I shaved all my hair off!
Shit That Will Never Happen #1
‘Don’t worry about me, just point me in the direction of the body,’ ordered Detective Inspector Groves, rolling his way out of the passenger seat of the Ford he and his partner had arrived in, and refusing the help of the constable who was there to greet them. Groves knew he still had plenty of pounds to lose – hence the aggressive diet Mrs Groves had him on – but the lure of the biscuits and Kit Kats on offer at the station was just too strong for him to resist. Old habits die hard, and it’s even harder to kill them when you have a job as stressful as Groves.
This was the last thing he needed. In all his years as a detective, Groves couldn’t remember a time when he’d had a week filled with this much evil. On Monday, he had had to attend the house of an elderly lady whose mail had been stolen. She cried so hard, Groves wondered if he would ever get over it. It had really started the week off on the wrong foot. But it just got worse from there – Tuesday opened The Case of the Missing Wing Mirror, where an unseen culprit drove off immediately after impact with a parked car, and has been on the run ever since; Wednesday saw a profanity too rude to print (starting with B, ending with M, and rhyming with HUM…) sprayed by some vandal on the side of a public toilet on the high street; and now, this. Thursday brought the worst crime Groves had ever had to investigate – a murder. Virtually unheard of, in this day and age.
Reaching the room where the body lay in a shallow pool of its own blood, Groves saw that it was mutilated. The single stab wound was so deep, it looked like it had been made by a pair of… safety scissors or something. It must have been three inches deep. For a moment, Groves felt like he might bring up the biscuit and cup of tea he had consumed before leaving to answer this call; but his throat remained strong, under the pressure of his instinctual professionalism. He knew that he had to be the rock for his team here, to help them through the most horrid experience they would ever go through. He stood in the doorway of the bedroom and surveyed the scene, his eyes glistening with a thin layer of tears, but his face showing none of the emotion that exploded within him.
Before too long, his partner was standing by his side. Poor, young Hadley, he was so horrified by what he saw that he began to cough into his tie, nearly dropped his notepad. ‘Oh, God, sir,’ he spluttered, ‘who would do this?!’
‘I don’t know, Hadley,’ Groves said, straightening his trousers by the belt, ‘but can you imagine how much worse it would be if that porn blocker had never been activated? I don’t even want to think about it. Thank the lord for David Cameron.’
Hadley just nodded.
My First eBook: Part 7
They make it way too easy to release books on KDP. It was a couple of clicks, and I was done. It's out. Here it is.
It's selling. People have bought it and are buying it and, I assume, must be reading it. It's as terrifying as it is exhilarating. Look at that, I've even had a cheeky review, there. By the time you read this, there might be 20,000 more reviews. But I doubt it; it's not selling that well.
If you look at the top of the page here too, you'll see links to different pages: Everything Around Me is Destroyed or Damaged and About Me. I added these to make this site look a bit more professional. Like I mean it, y'know. Because I do. And everything on those two pages is true and anyone who tells you it ain't is a FUCKING LIAR.
So what now? Well, if you could buy my eBook, that'd be fantastic. And if you could review it after you've read it, that would be even better. And if you would then share it with any of your friends who would also enjoy it, you're verging on best friend material. You hear that? WE COULD BE BEST FRIENDS. But, y'know, you don't have to do any of that stuff. You could do none of it, and I wouldn't mind too much. *grumbles*...
Thanks for reading the My First eBook series. It was fun. And so much quicker than I thought it would be. Story of my life.
My Second Tattoo
I got my second tattoo today. In fact, it was finished less than 3 hours ago. It was the second of many, and I enjoyed it just as much as the first. Here's a picture. If you're considering getting a tattoo but haven't brought yourself to do it yet, get on it.
click for full size.
It's a Queens of the Stone Age thingymajig, and it's from one of the best albums ever made. Yeah, I went there. Deal with it.
My First eBook: Part 6
Release date, and marketing plan.
The first, I have. The second, I'm a bit sketchy on. I've never been very good at selling myself (and in saying so, I'm proving it right off the bat. Skillz); unless I'm pretending to be arrogant for comic effect with friends, I'm generally self-deprecating, because I've always felt like that's a better quality to find in a person than actual arrogance, so I've spent years cultivating it. But too much modesty is harmful to someone who has something to sell, to get out there, to spread... and confidence in your own work and your ability to market it to people isn't a bad thing at all. You can be healthily, tolerably confident in something you've done without being intolerably arrogant. I definitely believe that. I just find it hard to pull off.
So I've taken steps to prepare myself for selling my eBook, and steeled myself emotionally for their epic failure. These preparations take the form of the following:
Compiling a list of book bloggers. These people are everywhere on Twitter, and they're infinitely more helpful and nice than I'll ever be, and they love to have books suggested to them. They'll review them, write blog posts on them, spread the word, you name it... but they have to like your work first. So you can't be all like, YO, READ MY BOOK ABOUT A MURDERER WHO RIDES DRAGONS IN AN ALTERNATE REALITY IN THE YEAR 6043 PLZ to someone who likes to review chick lit. It just won't work. So what I've been doing is reading blogs and working out tastes so that I have a list of people who might actually like my book, and when it's released, I'll send them personal e-mails (not templates, never templates) begging them to love me. If even one of them does, it's better than none, isn't it.
Throwing pictures about, and that. I've made some images to put up on my Twitter page, as the background, and across the Facebook pages I manage, so that everyone who stumbles across me will know that I have a book available to buy. I'm not hard selling. Except maybe I'll post 400 tweets a day with links to the Amazon page.
Facebook ads. I've done this before, and it wasn't fantastic, and it gets an even worse press these days. You hear that unless you're spending big, Facebook will make sure your ads are hardly ever seen by anyone who'd care; but who knows if that's true? Who wants to risk it? I dunno. This is just a consideration right now. It's an option.
Communities. I'm a member of several writing communities on Facebook, so I'll post it around there. The problem I have is that most of those are just full of people begging for other people to read their work, and no one who actually reads any of it. So while I'll let them all know what I've done, I won't expect much feedback. Cynicism is cool, kids. More useful, I expect, will be my presence on Twitter (and my Twitter friends), along with some new tools I'm toying with like Triberr.
Friends and family. Yeah, this is what I'll resort to in the end. Bugging the shit out of everyone I know until they've all bought 5 copies each. I've already started - I've sent 529 texts since I started this blog post, and before the night is out, I will have sent 529 more.
So that's the plan I have right now. It's not comprehensive, or structured, or sensible, but nothing about my life right now is. I live in the fast lane, baby, and when you live like me you'll understand that we ain't got no time to put our seat belts on.
Oh, and the release date? July 23rd. Because I fucking love working to tight deadlines.
My First eBook: Part 5
Formatting for Kindle.
I know I said this would be a better post than the one before it, but I was lying. It's gonna be so much worse. Deal with it, dickhead.
Also, this isn't to say I'm definitely opting for Kindle over, say, Smashwords. It's just to say that KDP is a bit of a prettier site, so it held my attention for longer and I ended up experimenting with the advice given by this booklet, and eventually creating a proper .mobi file, like what real authors have. Now that I've linked to that book, in fact, I don't really need to write any more blog post. Everything you need to know is in there. As long as you follow that advice word for word (except for a couple of points below), you'll be fine. But in case you've missed something along the way, here are my tips:
- Remember to work on your book as .doc. I'm on Word 2013 and so will a lot of you be, but most people are probably on Word 2007 or 2010 I reckon. Either way, you'll be saving as .docx by default, and the new format will mess with your formatting, so just hit File > Save As, and shut up moaning, alright?
- My only issues with Building Your Book for Kindle are that it advises you to set 1.27cm indents and 10pt paragraph breaks. This is completely your choice, and you might like those settings, but I thought they were both way too high. When I viewed it in the previewer, I thought it looked terrible. I think I ended up using 0.8cm and 7pt. Deal with it.
- I centre-aligned all of my headings. I just think that looks so much better. But you can do what you want.
- It's so important that you use the previewer to view your .mobi file on every device possible - each of the e-inks, each of the Kindle Fires, and each of the iOSes. What looks fine on e-ink might not look good at all on Kindle Fire. For me, this was because e-ink devices were using the default font for their system (which I liked), but the Kindle Fire devices had the sans serif font that I had used to create the file, and it looked terrible. I changed it all to Garamond, and now it looks better on those devices, while remaining the way I like it on e-ink. I'd still rather it was a bit prettier on all those shiny screens, but I don't know what that pretty font is that the e-ink screens use. Or do I? I do. I wrote it down somewhere actually. Let me get back to you on this one.
I wish I had more to say, but that book really does explain it all. God, I feel so useless. At least I still have my looks.
My First eBook: Part 4
Metadata.
That is, blurbs and shit.
So it turns out that I forgot or I didn't think about until now the fact that books have blurbs, and eBooks are no exception. When I was formatting my book to give it a go on that there Kindle emulator thing (full details on formatting to follow, in a much better blog post than this one), I realised that I would have to enter all of this stuff in order to preview it. So I've started brainstorming.
I don't know if there are people who write blurbs as a job, but my mind tells me there must be. It's an art form, condensing the message of a 100,000 word book down into 5 lines of enticing summary, and it must take a certain sort of mind to perfect it. It has to be witty but not too playful, clever but accessible, cheesy but aware of its cheesiness, inviting but not too revealing. Authors don't write their own, surely? No, of course they don't. Don't be ridiculous. They're too close to the work. They'd be terrible at it.
But I have to, and so do you if you want to self-publish. So get to it. Here's my first attempt (with a clever play on words which I'm not sure comes across very well now I read it back):
From disturbing to enlightening, seedy to romantic, Everything Around Me is Destroyed or Damaged is a 23-story fall through the mind of the author of DestroyedorDamaged.com.Featuring a selection of stories from the site and a whole bunch of exclusive new ones, this collection is full of laughs and shudders and lovers and losers, and is sure to change the way you feel about street magicians and business meetings forever.
My First eBook: Part 3
Designing a cover.
Have you noticed how a lot of self-published books on Amazon, particularly the ones with 20p price tags, have terrible covers? Like, as you gaze at them, valiantly holding back the tears and vomit, you wonder if the person who designed them has ever seen a printed book in a shop? I'm not sure if what I just said is really controversial - nobody seems to talk about it, so it might be one of those things everyone knows about but no one mentions, like the menopause and the fact that Daft Punk are overrated - but I've said it now, so deal with it. Whenever I see these terrible eBook covers, I think, surely this person could have done better than that, if they're creative enough to write a book?!
With that in mind, I set about attempting to design a cover that a real book cover designer might design, if they'd had only a very light head injury recently. And what I found out is this: it's really hard. Covers like this one and this one just get it so right - font, style, effortlessness... and it's so hard to recreate that yourself, having had no design training at all and with only the shitty kind of free software one obtains when one doesn't want to do pictures and that for a living. So yeah, I apologise, cheap eBook writers of the world. I was so wrong about your design talents.
Anyway, I've come up with a couple of designs I like. I'm going to keep working on it, so there'll probably be another "Designing a cover" post soon, but for now, here they are:
FIRE. (click for full size)
ANGRY SCRAWL. (click for full size)
The problem I've found - and I might be wrong here, feel free to correct me - is that Amazon really don't care what size the cover art you upload is. And nor do Smashwords, as far as I can see (I haven't decided how to publish it yet. Maybe both - these are the two options. Thoughts on a postcard, or in the comments section). They offer guidelines, it must be at least this and at least that; but no clear standard, which would be nice for a computery person like me who likes rules and clear guidelines and all of that bullshit. So I've read a few blog posts and they said that it should be something like 1500x2500 pixels, so that's what I made the above. They look good enough to me, sizewise, but if you've published to Kindle or whatever before, let me know what you did. I want this communication to be two-way. Why don't we talk like we used to?
Where was I? Oh yeah, those two covers. Do you like either of them? Do you have suggestions? Do you like onion rings as much as I do? Answers in the comments or in tweets to me. Thankyouverymuch.
My First eBook: Part 2
The order. A first stab at it, at least.
I've always thought that so much effort must go into deciding album song orders. The way the songs in ...Like Clockwork flow into each other is a prime example - the album is so cohesive, so meticulously planned out, that the instant it ends, you want to begin it again. And while I can't hope to give the purchaser of a cheap, possibly crappy totally awesome future eBook the same level of pleasure that album gives me, I do think that the order in which they read the 23 stories I've written for this collection is very important. If the reader starts on a downer, they won't want to continue; and if they finish on a high, they'll forgive any dips they felt along the way because they'll be left with a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside. This is probably damn obvious to anyone with half a brain, so I'm sorry if you're bored; but if you are, then you should really be off watching Arrested Development or something instead.
So I've been thinking carefully about the order of the stories. I thought I'd start and end with two of my favourites; and between, I'd spread out my other favourites between stories that I don't love quite as much, in anticipation that the reader will feel exactly the same as me, which they definitely won't will. Also, stories which are about me being drunk and self pitying need to be spread evenly so that they're not in a clump and the reader doesn't form the wrong impression of me, so I've thrown in some stories about mutilation and abduction and jumping from great heights onto concrete, just to level it all out.
And this is the order I've come up with:
- Town Hall
- Hole in One
- The Beauregard Wishlist
- She has a Boyfriend
- The Street Magician
- The Carriage
- That Girl
- Real Monsters
- Reliving the Future
- The Harshness of Life
- A Note to a Former Lover or Friend or Pet or Piece of Furniture
- I was sick to death of masturbating my nights away
- The Writing Club
- Against Nature
- An Imagined Affair
- Saved
- Scud
- Watch This
- Against Nature
- The Girl with the Riddler Tattoo
- The Girl from the Station
- The Slightest Hint of Moisture
- Alley Dogs
This, I've compiled into a rough draft and sent to a number of close friends to assess. Their feedback will shape future revisions to the order. To be honest, just sending it to that small group was daunting enough, what with there being so many stories no one has ever read in there... so only Derren Brown knows how I'll feel when I release it to the hyperglobalblogosphere.
And yes, I realise that you're not getting much from that list since some of the stories you can't find on the Interweb, but one day you'll look back on this list and say, 'Wow, I can't believe the order of stories on the world's best-selling eBook ever was going to look like that, once upon a time... can you imagine how different history would have been?! All hail Aaron!' and then you'll bow to me and I will say unto you, 'Get up.'
My First eBook: Part 1
At the beginning of the year, as well as some ridiculous new year's resolutions, I came up with one that I actually aimed to do: release an eBook of short stories before 2014. It was part vanity and part ambition, I guess, because half of me just wants to see my name on a Kindle screen, and the other half hopes that there's something deeper within me than blind love of Lady Gaga, tattoos and Batman. So I set about writing some stories, or in most cases, collecting them from around this site (and fixing up the cracks I left in them, in my rush to post them online and gain attention for them). And now, nearly 6 months down, I have 23 stories ready for an eBook.
Yay! I hear you saying. When can we buy it?! Well, not yet. I've come up with the title of the collection, but I don't intend to shout about it yet. I've written the stories, but you're not seeing the exclusive ones yet. I don't have a cover, and I'm yet to work out how exactly I'm going to get it online (in case you've never published an eBook - you're probably in the minority by now - the choice I face now is Amazon, or a million other services which all promise me instant fame and fortune. But I don't know if I'm READY for fame and fortune yet!); so for now, I'm just opening up a series of blog posts in which I'll write about all the snags and funtimes of preparing and self-publishing an eBook, in the hope that it will help someone somewhere sometime in some way.
Then you have to buy it. You cheeky bastard.
Then you have to buy it. You cheeky bastard.
