly two years ago that there was actually an unfinished storyline from the original book that needed to be followed and 'Journeymen II: The Day of Reckoning' is the result.  If you've read the original book you will recognise some of the characters - John Markerson, the London based policeman who is also one of the Sons of Arlgon, and Alan Thomas, the Cheshire Police sergeant dragged into the Journeymen renegade plot that ended up at Jodrell Bank radio telescope.  Both men are reunited four years after that event, at a time when the Journeymen believe that they have completed their tasking to secure all of the Colonist DNA and push the planet to develop the technology to send it back to the Home Planet.  Now that job is done they no longer need the Colonists and can drop the pretence that the planet needs to be run by that particular elite - they want to step out of the shadows and rule Earth themselves, directly.

They know that the Sons of Arlgon are their greatest impediment to achieving this goal and to this end they have decided to organise a mass cull.  Against this backdrop we find Alan agreeing to work for the Sons to help reverse their fortunes in placing their people in positions of influence.  He also starts a relationship with Linda, who is unwittingly helping the Journeymen to prepare for their cull, and Alan is quickly drawn into a web of danger that surrounds a Journeyman Metropolitan policeman named Strong.  Ultimately, on the eve of the mass cull, Alan finds himself in a fight to the death with Strong with unexpected results.

One of the hardest parts of writing a sequel is to avoid the situation where you end up telling the original story again, perhaps a bit abridged like a Reader's Digest book, or you end up referring to people and events that only exist in your personal works of fiction so won't make any sense to readers who haven't read the first book.  It's a fine line and one I've worked hard at trying to get right.  If you end up reading Journeymen II: The Day of Reckoning then you'll find out the gist of the original Journeyman book and you'll pick up the salient protagonists: the Journeymen, the Sons, the Colonists and of course, the long suffering IBs.  You'll pick up on some of the events recorded in the original book where knowing them helps to understand what is going on in this book, but without spoiling the first book in the process.

I'm expecting to publish Journeymen II: The Day of Reckoning by early August so keep a look out on this blog for more information.

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        Visit Project: Evil Website here                                        Visit DLF Website here

        Follow me on Twitter  - @RayASullivan

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Monday 1 July 2013

Journeymen II - Coming Soon

Regular readers might have noticed that I haven't been posting much lately, in fact I haven't posted for about a week.  It isn't summer 'Flu or a dose of the dreaded lurgy - in fact I'm in rude health right now - but it's a case of the novel ending syndrome.

NES hits writers when their books reach a critical point and they find that writing the book is an all consuming affair.  I hit a couple of NES points over the last couple of years when DLF reached that point, as I did with Project: Evil a little later.  Project: Evil NES point could have been less obvious to most of you because I was posting it as I wrote it, apart from the problem that the postings had caught up with the story so far and I needed the time to finish it, hence my hiatus from posting a year ago.

Well I've reached the NES point with Journeymen II, a sequel I started writing over two years ago and has stopped and started several times.  But in the last week all the threads started to come together - I never know exactly how a book will end until I get to that point myself - and I've been writing every night since.  The ending, by the way, is fast moving and heart thumping action and I'm struggling to put it down myself.

At the rate of writing I should be ready to go through full read through in a fortnight or so, then I've got to write the blurb, design the cover, reformat the various versions - Amazon and Smashwords versions plus the CreateSpace edition, publish and, well, if the Journeymen read  it I'll be damned.

So apologies to the regular readers for stopping the postings for the time being - normal service may be resumed sometime soon, but there are two other books closing in on the NES point in my SkyDrive account so I can't absolutely promise you it will be.  But a darned good read is appearing in an internet bookshop near you real soon instead.

I'll keep you informed.

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                                                          Visit my Book Website here



        Visit Project: Evil Website here                                        Visit DLF Website here

        Follow me on Twitter  - @RayASullivan

        Join me on Facebook -  use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me