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Author Topic: Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel  (Read 4944 times)

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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« on: Sat, 12 November 2011, 07:33:22 »
So, after spending a very significant amount of time crafting my story and editing it the way I wanted, I've decided to release it on Kindle/Nook (Nook is still forthcoming). It's been an interesting process.

The actual writing began back in 2007. It took me about a year to finish writing the first draft of the novel, and then I worked with a critique group in order to improve my own writing, as well as find and fix typos/flaws in the story. The entire novel is written and edited by myself, so a lot of love went into this story. I can't say that it'll compete with the likes of George Martin, or Brandon Sanderson, but as this is my first novel I hope that it will be of interest to some fantasy readers out there.

Shameless plug time. The title of the novel is Bound by Fire, and is a epic fantasy novel focusing more on the darker/adult side of fantasy. There's no elves, werewolves, or vampires in my story.

Here's the cover:



And a short blurb:

An ancient promise.
A forgotten treachery.
Seven souls, bound by fire, will begin their quest for the truth.

Ilian, an apprentice blacksmith, has the heart of a god sealed within him. When Karena, the beautiful red-haired assassin, kills his father and rips his soul from his body, Ilian is dragged along on a journey that will reveal the truth of his dark past.

Meanwhile, on the other ends of the earth an evil that has been waiting for generations to emerge has finally taken the first step towards changing the known world forever.

Check it out on Amazon

It should also be up on the UK store shortly.

It's only $0.99 for a 114,000 word novel (well over 500 pages). I'm really more interested in gaining readers then I am in making any kind of actual money. If this sounds like it's something that's up your alley, please give it a whirl and let me know what you think (good or bad, I'd rather an honest review).
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Offline Bilbin

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #1 on: Sat, 12 November 2011, 10:25:43 »
Looks interesting, I don't have a kindle though. :Cry:
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #2 on: Sat, 12 November 2011, 11:07:24 »
Quote from: Bilbin;450525
Looks interesting, I don't have a kindle though. :Cry:

Me neither, actually. I just use Amazon's kindle client for PC to read ebooks I purchase on there. I'm going to be putting it out in a print-on-demand version as well, but that will take some more time to put together!
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Offline Quarzac

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #3 on: Sat, 12 November 2011, 11:11:12 »
If I had the time to read such a book, I'd go for it. But alas, I do not.
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #4 on: Sat, 12 November 2011, 13:08:36 »
Looks interesting and is right up my alley ... I bought it and it's sitting on my kindle right now.  Not sure when it will make it in the reading queue, but when I do I'll be happy to give you an honest critique.  I've got quite a bit of stuff lined up in queue though so it might take a while.  Currently doing a re-read of the Wheel of Time series so ya, might take quite a while LOL.
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #5 on: Sat, 12 November 2011, 13:53:42 »
Quote from: Gerk;450598
Looks interesting and is right up my alley ... I bought it and it's sitting on my kindle right now.  Not sure when it will make it in the reading queue, but when I do I'll be happy to give you an honest critique.  I've got quite a bit of stuff lined up in queue though so it might take a while.  Currently doing a re-read of the Wheel of Time series so ya, might take quite a while LOL.

Thanks! And, no worries, I'm in no rush. Like I said, my main goal here is to just gain readers as I want to get my writing out there for others to experience. I make virtually nothing on each sale. It's all about the readers for me.

I'll be looking forward to your review! Book 2 is currently in the works and should be out in 2012 :)
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #6 on: Sun, 13 November 2011, 19:08:41 »
Didn't read much yet but have one comment ... the enforced left margin is a bit weird.  It looks strange on both my iPhone/iPad Kindle app and on my Kindle itself.  Also with the larger enforced margins I don't get as many words per line as I'm used to which is kind of annoying too.  Did you use Calibre to make it by chance?
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #7 on: Sun, 13 November 2011, 20:11:59 »
Quote from: Gerk;451434
Didn't read much yet but have one comment ... the enforced left margin is a bit weird.  It looks strange on both my iPhone/iPad Kindle app and on my Kindle itself.  Also with the larger enforced margins I don't get as many words per line as I'm used to which is kind of annoying too.  Did you use Calibre to make it by chance?

Hmm interesting. I'll take a look tonight and see what I can do. I use OpenOffice for my word processing needs.

This is the first feedback I've had, so if I end up putting out a revision for the formatting you'll likely need to re-download it. Should clear up the issue you've been having, though.

If the only complaint thus far is on the formatting, then I'm fairly happy with that.
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #8 on: Sun, 13 November 2011, 21:21:52 »
Here is an example of how it renders on the iPhone vs a random spot in a WOT book.
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Offline pitashen

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #9 on: Sun, 13 November 2011, 22:33:21 »
Good luck!
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #10 on: Sun, 13 November 2011, 22:44:44 »
Quote from: Striketh;451470
Hmm interesting. I'll take a look tonight and see what I can do. I use OpenOffice for my word processing needs.

This is the first feedback I've had, so if I end up putting out a revision for the formatting you'll likely need to re-download it. Should clear up the issue you've been having, though.

If the only complaint thus far is on the formatting, then I'm fairly happy with that.

I haven't really read any of it yet, I got to that and stopped ;)  Have too many things on the go reading wise right now.  It seems like it's just some enforced layout options in the file instead of allowing the text to flow.  Did you export directly from OO?  

Again check into Calibre if you are not already using it .. it's free and supports all the format conversions and does a great job of it.  If you don't have illustrations you could literally just save it out of OO as straight ascii text (and make sure to have the chapters on sep lines) and it will do all the work for you including table of contents, etc.
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #11 on: Mon, 14 November 2011, 01:06:08 »
Quote from: Gerk;451538
I haven't really read any of it yet, I got to that and stopped ;)  Have too many things on the go reading wise right now.  It seems like it's just some enforced layout options in the file instead of allowing the text to flow.  Did you export directly from OO?  

Again check into Calibre if you are not already using it .. it's free and supports all the format conversions and does a great job of it.  If you don't have illustrations you could literally just save it out of OO as straight ascii text (and make sure to have the chapters on sep lines) and it will do all the work for you including table of contents, etc.

Should be all fixed now. I've uploaded it onto Kindle and it's just pending amazon's approval now. I'll let you know once it's up :)

Edit: It's up on the US store. If you got it off there, go ahead and delete it off your device and re-download it. You should get the updated version.
« Last Edit: Mon, 14 November 2011, 02:18:08 by Striketh »
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #12 on: Mon, 14 November 2011, 18:22:50 »
Nope. It's changed (there are less carriage returns) but the margins are still enforced. Here it is on my kindle vs another book.
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #13 on: Mon, 14 November 2011, 18:31:34 »
Actually it's unchanged. Maybe it only allows me to re download the old version. Tried on iPhone, iPad and kindle and it's the same on all.
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #14 on: Mon, 14 November 2011, 18:58:52 »
Are you outside the US? If so, that may be why as it takes a bit longer to get to the other stores. It's definitely up on all of them now, though and I tested it myself last night. It definitely synced up with the new version on my blackberry and PC.
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #15 on: Mon, 14 November 2011, 21:14:58 »
I just tried again and it's the same. Maybe the app and device are caching or something. I buy from the US kindle store.
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #16 on: Mon, 14 November 2011, 22:12:55 »
Hmm, it would make sense if it cached. Is it that bad where you can't read it right now, or is it just a minor annoyance?

Looking at the screenshot it doesn't really look that bad to me - would just make for slightly more scrolling as there would be a few less words per page.

The new/correct version should have an added index at the beginning, along with a preview of book 2 and an author bio at the end past the epilogue. Are you seeing those?
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #17 on: Tue, 15 November 2011, 10:28:03 »
Nope no index, so it must be that either it's cacheing (I don't think so, as I could actually check on the Kindle filesystem and it deletes when I delete it), or I suspect that because I purchased that exact version that's the one it lets me re-download.

It's kind of unreadable for me ... I'm very fussy when it comes to that stuff -- I'm a speed reader and if it's out of the norm it totally messes with me on that front.

I'll try coming back to it at some point and downloading at a later date and see if I get the proper one or not.  As I say have a long list lined up anyway.

Good luck with the book!
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Offline insilica

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #18 on: Tue, 15 November 2011, 13:03:55 »
Striketh,

Congrats on your book. Can I suggest you pick up latex? I mean I wrote both my Masters and PhD dissertations using it. It's available on Windows, Mac and Linux . Steep learning curve granted! but it's so worthwhile...
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Offline Gerk

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #19 on: Tue, 15 November 2011, 13:43:54 »
While latex is awesome for layout type stuff (i.e. think printed book) -- it's a tool for typography, it's terrible for eBooks ... with eBooks you mostly want to have free flowing text and not restrict fonts, sizes, justification, margins, etc.  That's the problem I had with this ebook, in that it had enforced layout guidelines which don't always work when translating to various random sized devices, fonts, etc.
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Offline nathanscribe

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #20 on: Tue, 15 November 2011, 16:27:42 »
Quote from: Striketh;450628
I make virtually nothing on each sale. It's all about the readers for me.


Welcome to my world.  And that of almost all the writers I know.

Good luck!
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #21 on: Tue, 15 November 2011, 18:07:33 »
Quote from: Gerk;452730
While latex is awesome for layout type stuff (i.e. think printed book) -- it's a tool for typography, it's terrible for eBooks ... with eBooks you mostly want to have free flowing text and not restrict fonts, sizes, justification, margins, etc.  That's the problem I had with this ebook, in that it had enforced layout guidelines which don't always work when translating to various random sized devices, fonts, etc.

I am sorry to hear about that. The paperback edition should be ready in a week or two. I'd be happy to send you a free copy of that to make up for the trouble you've had. I'm pretty confident in my writing, but as I said earlier, I write for the readers and definitely want to make sure you get to enjoy it.
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Offline Balgrog

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #22 on: Tue, 22 November 2011, 12:08:31 »
I just got done plowing my way through the Wheel of Time series and A tale of ice and fire. Will definitely check this out.
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Offline Striketh

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Fantasy-geeks: I've published my novel
« Reply #23 on: Tue, 22 November 2011, 19:22:16 »
Quote from: Balgrog;457506
I just got done plowing my way through the Wheel of Time series and A tale of ice and fire. Will definitely check this out.

Hah, awesome. Two fabulous series! As a first time author I can't quite compare to the amazing writing of the now deceased Robert Jordan, and the still living George R. R. Martin as they both have/had many more novels under their belts - but, I do hope you enjoy the story and I welcome your feedback. :)
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