Posts Tagged ‘Self Publishing’

Books4free.com – Hippopotamus Sea; My Viral Sobriety by Jared Bryan Smith

Posted: October 11, 2010 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Well the book launched yesterday! I was very excited as I didn’t realize it was basically automatic from the acceptance of the proof with Lightning Source. I was putting pressure on my graphics designer/web designer who was basically stalling and putting it right back on me, which drove me a little batty. So I was thinking books4free was going to have to call LSI, which is always a pain in the ass, and find out how to connect LSI and Amazon together. Thankfully it was all done automatically.

Hippopotamus Sea; My Viral Sobriety, written by me, Jared Bryan Smith, 2.5 years in the making, and it finally launches on 10-10-10, a sheer coincidence. Chronicling a 17 year drug and drinking binge, sobriety,  the 12 Steps of AA in their modern workings, haha, as well as, of course, the contraction of Hepatitis C, the insane costs of the treatment without insurance, the charity given by Roche, and the grueling Interferon treatment itself, it’s certainly a book anyone in recovery would appreciate.

It doesn’t sugar coat much, and cuss words are modern, and used liberally. Anyone who has Hep C, isn’t going to be offended I suspect, but it may not penetrate the staunch religious aspects of AA as some are very averse to cursing. My God doesn’t speak English exclusively so he could care less how many times I drop the F bomb. I didn’t cross the GD line though, haha. It’s a good book, regardless of anyone’s delicate sensitivities. I couldn’t write honestly and not cuss a little.

So as of yesterday my best ranking was in the top 32000 on Amazon, but today, Monday, we’ve drifted back to about 75k, so my brother just bought 3 copies to test this theory, see what happens. Very strange as a publisher books4free can’t just go and look up exactly how many copies they’ve sold, but I guess they probably just haven’t figured that out yet. I suppose books4free should call LSI regardless just to see how to do that.

I’m glad the book is up though. I used a technical editor, and in all honesty it wouldn’t shock me if later on down the road I ended up getting an editor specifically attuned to working on autobiographies, to get rid of some of the name dropping, probably crop some pages, but at this stage, it’s the very best I could do with the tools, resources, and time I had at hand. Especially the money. I would have saved thousands going through Lulu.com or any Vanity Publishing Press out there, but we wanted to use my book to launch books4free.com. We’ll see how that all plays out moving forward  I suppose.

So go take a look please, if you haven’t already!

http://www.books4free.com

-Jared Bryan Smith

Smashwords, Books4free.com, Lightning Source, Blurb.com

Posted: July 16, 2010 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Just put down the Fortune magazine in which I saw that Blurb.com is doing 45 million in revenues already. Good for them, that definitely shows this small publishing market continues to grow and thrive. God willing Books4free.com will enjoy just a bit of that success, as it launches with my first title, Hippopotamus Sea.

The cover is done, the editing is done, and the publisher I understand now awaits the Proof book from LightningSource.com to prove that they are actually capable of printing and shipping an actual hard copy book.

After much research, the decision to use smashwords to distribute all the digital formatting of the book seems to be the wisest. They take the book, and after formatting for Mark Coker’s meatgrinder software, which I had to send off the word document to rid it of all spaces, tabs, and page numbers, we will upload to smashwords, which will then, theoritiacally make it available on ipad, epub, nook, kindle, and the like, which is a good deal for me the writer, the publisher, and hopefully the consumer…

I saw on the smashwords website the ability to give away the book 4 free to soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, so in the spirit of books4free.com, we will definitely be participating in that venture.

The journey feels like it’s getting closer to completion, but of course, the marketing and selling of the book will just be the next step. The writing, editing and bringing to market though, is hopefully almost done. Once books4free.com is complete and their is a book for sale, for read for free, and digitally, I’ll be excited… right now I’m just feeling a little overwhlemed by it all.

-JB Smith

 

Self Publishing; Lightning Source; Learning the hard way.

Posted: July 2, 2010 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Do you know the difference between Perfect Bound, Case Laminate, or Dust Jack on Grey cloth, when it comes to books. Well at $80 a change, you had better figure it out. Also, unless you are your own graphics designer, make sure you use the lightning source cover template generator, lest you submit, only to find your specs are way off. And once you figure out what the above definitions mean, rest assured, you’ll have to change that cover. God willing, you have a patient graphic designer, or a ton of patience yourself, because learning all the ways of self publishing is certainly a challenge. Also its good if you go to meetings with your publisher who is using your book to launch his site, otherwise this shit would have been expensive as hell.

Ultimately though, I’m grateful books4free.com is learning the ropes with the book Hippopotamus Sea, as the next book will surely be easier.

I’ve already got a lead on a soldier coming back from war interested in publishing his memoirs. I hope to prove my method works with Hippopotamus Sea, so I can then persuade others to submit books to books4free.com.

Until then we’ll just keep learning the ropes. Almost two years in the making my book still feels a few weeks out, while I await the final changes (hopefully) from the graphics designer… argh… Some days I wish I’d just used Lulu, or Authorhouse, rather than doing all this shit myself…. Hell even Dan Poynter couldn’t have prepared me for all of this hoop jumping.

-JB Smith

books4free.com 10 year birthing pains

Posted: August 10, 2009 in Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Wow, so this is my first bloggage activity, and I’ve yet to see how this process works, so for all I know I’m writing in the subject line right now. It’s been a long day, I’m an executive recruiter by day and a writer by night, but also trying to finish the editing, and ultimately the publishing of my book through the website and publishing company books4free.com . Hippopotamus Sea is the name of the book, and it’s about the journey of my life. From being born into an abusive alcoholic, albeit, upper middle class, family in the late 1970’s, watched my Dad’s progressive disease as he spiraled downward from drinking Budweiser on a daily basis, to pina colodas, to chugging vodka straight from the bottle, and ultimately on August 22, 1989, putting a .357 to his head and blowing his head off.

I led an intense and crazy adolescent life, flirting with LSD, pot, cocaine, and of course my love, drinking, followed the Dead a little, sold drugs, went in and out of Juvenile Detention in downtown Atlanta where Judge Hatchett would scold me and let me go from time to time, until dropping out of school and dealing drugs, a gun was put to my head, both literally and figuratively. My girlfriend got pregnant, and then while she was 8 months pregnant a gun was put to my head to rob me of the cash I’d brought to a drug deal.

Longer story than can be blogged, eventually bought books4free.com in an early attempt to publish ebooks in 1999, that he’d written about Big Brother and the other wild conspiracy theories he’d floated about in his fragile little mind. I met in the rooms of AA and our stories were so similar we decided to work together.

Bertelsmann offered 20k in 2000 but I declined. Instead, got married, then divorced, and my addictions got worse and worse until I was doing my dying mothers fetinol patches. Once she died, I switched to heroin in one fateful evening, that would ultimately give me Hep C and cause my liver to start failing. I quit the heroin and all opiates after that night, but I continued to drink and things got worse and worse.

I lost my mind. I thought I had a microchip in my ankle, I thought I was an undercover CIA operative, and I was certain I was in hell when alcohol quit working for me in August of 2006.

I went to AA, I believed I was in hell, and my soul would ignite at any moment. I wrote a detailed book about the entire experience, my entire life leading up to that crossroads, and the journey of beating Hep C afterwards, and staying sober, etc.

With 2.5 years of real sobriety now, I’m trying launching the book, putting the final editing touches on the book Hippopotumus Sea and I believe I’m getting close, though the international slowdown in the economy is certainly not helping my progress any.

Oh well, such is life, as Miley says with all her years of wisdom, there is always going to be another hill to climb, always gonna be an uphill battle. Haha, I’m delirious. Day 3 without a cigarette, but it’s all good, I’m sure this too shall pass.

The dynamics of books4free.com will be this:

An unpublished author like myself will be able to post his/her entire book online for free, available to read, but not for download or print, but if they like it, and want to buy the hardcopy they’ll be able to purchase it through the site as well, or purchase the MP3 audio, or of course the ebook, which thanks to Sony, no longer is a monopoly through the kindle. The site, books4free.com, will offer authors the most money back of any self publishing avenue out there, and with the domain as obvious as it is, we will hopefully attract many readers, so that the cream will rise, and the books that aren’t amazing, will fall by the way side. That way when it becomes evident we have a successful writer on our hands, we will be able to act as a literary agent to the traditional brick and mortar publishing houses, and sign our authors up. We will charge less that lulu, iuniverse, or authorhouse, because we’re in it for the authors, not the vanity publishing revenue dollars.

We truly just want great works to be read, without the wall of traditional publishers from blocking them. Emily Dickinson died with 1000’s of pages of works in her attic. This is a place for writers to publish, and be discovered, without being charged an arm and a leg for cover design work, additional editing, consulting, etc. Vanity publishing sells to just that , the egos and vanity of writers, which I assure you can be quite large, but books4free.com and booksforfree.com will be for finished product, to be posted, and viewable for the public to read and judge on their own.

God willing, it won’t take another 10 years to launch anyway. Sometimes when I make plans, God laughs!

– JB Smith