Tag: audiobook

Top Ten Gifts for the Book Lover, Continued.

My top five holiday gifts of the season, including some you may not be thinking of!


Hi all, so here’s the last bit of my top ten gifts for the book lover, #1-5

#5 – An audiobook of his/her favorite novel. Trust me, there’s nothing better than being able to listen to your favorite story while being stuck in traffic. It really can make the time fly. My personal favorite audiobook, Ender’s Game, is an excellent book for those of you with middle age children in the car. Zap the phones and let them listen and watch for a change.

#4 – An eReader – Kindle, Nook, Kobo, or iPad. – Please note, I’m not telling you to actually go out and buy one right now. It’s better if you ask the gift recipient two things. 1. Do they already have one? (If so, don’t get them another) and 2.) What would they do if they got one? Are they going to use it primarily to read? Play games? Do work at home? Etc. Different versions tend to be better for different things. Nook and Kobo are a bit cheaper and focus more on just reading with fewer apps, but better ‘book-reading’ software. Kindle and iPad tend to be better all around machines, even able to run some competitors programs on their hardware, but you also pay a premium for it, especially if you want things like 3G and such. So think about short and long term cost.

#3 – Brass Legionnaire of course! I had to rep my own book, but in all seriousness, buying my novel or another self-published novel would really be a boon to someone else’s pocketbook this season, like my friend Hazel West and her novel On a Foreign FieldAnd the best part is there is something out there for everyone! So take a look this holiday season!

#2 – A super special edition of their favorite book – Many authors have some sort of special edition version of their novel. If you book lover is really interested, look it up. A good alternative – find a book poster or blown up version of the cover and get it framed.

#1 – My number one gift isn’t really something you can wrap or tie with a bow. In a way, it’s something that I personally always enjoy during this very hectic holiday season.

The number one gift is the gift of alone time. Many book readers enjoy being able to sit back, relax, and crack open their favorite novel (Old or new). It’s hard to do this during a very crazy holiday season with family, friends, etc all over the place. So if there is a free moment, or your book lover wants to hide in the bedroom for a while just unwinding, let him/her. Or go even further, set aside a whole day where you have no prior engagements, jobs, cleaning/cooking duties and just enjoy the spirit of the season.

Or when in doubt, make brownies. Everyone loves brownies.

Happy Holidays everyone! Be on the lookout for a surprise holiday sale coming this weekend!

Book Teasers & Trailers Done Cheap!

Book Teasers/Trailers for Brass Legionnaire are Up! Also, an update on How I made them, and on the status of my Kickstarter Project


My Brother emailed me with the most wonderful birthday gift (not today, but soon!), a finished audio rendition of my chapter one. “Now hold up” I can imagine many of you saying. “Your book isn’t even out yet, how do you have an audio book component?!” Well my good friends, I’ll let you in on a little secret… Most editors will do a free test edit of your first chapter. If you like what you see, you can send them the rest. In my case, I was fortunate enough to have a great editor in Marg Gilks over at Scriptora Editing Services. Not only was she actually interested in the story, but I carefully reviewed her previous work and found a few books similar to mine. So I hired her.

Back to the main point! I asked my brother, who has lots of voice and drama experience, if he would be willing to read my book. I love his voice, and he is able to make the different voices. I’ll admit, the first time he read it, I got goosebumps! He emailed me the copy earlier today, and I set to work.

Just a brief background – he used his PowerBook G4 with GarageBand to make the audio. He spent a few days locked in his room, recording and fiddling and rerecording. No expensive microphone (he started using a headset microphone I have from Rosetta Stone, but gave up on it after a while and just used his regular computer microphone) was needed. The music comes from Garageband’s ample free library, and I think it fits the mood really well. You can even fiddle around with it to make your own music.

So after I got the files, I simply plopped them into iMovie, imported my cover art, and using a few ‘Ken Burns’ slides and transitions, I was able to make a pretty handy book chapter teaser. I wouldn’t say it is on par with the professionally produced ones, but it doesn’t have to be. I didn’t spend $800 on it either. This way, I get the best of both worlds: A free book teaser with increased traffic and attention, while also doing it quick and easy. Now granted, I used family to help out, but that’s what they are for! He was amply paid in food, and the chance of a free room in my condo/house at some point.

Anyways, the most frustrating part was splitting up the file. It was 22 minutes long, and YouTube only lets you load 15 minutes at a time. Keep that in mind! If possible, record your audio and stop at good points, so that you can split it up easier. I had a hard time finding my split, as the most convenient on was at… 15:05. Seriously. 5 extra seconds was all standing between me and perfection and I could not make it fit. So I cut elsewhere. A little bit rougher, but it still works.

The thing I like best was that I could upload it direct to Youtube. A click here, there, and poof, it’s online! Don’t forget to make sure you tag your video with appropriate tags to grab the right people’s attention! Another cool thing is that eventually, it will be the start of my audiobook as well if I don’t get it more professionally done.

By the way, FUN news! My Kickstarter project was actually funded! Hurrah! I’d honestly given up hope, but sometimes it just takes one person to make a difference. If you’re still interested in helping out, you can contribute for another two days here. Please consider contributing, each extra dollar helps me get more cool promotional things and keep the cost of editing the book down.

Here’s the second part of the trailer for your viewing benefit! Or read the entire thing here -> Brass Legionnaire Chapter 1

10 Things to do Before Publishing Your Novel (Besides Editing)

10 things every aspiring author should do before their book comes back from editing!


Hello all!

So it’s been about 4 weeks now since I sent Brass Legionnaire off to the editor. I’ll admit freely, once it was out of my hands, I sort of… blanked. I was truly faced with a ‘now what’ type of situation. So for the last couple weeks I’ve been trying to tie up other loose ends that I figured I might as well get done now. So in my free time (My day job and graduate school keep me fairly busy, so that’s rare right now!) I put together a list of a few things that you can do while waiting for the book to come back.

1. Get some nice cover art (Mine was handled by the great people over at Streetlight Graphics, but you can also check out 99 designs or deviantart and post a job offer on either one.) Alternatively, if you’re a great artist or have a deft hand on photoshop, hunt down what you like and tweak it in the best ways. Great way to do it on the cheap if you need to.

2. Set up a personal author blog or website (Like this one) or perhaps even a website just for your book or series. However, don’t jump the gun too early. I have my entire website ready to go on Wix – a flash driven site that is really quick and simple to use – but I haven’t gone live yet because I feel a bit silly doing it without a product to show! Since I can’t do ‘preorders’ I’m simply holding off until the book goes live, then I’ll probably buy one of the smaller packages just so that I can get my domain name (and not have to worry about having other stuff in my URL), but I’ll save my money until then!

3. Set up a business/promotion plan – How will you promote your book? What will you do? Will you advertise? if so, where? Who is your specific target audience? What is best for them? Text ads, picture ads? You’re going to have to do some hard thinking on this one. Don’t limit yourself just to facebook or google. There are a variety of other sites out there that host ads, so find one that is more likely to be frequented by the people you are targeting!

4. Create a free audiobook sample of your first chapter. A lot of people offer a ‘free sample’ of their book to entice readers in. Even if you don’t plan on doing a full audiobook, a sample chapter (read by you, or someone you know whose voice is better!) can draw in a whole host of new people. Make it free on iTunes, put it up on YouTube. The more exposure, the more likely you are to rope someone in who is actually interested! Personally, I’d want to make it a full audiobook eventually, but in the meantime, it’s another cool way to build some hits.

5. In connection to that, create a book ‘trailer’ all you really need is some basic knowledge of iMovie or another video editing program and some effects and definitely your cover art. Alternatively, you can pay someone to make a (probably better) product, but it will cost you. For example, a basic book teaser at Circle of Seven productions will set you back a cool $800. But if you’ve got the money to spend…

6. Make some business cards/bookmarks. One of the most basic things to do is make a nice business card with your name, email address (not your phone number!) website, and title (you are a soon-to-be-Author!) along with a picture of your cover art. Don’t have cover art yet? Set it up except for that one part. Then it’s a simple copy and paste situation. You’ll probably want to use photoshop for this, but you can pay someone to do it. Personally, I like the control (And also screaming at my computer when photoshop goes wacky!) Then, it’s a quick upload to vistaprint or Zazzle. Be even fancier, add a QR code to the back and direct it to your website! Integration baby!

7. Set a reminder to copyright your book when it is done editing. No really, you need to remember to do this! Click here to find out more. You can also pre-register your book if it is in the process of editing to get a bit of a head start on the copyright process – Another chunk of money you need to shell out, but you don’t want people stealing your hard work now, do you? I’ll be honest though, I’m not sure if the pre-registration is a good deal. Readers?

8. Make sure you’ve got an account on Goodreads, Amazon, Smashwords, and anywhere else you plan on selling your book.

9. Make sure you’ve got a well-written synopsis for your various book pages and a good blurb or two for your front page or inside cover.

10. Write your bio, your acknowledgements, then sit back and wait!

Anything I forget? Please let me know! (Due credit where credit is due 🙂 )

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