Showing Tag: "e-publishing" (Show all posts)

Here I Go Again!

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Friday, January 26, 2024, In : Coming Soon

It started out as a nice easy task that might take an afternoon. All I had to do was upload Artists & Liars to print format, adjust the digital cover and bish, bash, bosh–I'd have a paperback to satisfy the friends who have been asking me for another book. That was the plan.
The trouble is, once I'd formatted the text, I decided it could do with some illustrations. One image for each story meant drawing, scanning and formatting nine illustrations, which was a little beyond my comfort zone. ...
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Fair's Fair!

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Tuesday, July 11, 2017,

One of the joy's of self-publishing is that you're free to do what you want with your work. No one might read it, but at least the decisions are yours and no one can insist on a different cover or cutting out your favourite scene. All the responsibility and the rewards are yours–as well as all the chores.
It's easy to see publicity and marketing as 'housework'–jobs that need to be done, that take up far too much time when you could be actually producing something, and whose benefits ca...
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As One Door Opens...

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Sunday, March 6, 2016, In : Coming Soon

Would you rather have the good news or the bad news first? The good news. Right, here it is. Smashwords is holding its seventh annual Read an Ebook Week from today until 12th March 2016, and my books are all enrolled in it. That means you can get Discord's Child FREE (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/410566) and Discord's Apprentice (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/542490) and Artists and Liars (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/322872) for half price. All you have to do is go to ...
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Free to a Good Home

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Tuesday, July 21, 2015,

You may have read in a previous post that Discord's Child is currently available free in Smashwords' summer promotion, which runs until 31st July. I have mixed feelings about providing work for nothing.
Generally, I feel that it's letting the side down. Most authors struggle to get work published and make a living from it. As enjoyable and rewarding as writing is, it is work. No one would suggest that nurses, teachers or accountants should work for nothing, simply because they get satisfa...
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Three Good Things

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Thursday, May 14, 2015, In : Coming Soon

I was beginning to think this day wouldn't arrive, but I've finally managed to get Discord's Apprentice on Amazon and Smashwords for pre-order. Order a copy before the launch date (1st June 2015) and you can take advantage of a special low price. To celebrate having got this far, I've also reduced the price of Discord's Child and included the first chapter of Discord's Apprentice at the end. Now all I have to do is make sure everyone hears the news, so tell all your friends and come back ofte...
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Stop Struggling

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Monday, May 12, 2014, In : Competitions

There are many writing competitions around and it would be great to enter them all, but apart from the difficulty of coming up with work of a high enough standard, all those entry fees add up. Sadly, not all prizes reflect the amount of the entry fee either. Sometimes the only prize offered is publication, which is great if all you want is the exposure, but most writers need to earn to eat. Entrants are also, in effect, paying to be published. They might be better off self-publishing on Kindl...
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Is It Worth It?

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Monday, February 24, 2014, In : Inspiration

This blog was going to be all about publishing Discord's Child and Artists & Liars on both Smashwords and Kindle, with the annoyances caused by not formatting everything properly the first time around. (I thoroughly recommend making sure that all original formatting is taken off before you begin and starting again from scratch, having backed everything up first, of course.) However, the news that Alice Herz-Sommer has died made that seem rather trivial.
Alice Herz-Sommer was believed to be th...
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Chaos

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Sunday, June 2, 2013, In : Coming Soon

I've spent much of this week so far outside my comfort zone that I haven't even been able see where it is–not that I should complain, because it's all been prompted by some rather nice things. I've had a poem commended in a competition and another shortlisted, but what really got me moving was when someone contacted me to ask where they could find my short stories.
I've been planning to put a themed anthology online for some while and this seemed like the ideal prompt. As The Grid has a co...
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Yes!

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Sunday, January 13, 2013, In : Competitions

You can wait ages for work to get from acceptance to publication then, like buses, several come out at once. This week I received the latest wonderful edition of The Binnacle Ultra-Short. Included are the winning prose, poetry and humorous entries in the annual competition along with a host of pieces receiving honourable mentions, including one of mine, 'Plucked from Obscurity'. The edition is in paperback form, plus a box with each work on a separate business-sized card, which you can mix...
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A Level Playing Field?

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Tuesday, January 8, 2013,

A friend recently complained that when he did a search on Amazon for Discord's Child, my novel wasn't listed. I couldn't understand this as a Google search for the title finds it straight away on both the Amazon.com and .co.uk sites. I tried the Amazon site myself and discovered that if I used the title alone, or my author name (K. S. Dearsley) Discord's Child was top of the list. However, if I prefixed the title with 'book' or 'novel', as my friend had done, it didn't appear at all. Inst...
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Oo-er!

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Tuesday, March 13, 2012,

Marketing my novel, Discord's Child, has had some unexpected side effects. When I first set up this blog and website, and joined Twitter and Facebook, it was because a prospective publisher had asked about my 'online presence'. At that time I didn't have one. I'm not sure that any of these things have gained me readers, but they have brought me other things.
I have found work writing copy for web designers and various businesses via Facebook. Getting my cover contest in Network Arts' news...
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US vs. UK

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Saturday, March 3, 2012,

When e-publishing is it better to use American English (spellings, vocabulary and grammar) or UK English? If you're submitting to an e-zine or publisher, they will usually say which they prefer in their guidelines and, if they like your work enough, will correct one or two oversights that might occur if, say, American English isn't your first language. However, if you're self-publishing you have to decide which one to use–or do you?
There's less risk of making mistakes if you stick to UK ...
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On the Loose

Posted by K. S. Dearsley on Tuesday, December 13, 2011, In : FantasyFiction

The big news is that my fantasy novel, Discord's Child, is now available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006KRYYOK. The process was far easier than I had imagined. In the event, I wasted a lot of time worrying about converting the manuscript to a Kindle-ready version before deciding to simply upload the .doc file and let Kindle convert it for me (which is free). The preview facility allowed me to check everything was okay before finally clicking 'Save and Publish'. Anyone who is worried that p...
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About Me

K S Dearsley

Northampton, England

My writing career began as a freelance feature writer for the local press, businesses and organisations. Now a prize-winning playwright and short story writer, my work has appeared in numerous publications on both sides of the Atlantic. I write as K. S. Dearsley because it saves having to keep repeating my forename, and specialise in fantasy and other speculative genres.

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