Let’s Get Digital

July 26, 2011
 

 

Not so long ago, self-publishing was a dirty word. It was seen by many as the last resort of the untalented, the cop-out for anyone with a few hundred spare bucks to print vanity copies of their boring autobiographies. Not anymore. The Internet is changing this, just like it’s changing the entire publishing business. Increasingly, authors are making their work available as inexpensive downloads on sites like Amazon.com, Smashwords.com and a plethora of others.

David Gaughran has championed the digital publishing model as much as anyone. He released several of his own short stories on Amazon and has shared the results on his blog. This week he published “Let’s Get Digital” – a book that not only lays out his views on the advantages of digital self-publishing, but also serves as the how-to manual on everything from preparing your manuscript, to cover design, to promoting your book. One might consider “Let’s Get Digital” yet another among many “this is how to make money on the Internet” manuals written mostly to make money for their authors. Except that David is giving his book away for free.

You can buy “Let’s Get Digital” on Amazon and other such sites, but you can also download a free PDF on David’s web site. Anyone who is considering self-publishing their novel/short story/boring autobiography would benefit from checking it out. You should, of course, buy a copy or make use of the PayPal “Donate” button if you do find the book useful.

Personally I’ve given it some thought and I’m not ready to try and bypass the establishment. There’s an immense amount of satisfaction in having an editor pluck your story from the slush pile and select it for publication. Even so, I’ve been accumulating some publication credits and sometime in the future I’d definitely consider collecting and releasing them as an eBook anthology. And when I’m ready to do that, I’ll pay careful attention to the advice offered in “Let’s Get Digtial.”
 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Woot! Two sales in one day.

July 7, 2011

Far as the writing goes, yesterday was a very good day for me.

In the morning I heard back from Daily Science Fiction – they are buying a flash SF story  "Spidersong" which I wrote for a Shock Totem contest and submitted to them just under a month ago. A sale in itself is always a very exciting thing – but this sale even more so. First of all, this is my first professional market sale (as opposed to semi-pro and paying markets I’ve been able to get into in the past). But, more importantly, DSF is really special to me.

They launched on September 1, 2010 and I’ve been reading the stories they publish almost every day since then.  There is no other science fiction publication that I read with the same consistency. They also began accepting submissions at about the same time when I started sending them out – June of last year. It’s always been a goal of mine to be published with them, and in most cases they are the first market I try with my stories. Over the course of a year I submitted nine different times. A few times they held the story longer then average, or even let me know that it made it past the first round of reading – but this is the first time they bought one and I couldn’t be more proud.

Later that same day I heard back from Nanoism – a magazine that publishes Twitter-length fiction; complete stories told in 140 characters or less. I don’t quite understand the genre and the best solution to that is to try and write something in it. I did, and submitted my first ever 140-character story to Nanoism, which is the top market for such things. It’s been over four months since and I pretty much gave up on it, thinking they either lost the submission somehow or hated it so much that it didn’t deserve a rejection slip. Imagine my surprise when I heard back from the editor letting me know that he liked the story – and would be publishing it later that same day. It is up at Nanoism now and can be read over here.

I still don’t really know much about Twitter fiction, having written a grand total of 2 140-character stories (second one didn’t win or place in the contest it was written for) – but now I can at least pretend.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Pel’s Crusade

July 3, 2011

The July issue of Golden Visions Magazine is now live and it includes "Pel’s Crusade" – a very short humorous flash fiction piece of mine. You can read it by clicking over here.

In other news, The Drabbler will be publishing my 100-word super-short "Chill" in their change-themed issue due out in August.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman