Category: Modern Evil Press

Trying to do, perhaps, too much at once

So, I’ve been working on the audiobook version of Dragons’ Truth (available now in paperback from Modern Evil Press) for the last several weeks.  At least a full week, perhaps week and a half, was spent learning how to use the hardware and software tools I have available to reduce background noise as much as possible.  In the future (when I’ve been at this for longer, and have more experience (and more equipment.  ie: a better sound environment)) I’m sure I’ll want to re-record Dragons’ Truth.  I’m somewhat a perfectionist, and this recording isn’t as perfect as I’d like. But it will have to do, for now.

That is the conclusion I came to after the first week of fighting with the background noise.  The other few days were just me trying to get it “good enough” for now.  It’s better than a lot of the stuff that’s out there, it’s just … not as good as I’d like.  I’ve played it  for a couple of “normal” people (ie: not audiophiles) through “normal” audio players (ie: not high-end closed-ear headphones; just a regular stereo, regular earbuds) and they don’t even hear the things that bug me about it, so … it’s good enough.  Lost and Not Found, which I would like to tackle next, should be better.

I’m planning on podcasting these audiobooks, for free, through Podiobooks.com and perhaps through a Modern Evil Press feed that has everything. (Multiple books, videos, et cetera…)  There are hundreds of authors/titles already on podiobooks.com, and a huge base of listeners, hungry for new books. The traditional model for podiobooks authors seems to be to only have a few episodes (or none) recorded ahead of when they hit the site (typically one episode a week).  The guide recommends to have 5 episodes finished before your first episode goes live, in case anything slows production down the line – no one wants an episode to be posted late, and it’s a sure way to lose traffic fast.  So, for most first-time podiobookers, based on what I’ve seen in the mentorship forum and from chatting with them on Twitter, they spend several months working on an episode or five, and then just try to stay ahead of the release schedule from then on.  I state this for contrast from what I’m doing:

Even including the 1.5 weeks lost to my insanity, I’m spending less than a month recording an entire audiobook.  I want the whole thing done, ready to go, before the first episode is available for free to the internet.  I want the completed audiobook to be available for sale before the first episode hits the internet for free.  I want to have links to where you can buy the audiobook as an MP3 CD (or AAC CD), as a set of audio CDs, or where you can subscribe to dl it for free, one episode at a time over months, and I want all three links to go up at once.  That month includes composing intro/outro/bridge music (so I don’t have to pay or credit anyone else for that), editing, mixing, test-burning CDs and designing labels and packaging for them, because I plan to do all that myself, too.

All of this is possible because of digital tools available to me relatively cheaply.  This audiobook is relatively short (it’ll probably come in at around 4.5hrs when I’m done), but with experience recording should go faster, so the next one will probably take fewer days per hour of audio, and at a higher quality.  Packaging for the LaNF audiobook, which will probably be on 10+ CDs, I don’t know about right now, but I’ve already got some good ideas about how to package D’T, and some ideas about combo-packages I can offer (buy the paperback and the MP3 CD together and save!)…  hopefully this will help with sales of everything.

Anyway, I’ve been somewhat busy lately with this one project, at the exclusion of almost all else, because I want to get this launched ASAP.  I want to get the audiobook broadcasting (podcasting) as soon as possible. But since I also want to get the entire thing done ahead of time … it’s a lot.  Oh, and people keep reminding me First Friday is THIS Friday, and am I ready?  Of course I’m not ready!  Are you coming?

The white noise of diminishing returns, OR: How not to record an audiobook

Shoot, is it Thursday already?

My life is Hell, in fast forward, sometimes.

Did you know that making good, clean, audio is tricky? Yeah. Like, a week and a half, out the window, because I didn’t know I was doing it wrong, and I still haven’t quite got figured out how to do it right. Call it two weeks lost. And now there’s a garbagetruck, I don’t know, revving its motors outside.

Free movie might be better than art walk. Stubbing my toe might be better than recording the audio wrong again. So I’m frustrated and paranoid, tweaking and adjusting and fiddling with things. I probably won’t know when it’s “good enough” anymore, since I thought it was good two weeks ago and have since learned that it’s not. Sigh. I don’t know what to do.

Go have breakfast, I guess. In an hour, I get to drive across town to pick up the generator to power the lights for my space at First Friday. Too bad I can’t listen to my iPhone in the car, or I might have been able to catch up on some podcasts.

Hope you’re having a better life than I am.

Everyone say goodbye to Betty

Friday afternoon, Mandy and I were poking around, asking people on Twitter what we should do for the evening, and we were considering one of the (apparently several) regular poetry readings around town, but then we heard about a meetup of Podcasters and other social media types (whatever that means) from around the valley. So, we went down to Tempe Marketplace (fashionably late – plus ten minutes just to get into the parking lot from the turning lane) and met a whole bunch of new people (plus a couple of people we’d met at Creative Connect a week or two ago) and had a good time hanging out until we’d literally closed the place down.  THEN, because Mandy and I weren’t done with our night out yet, we went to see Zombie Strippers at the Valley Art in Tempe.  It was much more fun than we were expecting.  Not to mention nudity, gore, zombies, and dark comedy, there was plenty of anti-GWB sentiment from even the first scene.

Anyway, as I do, I discussed my writing, my art, and my attempts and plans for making a living from it with the people we met.  I’ve previously spent a fair chunk of time formatting and transferring photos of my art to my iPhone for just such conversations – people like playing with the iPhone enough that it’s fun to go through dozens of pictures in the midst of conversation – so I had the opportunity to share my art with several people.  And my art really resonated with a couple of people.  And long story short, they decided they wanted to buy Betty.  So Mandy and I hand-delivered it to them on Sunday and hung out with them some more – they’re good people, and we all got along well, which is even better.

This is all good news.  Very encouraging.  Not selling a lot of books (yet – still working on getting the word out there), but that’s two direct book orders (five books total) and two art orders (five paintings total) so far this month, which is more than I sold all last year and the first quarter of this year combined.  And there’s been additional interest in some of my other pieces expressed from a couple of corners, so perhaps we can turn that into sales down the road, too.  Word of mouth is always good. And my “big marketing push” for Dragons’ Truth (my first audiobook, currently being recorded and edited) should start next month, so hopefully that will sell some paperbacks and a few CDs.  Oh, plus I’m going to (finally) start showing at First Fridays in May.  Just a 10×10′ space with the Roosevelt Row folks, but I’ll have my art, I’ll have my books, Heath will be there with his chainmail jewelry, too.

So, times are reasonably good, so far.  I spent all day today (literally from 7AM until Mandy came home around 4:30PM (and a while afterward, as well) just going through stacks of paperwork and filing things, sorting papers, getting things organized into the “new” filing cabinet, and samesuch.  Yet the table I’m trying to get cleaned up to use as a working area is still entirely covered in mess.  More work on it tomorrow, but I’ve also got to take care of the Roosevelt Row paperwork tomorrow, so … maybe we’ll get done.  Maybe we won’t.  Having a couple extra days off the audio work is good, though, even if it is all business-side, mostly paperwork stuff.

You guys better love the audiobooks.

DailyLit has apparently never heard of the long tail

So, I’ve been working on getting my books and eBooks around to as many places as possible lately. Putting them up in over half a dozen formats (apparently have to figure out how to make eReader, Palm Reader, and MS Reader compatible versions, as well) for free on my website, getting them available on Amazon for the kindle (done), getting them on Google Book Search (apparently even uploaded PDFs need to be manually “processed” so that could be a couple of weeks), getting set up at Lightning Source (which would include distribution, and for which I definitely want to have the MS and Palm versions ready, if possible – oh, and for which I’m faxing the paperwork over to them today), and emailing other eBooks sites to see if I can get my books up. I need to look closer at WOWIO and a couple of others, but so far I’ve emailed DailyLit and BookGlutton to see if they could put up my books. Each is either entirely or mostly free, having mostly or entirely Public Domain / CC works.

Heard back from DailyLit. Here’s an excerpt of what they said:

“… right now we are looking for works in the following categories:

  • Best-selling or critically acclaimed titles
  • Titles by authors who have a big following (especially on the web)
  • Works that are especially well-suited to the DailyLit format”

Which is to say, they’ve apparently never heard of “the long tail” … DailyLit would be an excellent service for the long tail of eBooks, since they have an even lower psychological barrier-to-entry than traditional eBook retailers; they send books to you via email in small, easily-digestible chunks. Everyone is used to getting daily emails these days, email newsletters, they check their mail, they read their mail, it’s part of everyday life in a way that reading paper books often isn’t, and reading eBooks on digital readers isn’t for everyone who doesn’t own one. DailyLit is a format I can imagine people would be willing to try new books out on, new authors on. DailyLit has a universal enough platform that all those niche books in the long tail, instead of targeting their eBooks at only the people with digital readers, or who are willing to read a full-length traditional eBook on their screen, they can target everyone who is comfortable reading email. Which widens their niche, I would think.

As we know about the long tail, each title may not be purchased very often. Yet if we make each of these less-popular, niche titles as widely available as possible to the most possible readers, they will see an increased possibility of success. (And DailyLit would see more volume of business overall.)

Alas, like traditional “Big Publishing”, DailyLit is only interested in you if you’ve already got a big audience they can tap into. Oh well. Their loss as well as mine.

E-Books coming online

Alright, it took me roughly twice as long as I was hoping to get this far, but I’ve spent roughly 32 hours of the last 40 working on getting my books converted to a variety of E-Book formats and uploaded to my site and a couple of others. There’s still work to do (I have to fax some paperwork to Lightning Source to get set up for E-Books there, and maybe convert to a couple more formats for that), but I’m as done as I can be for right now.

Which is to say that my novels are now available as screen readable PDFs, printable PDFs (galley-like layout), basic HTML, RTF, Mobi, .epub*, and plaintext files. They are also available for purchase on the Amazon Kindle. All my print books (including poetry) will (soon?) be fully searchable on Google Book Search & purchasable via same as E-Books. After I get them set up via Lightning Source, they will also be available for purchase through all major online E-Book retailers, but that could be a couple of weeks.  Oh, and I also created preview PDFs of my poetry books – I don’t want to give those away for free in their entirety, and think their format doesn’t work as well as E-Books.

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be recording audiobooks almost full time for a while, and accompanying videos soon thereafter. For now: sleep.

*I’m not sure that my .epub files are formatted correctly – I couldn’t get several of them to open with Adobe Digital Editions, but they did open in other readers. I haven’t tested them on my PC yet, only my Mac.  Anyone use the .epub format who might be willing to assist with getting these to work better / look better?  Thanks