Really MUST remember to update!

Head like a sieve

To find out what happened with the Ficitivity Press cometition go HERE - if not then I'll just say that I won and Ficitivity are beavering away on my shiny FB for Milele as we speak! ;-)

Healthy competition...

… is (probably) to publishing what King Herod was to enlightened baby care? Cream floats naturally – so do other thingies that you most certainly don’t want on your coffee, strawberries, or ‘you’re worth it’ face :-P
However – some things are worth competing for, especially if it’s a fab FaceBook ad campaign for your debut novel. Doubly so when you suck at doing FB ad campaigns which I do – royally!

So this is the pitch -

VOTE FOR ME!!!!!

(5 – count them! – exclamation marks :-)  )

Click the link – the big pink one above (OK if you must then this is the actual URL - https://www.facebook.com/events/631129313645528) and vote for…

Milele Safari by Jan Hawke!!!!!

and I will be eternally grateful if I win ;-)

Voting is open up until 30th April 2014 – 2 days to go!!!!!

Twenty Years On - Rwanda

Twenty years ago, on April 7th 1994, the genocide of between 500,000-800,000 Tutsis, liberal Hutu and Twa began. The true number of victims will never be known. Fictional Zyanda and part of the main storyline in Milele Safari is partially based upon the brutal events that happened in Rwanda over the course of a little over 3 months. 

To mark this bleak anniversary, during April through to 15th July 2014 my author profits of Milele Safari will be donated to UK relief agency ShelterBox* in memory of the thousands of people who lost their lives in 1994. 

*ShelterBox operations manager in Helston, Cornwall, John Leach has my sincere gratitude for his invaluable contribution to the research undertaken for Milele Safari on how NFI aid (non-food items) is deployed during an emergency, such as the landslide incident described in the closing chapters of the novel.

Also available in NOOK!

:-) Well we got there eventually! For some reason it seemed to take forever to come onto the system after I got the Barnes & Noble/NOOK PRESS vendor account set up last weekend.

Anyway - HERE IS THE LINK TO NOOK

As you probably know eBooks have to be much cheaper than physical ones so it's £2.99* as opposed to £11.50 - 11.99 (depending on exchange)

For US/oversees visitors it's $4.79 or $18.95

Full(er) list of online merchants is HERE on the DreamWorlds Publishing site ;-)


*Which is still a bargain compared to mainstream publishers prices who'll happily charge you over a fiver for 'star' authors eBooks ><

WOO HOO! Nook Press has gone international!!!

Will finally be able to finish off the ePub submission with Nook (Barnes and Noble's Kindle equivalent) - for non-US peeps there was a problem with self-publishing your work on Nook without a US bank account.

Today it was announced that Nook's new international arm's opened up the vendor market to the UK and EU countries (well most of them anyway) which in turn means that I can finalise my vendor details for selling the ePub version of Milele Safari on the B&N site ;-)

It's out!!!!!

Well - after a few hiccups like forgetting to put my name on it as the author Milele Safari is now available in Kindle format and on sale on Amazon!

It will eventually go out on NOOK (Barnes & Noble) and Apple iBooks but it's enough to get it on the virtual shelves of Amazon so I'm not about to cry into my beer anymore after my foolish naivety with Ingrams (see post below). And by putting the ePub format up with them too the title's also available on any number of other eBookstores albeit not too well-known outside of the USA (mostly - there's about 2 in the UK and a handful in Brazil, India and Thailand as well on the ePub distribution list) so pretty much all internet bases covered :-)

Onwards and Upwards as they say (and I did! In Onwards and Upwards, chapter 4...) :p

Ding... Ding... Round 3!

OK - so I'm thick and can't read FAQs ><

My distributor for both print and eBooks are a subsidiary company with the biggest book distributors in the world - Ingrams. So they have a number of FAQs on their online POD business procedures including a very impressive one about their distribution partners such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Book Depository and other bookstore luminaries around the world.

Except they neglect to tell you that these are distribution partners for print publications only - there's a different list for eBook ones, some of which are on the print list as well, but NOT Amazon, Barnes & Noble and... You get the picture? So there I was blissfully checking on Amazon every day and wondering why Milele wasn't showing up as an eBook purchase, because I'd been told it'd take between 3 - 8 weeks to get through on the databases.

I did smell a rat but I wasn't asking the right questions. I just had a wee giggle at the irony of my print book getting on Amazon in under 48 hours, but the digital one was taking in excess of 4 weeks... Eventually I pointed this out to my account rep - yesterday in fact, which is why I came back to a gobsmacking time bomb in my inbox last night, with the vital info that in fact Amazon weren't a distribution partner for their eBooks at all and the rosy-hued scales dropped off with a mighty clang.

Boy did I feel a right 'nana!

Anyway, long story short I uploaded everything into the wee small hours and went to bed with it still unpublished because I couldn't get hold of my bank IBAN details until this morning (well actually I could have as the info was there, but by that time my brain couldn't cope with the online banking interface a nano-second longer...). Have just come back out of my little cyber tunnel and it's all loading onto the Amazon mainframe as I type, so the piece of the jigsaw nightmare that is self-publishing is quietly burrowing it's way onto the interweb and should be all systems go within a few hours.

Now all I have to do is flog a few more copies and promote, promote, promote... I feel quite kamikaze so watch this space!

Frustrated... Elated!

Still waiting on the eBook coming out - honestly you'd think that e-versions would be out a lot sooner than the print one but apparently it can be up to 15! business days before it's out there! Am still having major probs with my web connection (it's a regional thing so 'acts of god' timescale for restoration of a halfway decent service early next month ><). Anyhooo...

... have just been given a really kickass 5-star review from someone I don't know (another author I met on LinkedIn) so I'm  feeling really validated right now :D  I'm doing a review of his book, Dreamers as well which'll be my next task today - he's a great new writer of fantasy horror and I stayed up reading it until 4 a.m. this Saturday and my tablet battery failed on the last few pages - talk about frustrating! It's a great feeling though, getting a review from someone I don't know too well yet, but admire their work, and who likes mine back :D

Tired but happy...

... have just managed to submit an error-free e-pub file to Lightning Source (well the e-check validator said it was!) so fingers crossed Milele Safari will be hitting the virtual shelves very soon.*crosses fingers and anything else that will cross*

Am really tired now though - was a nightmare trying to sort out the metadata and not helped too much by the video tutorials which I loathe because they go through so fast. Still for a first try I didn't have that much wrong really so hopefully that's the learning curve mostly mastered for now - until they release a new version I suppose. Off to wind down with Buffy repeats on SyFy (vampires are soooo relaxing in the wee small hours :-P) but this will be the first place for news of Milele Safari the e-Book!

So far - so amazing

Well - as far as I can tell there's been 15 sales so far and even though 8 of those were ordered by me 3 of those were for friends who went through my POD account with the rest as Xmas pressies for my mum and sisters. Which means I've more or less broken even already on the publication costs (and taking the ISBN payment as £12.60 as 1 of 10 purchased). Not bad at all! Also 1 of the copies has been sent to the British Library which is a legal obligation for publishers whether or not you register for an ISBN - I'm officially a proper publisher!!! My, how proud am I! lol

I've been trying to put the eReader together all over the holidays - my first time doing this. It's not been accepted for publication I heard today but there's only 1 actual error on it, so I'm quite pleased with myself for that too. Not so good are the 27 'warnings' I totted up but as 18 of those are to do with leaving a single space on the file naming protocols they'll be simple to rectify and the others look to be easy enough to resolve, so the Kindle / iBook version should around gods-willing for the end of the month!

I'm also getting quite a good response for reviews although none are published yet - LinkedIn connections have been a great source for this so hopefully the promotion side of things will get off to a good start when the eBooks on the virtual shelves. I've got the DreamWorlds Publishing site off the ground as well so with luck we'll be getting some more activity on there soon as well. The DreamWorlds anthology is the next in line for publication anyway :D