Reviews, Views and Adventures in Content Creation

Friday, February 28, 2014

Short Story Rising

As I write this, "Why Do You Think They Call it a Ghost Town?" is rolling out across all of the tradtional e-book sites. This is the second publication I've released online, and the first short story I've distributed.

I handled "book" (it's only 35 pages or so) differently than my novel. I designed the book. The cover, with the exception of the "Alexander" icon was my design, and I created the e-pub file without professional involvement.  With "My Life at the Bottom of the Food Chain," I submitted the manuscript to BookBaby (for the ebook) and Createspace (for the paperback), paid for design services, and simply reviewed the finished product. In this case, I was hands-on, beginning to end.

The process was a bit tricky at first, but the learning curve was pretty shallow, thanks to some good written and YouTube tutorials. My first attempt at submitting to BookBaby wasn't successful, due to some illegally named photos, but that was an easy fix, and I was able to make the fixes right away and send them back for final approval.

I didn't try to edit or proofread, however, and hired the good folks at http://thebookscrubber.com to maintain professional standards. Needless to say, the only obvious typo I've seen so far is on the copyright page, which wasn't submitted for proofreading (word to the wise - proofread Everything!). I'll likely do this again for future short stories; I won't likely attempt this for a novel. There's too much to track, and my attention span won't allow a precise job to that extent! 
 
As I said in my previous blog, I'm waiting with anticipation to see how my short story - in particular, a short story for middle grade readers - will fare in e-book form. I'm also curious to see if it does effectively cross-promote "My Life at the Bottom of the Food Chain," which is, to paraphrase from the comic book world, Alexander's origin story. 

The standard description, by the way - the short description that appears on the sales sites - doesn't mention the book directly. Though "Why Do You Think They Call it a Ghost Town" features characters from the novel, it's designed to be a standalone story. My hope is that readers will be entertained enough to check out the book, which is mentioned on the final page. 

I apologize for the cliche, but "The Adventure Continues."

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