Sunday, August 22, 2010

Still Too Graphic


So, to update:

I *finally* got my first graphic novel Leather Tales up on Smashwords. To do this, I had to drastically compress the images (not sure yet how this may affect reading quality) and break the story into two parts, to be purchased separately.

The next day, I got an email from Smashwords, telling me that my Word .doc was giving strange results on different e-readers. Apparently, I needed to 'Align with text' for every image in order for them to display correctly. Bit of a learning curve here, but I won't make the same mistake again.

Right now I've got Serina Vol. 1 almost ready to go. I just need to get the cover done, but my illustrator's got a bit of a backlog at the moment. I've tried pressure, threats and flattery, but to no avail. Best I can say, he assures me he'll get to it next week. ;-)

By contrast, I took my .doc, sent it to Amazon as a PDF, and they had it Kindled up in a couple of days, no worries. I have to say, so far in this wild world of epublishing, Amazon makes it easiest.

And, oddly, as of this evening, Leather Tales has now outsold Crossroad Blues by two to one. I really do think Crossroad Blues is the more satisfying read, but apparently the market for lesbian assassins taking on The Mob is a fair bit larger... :-)

7 comments:

Sidney said...

It really is a brave new digital age with its own set of headaches.

Charles Gramlich said...

I have to admit I had a very difficult time reading the words on my Kindle. It was somewhat easier on kindle for PC, since I could enlarge the screen a bit more.

RK Sterling said...

"...apparently the market for lesbian assassins taking on The Mob is a fair bit larger..."

I've often found that to be true. :)

Good luck with the new ventures! I'm working on a short book to release in print via Amazon's CreateSpace. We'll see how that goes. I'm thinking of using it mainly as a giveaway for promotions.

AvDB said...

Interesting about your sales differences.

The illustrations look beautiful on my iPhone. I do have to zoom up and scroll the screen to read the words, but, they're quite clear and easy to make out. That's just the hazard of reading on a tiny, tiny screen. I can imagine it looks awesome on an iPad.

Erik Donald France said...

Oh man, good luck nailing this down digitally!

Lana Gramlich said...

Continued success to you, pioneer on the e-pub frontier!

cs harris said...

Good luck with this. Sounds like quite a struggle.

Hope all is well with you and yours after this earthquake! Nippy time of year to be without power.