Freewriting may, sometimes, seem like a waste of time.  It is NEVER a waste of time.  You have a writing prompt, you write for 5-10 minutes and wonder if it is any good.  Of course it is.  Your freewrite may contain the germ of a short story or the theme of a book.  It may provide a character of two, or a conflict, a place, a memory.  

Memoirs are really scenes from our lives as best we can remember them.  Never through away a freewrite, keep them in a binder, in a drawer, in a box and then use them when you feel stuck.

Woody Allen keeps what he calls his "scribbles" in a drawer.  When he needs a setting or a situation he pulls out these sheets of paper and starts to write.  You do the same thing.  It never fails, you will always win using this method.

epublishing: where, when, how, who?

Ok you have heard so much about epublishing. Now what?  Here are some tips.
FIRST RULE:  IT HAS TO LOOK PROFESSIONAL

o   Price your ebook cheaply – don’t deal with anyone that won’t let you set your own price. Make sure the cover art looks professional.

WHERE TO PUBLISH:
KINDLE DIRECT PUBLISHING

o   Amazon. Upload your book to Kindle directly (no fees)

o   70% royalty fee to writer but some rules apply  complete list of terms

o   https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin

o   $.99-$9.99 pricing – most books sell at $2.99 or less

o   Create your own cover using:  Mobipocket eBook Creator or Calibre. Mobipocket Creator allows you to create an e-book with a table of contents and convert it into Amazon's proprietary e-book format, AZW (MOBI, the file output by the program, is the same as AZW). You can start with a Word file, which then gets converted to HTML, then MOBI. (Check out the Mobipocket eBook Creator guide at the company's Web site).

APPLE

o   Offers the same royalty to writers that Amazon offers (70%).

o   Must use an aggregator such as Smashwords or Lulu to get into iBook store.

SMASHWORDS

·        Free style guide for formatting your Word document and images. http://www.smashwords.com/

·        Upload the document and image into their “meatgrinder”  tool and you can create an ebook in just about any format that you want.

·        They don’t charge you for creating ebook but do take a small cut of the author’s royalties. At a price point of $2.99, on Apple’s iBookstore,  Smashwords takes 10% of the retail price (iBookstore earns $1.794 or 60% of the retail price) so Smashwords winds up taking $.299.

·        You can acquire your own ISBN for a price although most ebook publishers provide it for free or roll it into their total price.

LULU

·        You can publish a print book or just publishing ebook. Lulu distributes to Apple iBookstore and Lulu.com.  Lulu would charge from $99.99 to $299 for this conversion.

·        It is one of the main aggregators for Apple’s iBookstore. 

·        The author receives 56% of the retail price for a book sold at Apple (versus 60% at Smashwords). Charges a $1.49/book production fee for every book sold to Apple in addition to the 20% sale price if Lulu sets up the book for you.
·         However authors are free to use any of the free conversion programs available to them.  If you go to lulu they list these on their website. http://www.lulu.com/publish/ebooks/

FAST PENCIL

·        A number of self-publishing packages. http://www.fastpencil.com/

·        $149 for its basic epublishing packing, and you still have to import your own cover image and get no design help. You do get wide distribution. (Nook – B&N, iBookstore, Kindle store, Sony Readers, Ingram’s Digital network.

·        Royalty is similar to Lulu’s which is not quite as good as Smashwords – or about 56% of retail rate.

PUBLISH GREEN

http://www.publishgreen.com/

·        A number of packages from $299 - $899.

·        Kindle compatible file.

·        90% royalty.

o   Create Space, iUniverse, Xlibris, Authorhouse.

·        Allow you to do print-on-demand self publishing ebook conversion service and distribution but avoid any company that doesn’t let you set your own price.

SCRIBD

·        http://www.scribd.com/

·        Fast/easy way to get ebook on Internet. Create an account, then a PDF of your book with cover image embedded on the first page of the PDF and upload it to Scribd. Its online software converts your document into

·        a file that can be viewed on a pc, iPad or other portable devices.

BARNES & NOBLE PUB-IT

·        http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home

·        Similar to Amazon B&N set the Publit royalty rate for authors at 65% of the sale price for titles priced $2.99 and higher.  Rate falls to 40% if you go lower than $2.99 or higher than $9.99 with B&N setting $.99 as lowest price and $199.99 has highest.  This is close to Amazon’s 70% royalty but not quite as high.


·        RESOURCES: J.A. Konrath (mystery writer)has a primer on ebooks  "How to Make Money on eBooks"

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