Category Archives: My Musings

My Musings

Publishing Erotica Part 2 – What You Need

11 Comments

Publishing Erotica Part 2 – What You Need

Click here for Publishing Erotica Part 1—Introduction.

So, you’ve decided that you have one of those perverted, deviant minds that is constantly bubbling with wicked ideas begging to be shared. Nubile women, hunky men, and explosions of bodily fluids gush through your mind. You want to be an erotica author, but what do you need to get started to publish erotica?

A computer of some sort is a good start.

I know, obvious. But even if you prefer to write with pen and paper, eventually you need to transcribe your words onto a digital document. You could write it on a desktop computer, a laptop, or even a tablet. I even write on my small Kindle from time to time. What kind of computer it is really doesn’t matter. It just needs internet access.

The internet is what makes this possible. That and ebooks.

The key to being successful as a short-form erotica author is to keep your costs low. Individual titles may not sell well enough, especially starting out, to justify the expense of hiring professionals to make covers and create your interiors. So you need to learn to do it yourself. To do that, you need software. There is really good software out there that is quite expensive. But, fortunately for you, there exists more than adequate software that is absolutely free.

Yep, free. It’s a great word.

Starting off, you need your word processor, the program you will write your erotica in. There are the paid softwares such as the Microsoft Office suite. Anything from Word 97 and on will suffice. Yep, you can go back to Word 97 if you want. You don’t need the latest version. You only need it capable of using style sheets (which I’ll touch on in a later post). There is also the excellent software Scrivner, designed for the express purpose of writing books. It’s cheaper and, while I’ve never used it myself (I’ve only recently picked it up and haven’t started playing around with it) many authors I know swear by it.

So what are the free word processors?

The two biggest are OpenOffice and LibraOffice. Both are capable of performing most of what Microsoft Office can do. And as far as writing and publishing erotica, or other genres, OpenOffice and LibraOffice can accomplish everything you need. I use OpenOffice (I’m writing this blog post in it), and have been completely happy. It can save your file as a Word 97/2003 .doc, which you can upload that file directly to Amazon for publication. OpenOffice can track changes (invaluable if you ever use an editor), leave comments, use style sheets, make PDF’s, and more.

Google Documents is another free software. Your files are automatically backed up into the cloud (see below for the importance of that), but it does not have nearly as many features that even OpenOffice has.

So, we have our writing software out of the way. Let’s take a look at graphic design. Making your own covers is a good way to save money. With tutorials on Youtube, you can learn the basics and lots of tips and tricks that can make a sexy cover (which I will detail more in a later post). The big daddy of graphic design is Photoshop CS. Now, Photoshop is not a cheap piece of software, but Adobe does offer a monthly subscription that is reasonable to use Photoshop CC.

Or, for free, there is GIMP.

You can do a lot with GIMP, and there are plenty of tutorials on Youtube to explain how to use it. It can do a lot of things that Photoshop can, but Photoshop is the more robust tool. There is a lot more support for specialized brushes and addons for Photoshop then GIMP. But you don’t need it for a terribly complicated purpose. You just need to make simple erotica covers. And GIMP will work just fine for that task.

Now that you’ve written your story, you have to assemble it into an the ebook, or a print book. This is your interior. For publishing on Amazon, you can upload a Word .doc straight to their server, but other publishers require ebooks or other formats. Or, if you want to have a more professional book (particularly if you’re writing something longer than a short story), formatting your document with an ebook creator is preferred. Scrivener is capable of making ebooks (since it was designed for writing books). Vellum is an expensive software, but it is the best at making ebooks. Sadly, it is also for Macs only. For free, I use Calibre. It can make ebooks of any format from even an OpenOffice file. In fact, I found using an .odt (OpenOffice doc) works better than a .doc.

Lastly, let’s talk about the most important thing you need—a way to backup your work. This is vital. Technology fails. Hard drives die. Devices break, get stolen, or are lost. You do not want all your work to go poof. It has happened to me. It has happened to other authors. Luckily, there are a variety of ways to backup your data.

Always have multiple copies stored in different locations. Don’t just leave your file only on your hard drive. Save it to a thumb drive or an external hard drive. You can even email it yourself as an attachment, leaving it on your mail server. These are all great solutions, but the best is backup in the cloud.

There are a plethora of services that provide cloud backup. I recommend Dropbox. The basic service, which they try hard to hide, gives you 2 GB of storage for free. Documents are small things. 2 GB will go a long way. So why Dropbox? It creates a folder on your computer. Anything in that folder is automatically backed up to the cloud the moment it is modified (assuming you have internet). If you have multiple computers, your files will be synced between them. Work on something on your laptop, save and quit, then find the file already downloaded to your desktop. Plus, you can revert the file to an older version if it isn’t older than thirty days (this saved me a few weeks ago).

You can use other backup services like Google Drive or Microsoft’s OneDrive, but I’ve found Dropbox to be far and away superior.

Every author has their own familiarity with software and access to different programs. Use what is best for you. If you want to buy the software, think of it as an investment for the future (and make sure you save that receipt for your taxes). Or you can use the free software. Supports a little harder to find, but it’s out there. Writing erotica professionally is treating it as a business. This is no longer a hobby. You need to think about your profit margins and keeping your costs down.

Well, that’s the boring stuff down. Next post, we’ll tackle just how kinky can your writing be and still get published.

Addendum: Author Isabella Belucia has brought up a sight called canva.com that is for making book covers, complete with templates and tools.

Click here for Part 3 – What to Write

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather
My Musings

Publishing Erotica Part 1 – Introduction

14 Comments

Publishing Erotica Part 1 – Introduction

For the last two years, I have been a self-published erotica author. For nearly a year-and-a-half, I have been self-employed, writing erotica full time and providing for myself above what I had been at my low-paid day job. I publish as Reed James, and I want to share with you how I tackle publishing, what I’ve learned, the pitfalls I encountered and how I navigated them, and how I’ve made a moderate success as a short-form erotica author.

At the time of writing this article (March 13th, 2015) I was the #21 ranked author in the category Kindle Ebooks>Literature & Fiction>Erotica and the #45 ranked author in the category Books>Literature & Fiction>Erotica. I have over 400 books published on Amazon and another 40 on various other sites. Every other day, I post a new short erotica on Amazon. That’s a story around 4 to 6 thousand words (though I’m usually 6 to 7k these days, sometimes more). I’ve been doing this since I went full time in October 2015. It has been a rewarding experience. I make my own schedule (though I spend most of my day writing and editing). I am my own boss. I am happy and satisfied. I get to spend my time working on my passion—writing. And not just writing erotica, but on non-erotic fiction that is not nearly as successful.

Why Write Erotica?

So why should you write erotica? You may have heard it is easy money. Compared to any other form of writing, it is. But that doesn’t mean this is easy. It doesn’t mean you can sit down at your keyboard, bang out a story, post it on Amazon, and then just sit back and rake in the dough. If you are looking for a quick buck, no form of writing is that answer, not even erotica.

The money is merely the bonus. You should write erotica because your kinky, because you have dirty ideas, because you want to share your naughty fantasies. To write erotica, you need to enjoy erotica. It cannot be a chore to you. If the thought of writing graphic descriptions of sex turns you off, then you should not write in this genre.

I have known many authors who had the mentality of “I’ll just write smut even if it’s distasteful to make money.” Their prudishness shows in their writing. Your readers can sense if you don’t love what you’re doing and just going through the motions to make a quick buck. The successful erotica authors are people that want to explore the perverse, who see the world and wonder why doesn’t the hot doctor give me a “physical” or wouldn’t it be hot if my secretary had nothing on under her skirt. They’re the people that imagine having sex with a stranger at a club on the dance floor or watching their wife being fucked hard by a Black man.

Erotica isn’t about being realistic. It’s about sharing hot fantasies, forbidden lusts, deviant thoughts, and wicked desires. And it’s up to you to bring them to life for your readers enjoyment. Even if they’re impossible—futanari, witches, paranormal creatures, inhuman stamina, gushing orgasms, bucketfuls of cum. Don’t be afraid to write all the juicy, naughty details. Don’t be afraid to use words like pussy, cunt, ass, cock, dick, cum, slut, and whore. Have your characters embrace these words. A cock fucks a pussy in erotica, not a penis entering a vagina. And remember, these are fantasies. Condoms are not needed. Pregnancy is only an issue if the risk of pregnancy while having unprotected sex is what makes the story hotter. Or maybe it’s a breeding story, and the girl is begging to be knocked up and bred, to have every drop of cum pumped into her fertile cunt.

If any of that makes you uncomfortable, writing erotica is not for you. And that is okay.

If, however, you don’t have a problem with graphic, kinky sex, and you have a filthy mind just bursting with ideas to share, then the next thing you need to understand is short-form erotica is a grind.

Let me repeat that. It. Is. A. Grind.

You need to keep publishing and keep putting out new material so people keep browsing your catalog. It’s rare for any one story to be a huge hit when writing short-form erotica. But as you build your catalog, people are more likely to discover your stories. And if they like what they read, then they will browse your catalog for more of what you write. As your catalog grows, it feeds off of itself, delivering you more sales. You won’t even start to see any real success until around 30 books, and you’ll need more to make a living at it.

So that means you need to be writing a lot. You need to be prepared to commit time to this. If you want to write erotica as a hobby, that’s fine. If you want to make a career at it, you must make writing a priority. And this applies for writing any genre. You need to devote at least an hour a day.

And success won’t come right away.

My first story made me exactly $2.55 my first week and a half (I published near the end of March 2014). I had delusions of making several hundred dollars in the first day. Surely, there would be a hundred people who would by the book. That’s not a lot. A drop in the bucket.

It did not happen.

I preserved. In April, I published a second story and made $6.15. I had no idea what I was doing, but I kept at it (you’ll see in future posts). May saw me earn $13.90. I had three titles by then. It wasn’t until July that I started publishing more stories. By August, I made nearly $400 dollars. I published more. September saw me hit over $1000 dollars. I was seeing success. I kept writing. I was publishing a short ever three days by the end of September.

October, I made nearly $3000 dollars. I was making more than my day job. The decision to quit was easy. I went full time. Now, this was during the days of KU 1.0. The changes Amazon made in July of 2015 to the Kindle Unlimited borrow program hurt short-form erotica a lot. Many erotica authors dropped out. I myself took a hit to my income. But I kept the grind, and I still make a living even in the KU 2.0 days.

And so can you, if you are dedicated and want to do this. I’ll show you how over the next series of posts.

Click here for Publishing Erotica Part 2 – What You Need

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather
My Musings

Piracy!

13 Comments

I found out last week that some of my books were on a piracy site. It was a strange experience. I had just read another authors blog (badredhead media) on handling pirates. It got me paranoid, like one tends to get late at night when you should be sleeping. So I did a google search. And there, on page three, was one of my books advertised on a site I had never heard of. I’m not going to say which, I don’t want to give them any promotions, but I clicked on it.

And my antivirus software immediately alerted me that the site tried to download malware onto my computer. Another reason I’m not sharing the link. The site seemed legitimate, with links to my actual buy links on Smashwords and Barnes & Noble, but nowhere did it say ‘buy’ my ebook, but download. And there, beneath the buy links, was a link to do just that—pirate my intellectual property.

It irked. It still irks me. I put a lot of effort in making my works, and to see someone else giving them away bothered me. And they may not even be giving my stuff away, but using my works to trick people into downloading virus to steal their personal information. That download link didn’t contain my book, but an .exe program, supposedly a downloader, but how can you trust a site such as this? I didn’t download it to find out. But I did send them a cease-and-desist letter. Which they’ve ignored so far.

Seeing my work being stolen, made me think of all the times that I had downloaded mp3s or pirated software ten, fifteen years ago when I was in High School and my early twenties. Back then, I never even hesitated. I always rationalized it as I would never buy it, so how was I stealing anything from them. They weren’t getting my money either way. And it hit me, the people pirating my works would never bother to buy them from me, and while I may not be thrilled about my works being pirated, I can take comfort (whether it’s real comfort or just self-delusion) that the pirates weren’t going to buy it anyways.

If you want to learn some helpful tips on how to deal with piracy, click here, which includes a sample cease and desist letter.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather
My Musings

On Writing: Words and Characterization

3 Comments

On Writing: Words and Characterization

by Reed James

 

It should come as no surprise that words are very important to a writer. English is a rich language, and that gives writers a lot of tools when it comes to their writings. Often we have two, three, or even more words that can convey almost the same meaning, with only minor differences in the shades of their meeting. Since words are our tools, we should get to know them well, keeping them sharp and choosing the right word for the write task.

Take ‘yell’, ‘shout’, and ‘cry’. They all pretty much mean the same thing: to exclaim. But yell has connotations of anger and rebuke, shout gives the feeling that the character is trying to be heard over another noise or over distance, and cry adds a feeling of pain or sadness or even passion to what the character exclaims.

7585568394_486de2d363_oThis is very important when it comes to characterization. Depending on your writing style, you could be employing first person or third person limited POVs, where the narrator either is your character or the narrator lives in the mind of the character. This is less important in normal third person narrative, where the narrator is omniscient and can flit in and out of character’s minds for brief moments. Different characters will think with different words, and when you’re writing their POV you need to demonstrate that. An uneducated person isn’t going to use large, scientific, or obscure words and is more likely to use slang and simple words. A prudish person isn’t like to use harsh swear words like ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’, and may use euphemisms like ‘fudge’ or ‘shoot’. A religious person may not use the Lord’s name in vain. Regional dialect will crop up, changing the patterns of speech. Even with an omniscient narrator your characters will still speak, and their speech should reflect who they are. Maybe its punctuated with obscenities, maybe their given over to verbose speech in an effort to prove how intelligent they are, maybe they use a lot of technical jargon.

The protagonist of my upcoming erotica ‘My Test Drive Lover’ is a lesbian. She’s working at a dealership selling Ferraris. My own inclination is to use the word ‘salesmen’ to describe her job. I’m a man and often don’t think about such gender issues (I know, a failing on my part), but Aurora is not a man, and she certainly wouldn’t be one to use a gender specific title when the gender neutral ‘salesperson’ is available. That’s an important thing as a writer; you have to be prepared to step out of your own experiences and into someone else’s. You have to try and imagine not just how they would act, but how they would speak and think, changing your own language to match theirs like a chameleon changing his skin to blend into the background. And you do that by mastering your words.

And mastering your words takes practice. I’m not perfect. I make grammar mistakes all the time. I bet there’s going to be one or two in this article that I’ll completely miss when I edited this. That’s life; you’re only human. But you have to strive and practice. If you don’t care enough to understand your tools—your words—then your audience will pick up on that. So read up on grammar. When you have a question, look it up on the internet or ask someone’s opinion. Writing is a craft and, like all crafts, it takes practice to hone and maintain. Your writing will only benefit from this.

Here’s a couple of sites I use when I have questions:
Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary: The go to dictionary for American English. They have a free site, but their unabridged dictionary costs about $30 dollars a year, and they add new words to it all the time.
Grammar Monster: Short and quick rules.
Your Dictionary: A nice, ordered site for looking up rules.
Grammar Girl: She has a great article on what to look for while editing.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather
My Musings

On Writing: Chapters

8 Comments

Note Taking

by Reed James

A book is nothing more than a collection of scenes woven together for a narrative purpose. How these scenes are organized, paced, and divided into chapters greatly affects both the tone and the flow of the novel. Figuring out how to choose where your chapter breaks are can be one of the toughest decisions. There is a lot of advice out there, but what’s right for you and your work?

Short chapters can give an sense of urgency, propelling the story. Long chapters can give a story a sense of weight, a slow fire slowly bringing the kettle to a boil. The pacing of your scenes and chapters is so very important. So how do you make that decision? Some people live by the 5k rule. Studies show that most readers have about a half-hour to read before bed and prefer to stop at the end of a chapter. 5K words is what the average person reads in a half-hour. But is that the right way?

A chapter needs to have its own life and purpose. It’s there to accomplish a task. When I write a chapter, I have a mini-theme and story I want this chapter to convey and it will be as long or as short as it needs to be to get the job done. Perhaps its an action chapter, or maybe it’s setup where I’m weaving several characters to the verge of collusion. The most important thing is to be true to the story your telling. If it’s a fast paced thriller, use short chapters, if it’s a long epic, stretch it out a bit. I’ve seen a chapter that’s 190 pages long in the hardback edition. It was a single battle, the chapter seemed to never end, making me feel the exhausting, unending brutality that the characters felt. I have seen other chapters that were but a single sentence of even a single word. A word so important, so profound to the story, the author gives it such weight by having it exist as a single chapter.

What’s really important, once you have your pacing, is how you end the chapter. While most readers may want chapters to let them take a break, you should ended it so they’re wanting more. When people say a book is a page turner, they mean that at the end of every chapter was a cliffhanger that made the itch to find out what happened next. “Just one more chapter,” becomes the mantra. It doesn’t have to a life or death cliffhanger, but maybe it’s a question asked, a sudden twist, an unexpected character showing up, or a character breaking down on the verge of being crushed under the weight of their problems. Keep them reading. That’s really the most important thing.

If you were wondering about the 190 page chapter, ‘A Memory of Light’ by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. I’m blanking on a one word chapter that I’ve read. I feel it was a Steven King novel. Google is failing me in this regard. The only one I can find is ‘Misery’ and I never read that one.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather
My Musings

On Writing: Taking Notes

4 Comments

Note Taking

by Reed James

Organization is so very important when it comes to writing. You may think writing is easy. You just sit down and let your fingers fly across the keyboard. But if you really want to write something meaningful (I know, a guy who writes smut is talking about writing something with meaning) you need to take notes.

Have an outline to guide you as you write. It doesn’t have to be super detailed, that’s really up to your own tastes, but you need something down to give direction, to know where your characters are going, what challenges they’ll face, and how experience will change them. I prefer to outline the major points of the story and then see where inspiration takes me as I journey to those points.

Next you should keep notes. If you have a character, say a minor cop that likes to chew a specific brand of tobacco, you should write that down in your notes. You may never even plan on using the character, but down the road you just may realize you need him/her to fulfill some part in your story and you’ll want those notes to keep the character traits consistent. Believe me, someone will spot the discrepancy. Keep notes on everything, descriptions of characters, of places, mannerisms, ticks, fears, relationships. If you do this from beginning, it will save you headaches down the road.

Have a system to find your notes. The most detailed notes in the world will not help you if you can’t locate the information. Whether you write your notes down and keep them in a filing cabinet or you have them as files on your computer, have a system. Use subfolders, consistent file naming, or whatever method you want, just be able to find those notes when you need them.

Do not rely on your memory. If you haven’t written a character in a while, you’re liable to grow fuzzy on some the details. Read your notes, that’s why you wrote them down to begin with. You’re only human and human memory is mutable. It changes, shifts, distorts with time. Maybe you’re that rare person that can hold all those details in your head. Good for you. But I bet the vast majority of us (yes us, I have made this very sin before) just are not capable of doing that.

Readers love consistency. It shows that you care enough to put hard work into your writing. So do the best you can, be the best you can. Whether your writing a novel exploring the myriad aspects of the human spirit or smut, put your all into it. It may be what separates you from the thousands of other writers out there.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather
My Musings

On Writing – Facing Fears

4 Comments

Writing is never easy, and writing erotica can be even more daunting. You’re taking your fantasies and sharing them for the entire world to read. Maybe you’re ashamed of them, or maybe you’re just afraid of what your friends and family will think if they find out just the sort of kinky things you’re into. Fear was my number one hurdle. And not just fear that my mom would find out what I was writing (the woman has a very anti-porn stance and kicked me out of the house when she found my own porn collections). I was afraid of criticism.

I was afraid to share even my non-erotic writing with friends and family. What if they don’t like it? What if they hate it? Could my self-esteem survive the crushing, vitriolic hate that I feared I would get? It took me years to overcome that fear. I started by posting anonymously on the internet, finally sharing my writing instead of letting sit on my hard drive for years (or even decades, and trust me you don’t want to read the stuff that’s been there for decades).

“Why don’t you shove a pineapple up your ass,” was one of the first comment someone posted on my writing.

I learned something—I could take vitriolic hate. I had thicker skin than I thought. I was even tempted to write a witty comment back like, “I did, and it felt great, I have a cactus that’s ready to be shoved up yours.” I didn’t. No sense in feeding the trolls. And then the positive comments came and I started to realize just how much I wasted my twenties. I could have been writing, getting better, sharing my works, for all these years.

Writing has been my dream since junior high school. It was my dream and yet I let fear keep me from pursuing it. So if it’s your dream to write, to paint, or sculpt or to do anything else—pursue it. Don’t let your fears or small minded, hateful comments, like the pineapple one, hold you back. If the criticism isn’t constructive, discard it, otherwise take it as an opportunity to learn, to grow, to get better. If someone is negative, but not hateful, think about what they said. Maybe there completely off based, but maybe there is something that you could improve. No one’s perfect and everyone can get better. I strive everyday to improve my writing, I welcome any criticisms so that I can improve my craft.

Life is too short and too precious to waste it on fear. Live to your fullest and follow your dreams, else you’ll soon be old and filled with regrets.

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather
My Musings

My Experience Self-Publishing!

1 Comment

First time Self-Publishing

Hey everyone, I thought I’d share my thoughts on self-publishing.

After putting a lot of hard work into writing my first short story, Roleplay Gone Wrong, part of the Naughty Wives Series I plan on writing, I had the daunting task of self-publishing. I knew I would have to make a cover, and I had know idea how to do that and not to have it look like complete garbage. So I turned to Google.

I found a post: Create Your Own Ebook Covers, Step by Step, With Pictures by William King. From him I learned of image libraries. Websites with thousands and thousands of photos that you can buy the license for commercial use for relatively cheap. If you’re poor like me, it’s a great solution. My cover art for Roleplay Gone Wrong cost me about $14 from Dreamstime. Another image library I found is iStock.

So now I had the image and William King recommended a 3×4 aspect ration for the image size such as 600×800 pixels. I opened up gimp a free, and fairly robust, graphic editor. A poor man’s Photoshop. I shrank my picture down to 600×800, banged my head against gimps text editor, then I accidentally lost all my work just when I had it all finished. Sigh. Finally, an hour and a half later, I had the best cover I could produce with my limited gimp knowledge.

naughtywife1cover

I had my cover, I had my text. I had to combined them into an ebook somehow. Google was my friend again and I learned all about calibre. Another free software that could edit an ebook. It’s a clunky, poorly laid out piece of free software that took me a few minutes just to figure out how to do anything, like adding the document I planed to turn into an ebook.

My first attempt to turn my open office (poor man’s Microsoft Word) file into an ebook was a disaster. The formatting of the text was all screwed up, there were no paragraphs, just huge chunks of text. I tried to edit it. Ebooks apparently run a modified html code that I could make absolutely zero sense of.

Back to Google, and the discovery of style sheets. I had always ignored the formatting selection on Open Office, opting to manually do it and, worse, use tab for indents. Turns out to get paragraphs in an ebook you need automatic indents from a style sheet (Styles and Formatting or F11 in Open Office). Chapter titles need the heading format so the ebook creator will recognize them as the start of chapters. My next attempt was far better. It looked like an ebook. Elated, I felt like I was ready to upload to Amazon and Smashwords.

Amazon was definitely the easier of the two. The only hitch: I made my cover 600 x 800 pixels and Amazon required at least 1000 pixels tall cover. So I scaled my cover up and was relieved to see it still looked crisp. I uploaded it and passed their text scan. If you want to post erotica on Amazon, be prepared to never mention a characters family (other than a spouse, and that means no mother-in-laws or sister-in-laws or any other -in-laws) or use the words boy or girl to often (even in sorotity girl or frat boy). No jobs traditionally held by high school students (no cheerleaders or babysitters even if they’re over eighteen), no living animals (extinct animals are okay), and no nuns (don’t ask, I couldn’t tell you why).

Smashwords was next, and the headache began in earnest.

The cover was again a problem. Smashwords requires the width (not the length, but the shorter, top side) to be at least 1400 pixels. Again I stretched my cover, hoping it would still look crisp and sharp. Relief swept through me—it did. I was afraid that I would have had to recreate my cover from the original image.

It was time for me to face the Smashwords ebook creator—the meat grinder. I used Open Office, so I had to first convert my file into a .doc (the only format they accept). Then I submitted it. The meat grinder did not approve. I had tab errors, copyright page errors, and paragraph indent errors. Because I had foolishly used tabs to indent as I wrote (they didn’t teach style sheets when I learned typing), I had to go through and take them all out. Then I had to modify my copyright page to something Smashwords approved. I read through their Style Guide, and I set up style sheets with the recommended .3” first line indent.

Resubmitted. Paragraph error. Improper indents.

Resubmitted after making sure all the indents were in fact .3”. Paragraph error. Improper indents.

Took out the indents. Accepted. But it looked terrible. Block paragraphs with only a tiny separation between them. Unacceptable to me.

Now I was thinking I had to shell out a hundred dollars to get Microsoft Office, money I didn’t really have. I dug deeper, reading through the Style Guide Faq, and I realized what was wrong. The Autovetter message used this phrase: “If you want to use first line paragraph indents, then remove the “before/after” space you have coded into your paragraph style.” I didn’t understand what that meant. Luckily their FAQ explained things in simple terms that my pounding head could understand. My style sheet put an extra space .1” between the paragraphs when I saved it as a .doc file, and that had caused all the issues. Smashwords will let you indent paragraphs or have spaces between paragraphs, but not both. I removed the space and suddenly…

I was approved!

I shot my fist up into the air, as triumphant as a Greek hero completing some seemingly impossible task. I slew the Hydra, skinned the Nemean lion, navigated Scylla and Charybdis, and used far too much hyperbole in describing my elation just now! I survived the meat grinder, and its strange messages that made little sense.

I few days later, I passed their manual inspection. I was on the premium content list!

So for those out there looking to self-publish, remember these lessons. Make your cover width at least 1400 pixels if you want to post on Smashwords or 1000 pixels tall if you want to post on Amazon. Before you start writing, read Smashwords Style Guide and set your formatting up ahead of time. It will help to make any ebook, not just one for posting on Smashwords, and save you hours of formatting headaches.

Check out Roleplay Gone Wrong available on Smashwords and Amazon for the low price of $0.99. It’s a hot read about a married couple who get more than they bargained for with some roleplay when a Black cop catches them at their fun. Cheating, Cuckold, Wife Watching, Spanking, and Bondage. See how Frank and Evie’s relationship changes forever!

Facebooktwitterlinkedinrssyoutubetumblrby feather
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather