Category Archives: Book Release Info

Brain Clutter

Work is still crazy with learning things AND finalizing budgeting for 2022. That work adds to publication activities. Then I add other hobby activities like Sounders games and D&D. I have to admit that I’m no longer at the top of my game. As a result, I have not been doing much writing in the last couple of weeks. I’m trying to prevent this draft from being filled with holes. 

Right now, book 2 is out with my alpha readers, and I have been working on the concept revision of book 3. I mentioned this before, but my drafts usually go in this order: concept, revised, alpha, revised alpha, beta, final draft, edited final. The Hidden Series has four books planned, and I have a pretty good start on all of them, but each stage takes time.

  • Book 1 (Hidden Memory): Edited final set for publication
  • Book 2 (Hidden Sanctuary): Alpha version is with alpha readers
  • Book 3: The concept is complete, and I’m working on the revision
  • Book 4: The concept is complete

I have rough publication timeframes on the “My Books” page for each of the four books, and I plan to post Hidden Sanctuary for preorder in the next couple of weeks. That is so I can include the link at the end of the first book. I need to work on the book description for that to happen. 

Mad Mage Campaign

The brain clutter impacted my D&D game this week. The game still went fine, and everyone had fun, but I forgot so much of the monster abilities and negative stat items for the players that they walked through combat like it was a day at the beach. Now I have a “reminders” section on my notepad to help me keep all of these moving parts in mind. 

My players strolling through level 2 in Halaster’s dungeon.

I’m trying to warn my players that combat will be more difficult going forward. That they should be careful when deciding their course of action. Words are not internalized like experience, though. They will plow into another combat with half health and zero ability resources left, and someone’s character will die. Or my warnings will drive them to rest all the time, and I will have to attack them to break them of that overcorrection. Fun times for me either way!

Bookbub

Next week I will share some of what I have learned about Bookbub from some of the Facebook groups I’m part of and hopefully an acceptance letter for their “New Release” feature (super difficult, so cross your fingers, but don’t hold your breath on my account). If I release book 2 for preorder, there will also be more changes to the website! 

Those are all the remotely coherent sentences and complete thoughts I can string together for today, so have a great weekend, everyone!

Available for Preorder!

My book officially drops onto e-readers in just over ten weeks and is available for preorder now! I hit the submit button on Amazon this morning and was so nervous that something would go wrong. They say it can take up to 72 hours before it is live for preorder, so I was bracing for a long wait. I can’t even tell you how much I have been grinning since getting the notification that it went through just fine, but you can probably imagine. 

Before I delve into some publication sharing, I want to say thank you to everyone who helped me get this far. The interest and support of family and friends helped me push past the fear and imposter syndrome and make it to this stage. The professional support for artists, editors, and readers is crucial to realizing a vision. I tried to name all of the direct contributors in the back of the book, and I know I missed some of you. Please consider this for you as well as the additional thanks I’m sure to write when the book is published and available. 

Hitting Submit

I know there are some fellow authors following me or looking in on these, so I also want to share some of the steps I have been taking recently to get to this point. While I am not going to say the Amazon publishing tools are perfect, I have found them all relatively easy to work with. A lot of these steps I set up and started playing around with a few months ago just in case I had any issues understanding what was happening. 

First, I set up a KDP account separate from my personal Amazon account. I’m not sure exactly what might happen if I mixed them, but I made sure they were separate just in case. One that was set up, I went to my “Bookshelf” and started setting up Hidden Memory in the tool as a draft. I wanted to see how it looked and what options there were. I’m still not sure about the categories I selected, but I can adjust those by contacting Amazon later, so those are not a deal-breaker for moving forward. (They could be critical to sales, so do not discount the importance of categories.)

I also decided to use the Kindle Create tool to turn my Word doc into an ebook format. There are pros and cons to this. I will probably use it again, but I will keep in mind the limitations. 

Pros: 

  • Following the instructions, it read and formatted the file well.
  • It includes tools for frontmatter and backmatter (see this blog post for great links) which were simple and useful.
  • It allows nice preview of the document in multiple formats. 

Cons: 

  • The KPF files are not able to be used on other tools. This is impactful because I plan on using BookFunnel for ARCs (post probably next week on this). 
    • The frontmatter/backmatter does not translate.

I shifted to Calibre for BookFunnel to create a mobi. KDP no longer accepts mobi files, so it is something to keep in mind.

Once my book was published, I was able to create my Amazon author page, and I also submitted for a Goodreads author page. The latter is still pending, so TBD on how that works. My next steps are a Bookbub author page, a BookFunnel account, and gathering ARC readers to submit early reviews. I plan on getting to some paid advertising next month or closer to the release date to generate some additional interest, but I have no idea what that looks like yet. There is always something more to learn and do.

I hope you are having a great weekend. Go Sounders! Go Mariners!