A Trip to Iceland and a Surprise Award!

I've just got back from a trip to Iceland to find that I'd been award the Liebster Award from Rosemary Gemmell. You may remember that she was the one who showed me how to make the magic links to Amazon and Smashwords on my blog. So thank you very much, Rosemary!

She has at least two blogs that I know of: Reading and Writing

where she talks about writing her NaNo novel, among other topics, and Flights of Imagination, all about children's literature. She went to the book launch of Viking Gold by V. Campbell recently, and I'm going to have to read it, now that I've been to Iceland!

'Liebster' means dearest in German, and this award is to encourage new writers and bloggers who have less than 200 followers, so this is what each recipient has to do:

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger

2. Choose your 5 bloggers to receive the award and tell them by leaving a comment on their blog

3. Copy and paste the award on your blog

4. Hope those five people send it to their chosen bloggers!

So now I'm going to pass the Liebster Award on to the following five whose blogs I have

enjoyed:

Susan E Willis for her delicious A Food and Love Story Writer. Every blog has irresistible

photos of food, as well as interesting stories.

Dot Scribbles for her fabulously detailed reviews of the latest books.

Scarlet Wilson for her informative and helpful blogs for the new romantic writer.

Angela Bell for her inspirational blog about literature and art with beautiful illustrations.

Catherine Miller for her entertaining and inspirational blog with great photos.

Best wishes to you all!

Self-Publishing - Gipsy Moth Book Signing!

Thankfully, my books arrived on Friday lunchtime, just in time for my book signing on Saturday. So many thanks to Clare and the team at Direct POD for pulling that off for me! It's amazing how much room one hundred books take up; that's just a few of the boxes in the picture. But the beauty of print on demand is that I can order as many more as I want. I'm really glad that I didn't order 1,ooo! I don't know where I would have put them!

The book signing went very well yesterday. I sold quite a few in the beautiful barn where the farmers' market is held, and I got some leads where I might sell more which I'm going to follow up. I also got some ideas, e.g. make some notices with 'Book Signing Today' 'Local Author' and the price, '£7.99', because they answer lots of questions! Also, Direct POD sent me some posters and postcards, blank on the back for me to fill in. I thought that I could do it as I went along, but I didn't have the time, so I've printed the short description of my book that I wrote for Smashwords on the back with my blog and email details. Prospective customers can therefore pick them up to see what the book is about. I did distribute some on the tables laid for tea and cakes, but I think they would have been better with more information.

The stall beside me was the WI tea and cakes stall and I was desperate for the coffee and walnut cake which was gradually disappearing, slice by slice, beside me. I couldn't have any because I'd have got sticky hands, so I've made some little coffee cakes for tea today!

I've been checking my progress on Amazon. Today, I'm number 11,975 in the Amazon best sellers ranking, not bad considering I started at about 88,000!!!

I've published Gipsy Moth on Amazon Kindle and Smashwords!

At last I've published Gipsy Moth on Amazon Kindle and Smashwords, and sent my final pdf copy off for printing!

A week last Saturday, I was sent the loose leaf proof copy of my book, wrapped in it's lovely new cover, see left! (I think Samantha Groom did such a good job!) I worked solidly to go through it and get it back to Direct POD as soon as possible. I posted it back last Monday, proudly having used the proofreading marks from Collins Dictionary for Writers & Editors!

Clare Lill sent me the pdf corrected copy, but some of the line formatting hadn't been done. So I feverishly went through the whole book again, putting things right and finding some more of my own errors. There were two problems on Saturday: firstly I kept getting a message that some of the header or footer was outside the printable area, and it took half a day to find printable area under Page Set Up - Page Attributes- Manage Custom Sizes - Printer Margins - User Defined, and phew - that did the trick if they were set to zero. Secondly, although the title pages and body of the text were in one doc file on my computer, they would only save as two in pdf, but Clare said she would be able to sort that out for me. At last I was satisfied and mailed them off. Hopefully they will be back on Friday for my book signing at the local farmers' market, where I hope there will be lots of people wanting a paperback with their organic sausages!

As far as the epub copies of my book went, I found, as I said before, the advice from Freda Lightfoot and Catherine Ryan Howard invaluable and the Amazon copy uploaded without any hitch. Hopefully, the Smashword copy or copies, as they are made for multiple formats are all ok too. At the moment, although it's published, I'm waiting for the AutoVetter to check it for the Premium Catalog so it can be distributed to the Apple iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, Sony, Kobo and others.

I would like to thank Rosemary Gemmell, as well, who told me how to add the buttons to the right, (through the design tab in dashboard) so I could make a direct link to Amazon and Smashwords.

http://www.direct-pod.com/

http://www.fredalightfoot.co.uk/blog.html

http://catherineryanhoward.com/

http://ros-readingandwriting.blogspot.com/

Fantastic Book Cover by Samantha Groom

Here is my fantastic book cover designed by Samantha Groom. I'm really pleased with it.

I sent her some ideas, but she came back with some even better ones, and was pleased to change the layout, shading and font until we arrived at this on the left. She also designed the spine and back of the book because I'm having some paper copies printed as well as listing it on Amazon.

I'm so excited about it all and I was thrilled to see all her suggestions dropping in my inbox.

I can really recommend her for her excellent service.

magicat45degrees@googlemail.com

My novel should be on Amazon within the next week. I'll put up a post when it appears.

Self Publishing - Sending off Typescript to Printers and Formatting for Kindle.

I had a delicious lunch in The Gipsy Moth pub in Greenwich yesterday, to celebrate sending my typescript for Gipsy Moth to Direct POD, the print on demand company!

I have checked and re-checked the typing, spelling, continuity, and those pesky chapter headings which seem to jump about every time I changed something else. At last it was ready, and the final cover design arrived too (I'm going to tell you more about that in a later blog).

I phoned Clare to check that I'd done everything, and pressed send! The proof copy should come back soon, and then I'll have to re-check it , of course and send it off again for the big print run! It's so exciting to be actually doing it at last!

Meanwhile, I'm formatting it for Kindle. I've been using Self-Printed by Catherine Ryan Howard, and Easy Way to Publish ebooks on Kindle, a booklet from Freda Lightfoot. They are both very good, and it's a bit like making a special dessert and taking the best advice from Delia and Nigella to make the flavour that I want. The cheesecake above at the pub was Mascarpone and Amaretto. Umm!

Self-Publishing - A Weekend in Madrid with Final Editing and Formatting Book for the Printers when I got home.

It wasn't a good idea to go to Madrid for the weekend when I was trying to do the final edits on my novel, so I took a hard copy with me, and it was quite inspiring reading about Kathy's flying lessons when I was 39,000 feet in the air!

Madrid is a beautiful city with a clear blue sky and amazing white rooflines shining like intricate wedding cakes against it.

We had dinner at The Botin Restaurant, the oldest restaurant in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records! Ernest Hemingway used to eat there.

'In his book The Sun Also Rises (1926) he writes, "We lunched upstairs at Botin's, it is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drunk rioja alta.". Then again in Death in the Afternoon (1932) he writes, "I would rather dine on suckling pig at Botin's than sit and think of casualties my friends have suffered." '

http://everything2.com/title/Botin

Whilst I was away Clare at Direct POD printed out my cover to check that the colours worked, and she sent it me with no laminate, a glossy laminate and a matt one. The matt one was best, although in all the colours were good.

At last I finished the editing and then I had to get to grips with formatting. It didn't take as long as I thought, but it was fiddly getting the chapter headings to stay in place and making sure that the page numbers started on page 7 and not before! But I'm quite satisfied now. I've only got the Amazon Kindle to do and by all accounts that's far worse!

Self-Publishing Gipsy Moth at Last with Direct POD!

After a flurry of activity in the summer, researching into self-publishing, I began to have second thoughts and didn't do any more. Then the other Sunday, my husband was reading in the paper (on his i-Pad) about success in self-publishing and said I should really give it a try, so by the end of the day I had enquired about having a cover designed, more about that in a later blog, and I had asked for some quotes to have it printed! My aim is to have it ready for a book signing at a local farmer's market in November!

I wanted to have 100 copies printed to see how they sold, and it's amazing just how much that costs! In the end, I decided to go with Direct POD, because they gave an online quote immediately, which proved to be the best out of all the others.

We visited them yesterday to just see what their finished books were like and Clare was very helpful, answering all my questions patiently and apart from giving me a sample copy of one of their books, she also gave us a tour of their vast printing works where my book will be printed!

I felt that, at last, it was really happening!

Afterwards we asked about a good place to have lunch, and she suggested The Aviator at Sywell Aerodrome. Perfect, as my book is all about flying a Gipsy Moth! The hotel is situated in the original club house, and they have kept all the old panelling, windows and fittings to give it the real atmosphere of the 1930s. We even saw a small plane come in to land! I hope it's a good omen for my book!