I've been reading a lot lately too (another good thing, except that it takes away from my editing). I read the first book in the Jack Reacher series by Lee Child (Tom Cruise played the lead in the new movie). It was good. I'm now reading "Falling Kingdoms" by Morgan Rhodes. It's a high-fantasy YA... not something that I normally read, but very entertaining so far.So, I'm disappointed in myself to learn that there are some errors in KM3. My sister's currently reading it, but when she'd done, I may fix things and re-upload. :( I feel bad about them though. Maybe I rushed KM3 a little. Oh well, I'll make it right.
I thought you already had proof readers to try and catch any errors you missed? Oh well, as long as you're willing to go through and correct them I don't think it's that bad.
ReplyDeleteI actually came to your page to post this:
http://www.writingforward.com/creative-writing/outstanding-creative-writing-blogs
then saw you had updated your blog, lol. They have two sites on there that are related to self-publishing and marketing and I thought they might be of interest to you.
And I haven't read Reacher though I might put it on my to-do list since I've heard good things about the books.
Yay on getting some writing in! Even if you haven't gotten some editing I think it's a bit of a balance considering how you put your writing on hold to really get into editing a bunch of things last year.
My beta reader is awesome... the problem is that I tend to tweak after she reads (or she reads while I do my Nook edit, so she doesn't see the changes, which I'm sure are where the errors were introduced). I should let her be the final set of eyes... lesson learned :)
DeleteThanks for sharing the link with me. I put KM1 up for free on Smashwords and it's supposed to show up that way on Barnes and Noble, but it hasn't yet. I got the most downloads from that site. I might consider publishing it there as well. Smashwords is good for other e-reader formats, but I don't get much traffic there. Just glancing through the blogs listed, I think I'm going to check out The Creative Penn (very catchy blog name!)
It does feel really good to write again. I'm just getting in a hour every few days, but that's way more than before.
I decided to read Reacher after seeing the movie. The movie is based off the ninth book in the series, so I wondered if book 1 would give a little back story (it didn't really). It took me a little bit to get into Child's style and the voice, but I did enjoy the book overall and would definitely read another in the series.
I bet she is, betaing is hard, lol, I meant I thought you had someone read it when it was in it's final draft like your sister (for some reason I thought she was your final pair of eyes) but yeah, it might help for her to read it after you've finished your edits. But then you might be tempted to change something else after you've fixed the mistakes she catches, lol.
ReplyDeleteIf I find anything more specific about marketing your books online and connecting your readers I'll try and send it your way since I bet it is hard to get traffic through smashbooks. Does allromancebooks.com have an epub option? Although I think the Killing Mom series might not have a strong enough romance aspect although they do have a section for romantic comedy.
Here's a link to a word count tracker if you want it. http://cateartios.wordpress.com/2012/10/22/nanoresource/ They have a spreadsheet as well that can show you how many words you write in an hour depending on whether you time yourself or not. I don't know if it'll be useful to you, I always start it but then I slowly lose track, lol.
I haven't seen the movie yet but I know there were some grumblings because Tom Cruise is nothing like how the character is described.
What Tom Cruise lacked in the physical description (which wasn't really given a bunch in the first book, just that he's like 6 foot something), he made up for in the mannerisms and personality of the character, in my opinion. I enjoyed the movie, even though there was 1-2 holes, but even then I don't mind a few holes if I'm entertained.
DeleteWhen my sister was telling me about the things she caught she was like "I don't know why don't give it to me to edit." I told her I'd rather her read for entertainment. So, yea, I need to let Sarah (beta) read it after my nook edit and then TRY hard not to tweak anything else. The good thing is that with KM4 there's a lot less reworking. For every book I think I've re-wrote the first chapter. KM2 had a lot more editing than KM3... but yea.
Marketing is impossible... I started reading through one of the blogs and felt overwhelmed by what they do. This is definitely the first time I've had to promote myself. I'm not really good with that. I agree that KM isn't romantic enough for traditional romance. Not nearly enough sex :).
I feel like I'm just trying to count by the days that I end up writing. When I sit down, I feel like I can do 5-10 pages and hour... I just have to sit down. :) How's your writing/editing?
I've actually been editing, someone else's work more so than mine but it's still something and it's helping me figure out how I'll go about editing my own work - I'll definitely have to print it all off and edit on paper first since I seem to catch things better that way. After this weekend I'm aiming to try and write something because if I don't I'll end January with a little over 200 words written and I was hoping to have at least 8,333 done this month.
ReplyDeleteAnd i think your sister has a point, even if you make her the first person to read the story before you upload it, she can read it for pleasure and catch any mistakes that you or your beta miss without her actually being your beta.
I had originally planned on rereading the Great Gatsby before going to watch the movie when it comes out and someone was like don't! the minute you do that you'll create the character in your head and whoever is picked won't meet your expectations and that makes so much sense, so now I'll try to watch a movie before reading the book if only to be able to enjoy the movie without expecting the character to fit a certain mold ahead of time.
I love editing on paper. I haven't done that in a while. I catch a lot that way too, but I find that my Nook is even better for that. So, are you working on someone's novel? Is it a longer work? I recently read half of a friend's novel and I'm eager to get my hands on the other half. :)
ReplyDeleteOf books made into movies, there are only a few that I've actively read before the movies. I was never disappointed with the Harry Potter movies. Sure they left a lot out, but they kinda had to. I also read "The Help" first and was happy with the movie representation. I can't think of anything that I was really disappointed in, but it's so true that your hopes can get smashed when Hollywood tries to take over. I have a feeling that the Great Gatsby is going to be very different... I saw the preview recently and was kinda put off by the more modern (? not sure if that's the right word) music. Kinda like the Leonardo DiCaprio version of Romeo and Juliet. It could be cool--but part of me wants a period piece. We'll see, I guess.
Ella Enchanted was one adaption where the movie had absolutely nothing to do with the book aside from the main characters affliction and that really threw me, I enjoyed the movie only once I stopped expecting it to be anything like the book (which I love). Tuck Everlasting was another one, I understand why they made the characters older in the movie but still, totally different feel from the book.
ReplyDeleteThe Great Gatsby seemed a lot more modern then I was expecting as well but it looks interesting. I hope even if they stick with modern music it has the feels of the 1920s because that's a fun era to watch.
Yup, a friend of mine is self-publishing a novel and I offered to do a read through for her, it was really interesting seeing the things I caught when I had printed it out versus when I was reading it on the computer and then again when I was putting my comments onto the actual doc.
When I read it online it's easier for me to get lost in the flow of the story and automatically correct any mistakes in my head where as on paper for some reason they jump out at me. The only problem with editing on paper is that after you double space and give yourself margin room for comments you run through paper and ink quite quickly, lol.
With a Nook are you able to transfer those edits to a computer as well? Like can you work on the same document on both the computer and the Nook at the same time?
And in regards to marketing, yeah, I think the hardest part about self-publishing is marketing. I wish FP had a better system to allow communication and connection between the site and other things because then it would be easier to get your readership to follow you over from there to the published world.
I have no idea how goodreads lists work but I know I've recently read a bunch of self-pubbed novels because they were on a list fitting a category I was interested in like geeky heroes or plain janes etc. But I don't know if you can set that up or if it's your readers who would include them on lists.