{"id":4639,"date":"2011-03-26T17:39:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-26T23:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=4639"},"modified":"2011-03-26T17:39:09","modified_gmt":"2011-03-26T23:39:09","slug":"memoirs-of-a-snowflake-available-on-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/memoirs-of-a-snowflake-available-on-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Memoirs of a Snowflake available on Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I just released my first short story on the Kindle. “Memoirs of a Snowflake<\/a>,” a whimsical short story about the life and times of a December snowflake, is available for $.99 on Amazon.<\/p>\n

The publishing process was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.\u00a0 Because this is a short story, I didn’t have to worry about formatting for a table of contents or other stuff.\u00a0 All I did was upload the .doc file, and Amazon automatically did the formatting.<\/p>\n

Bryan and I did try to upload it as an html file, which failed miserably for reasons we don’t understand.\u00a0 Also, Amazon automatically generated the free sample for it, which is something I’d like to figure out how to control in the future.<\/p>\n

So as far as practice goes, this story perhaps wasn’t the best one to learn on.\u00a0 However, it’s good to see how the publishing process works–and really, it’s not that hard.\u00a0 The hardest part was reading all the terms and conditions, which took maybe an hour.\u00a0 Everything else was just uploading files, filling in fields, and checking off boxes.<\/p>\n

The cover art was fun.\u00a0 To make it, I took this image<\/a> from Wikimedia Commons (where practically everything is in the public domain), photoshopped it with The Gimp (“gimped” it?), and added the lettering.\u00a0 Voila!\u00a0 I don’t know if it’s my best work, but for a short story, I think it’s decent.<\/p>\n

$.99 is the lowest that Amazon will allow me to price it.\u00a0 For every sale, I make about $.35, and Amazon starts transferring money to my account after I earn $10. You can download it to your Kindle device, or you can read it on your computer with Amazon’s Kindle for PC program (where you can also read a two paragraph free sample, heh).<\/p>\n

So far, I’ve made two sales and gotten one review–a pretty good one, too!\u00a0 I posted the story on Facebook and Chuck has blogged about it, but that hasn’t translated into sales yet.\u00a0 But after reading this, you all are going to go out and buy it, aren’t you?\u00a0 AREN’T YOU??\u00a0 Hehe, just kidding.<\/p>\n

Next week, I’ll probably release “Decision LZ1527,” after I figure out the cover art.\u00a0 It’s a little more complicated, because I wanted to buy the art that was in the magazine in which it was originally published.\u00a0 But I’ve got that squared away, now just tweaking it.\u00a0 And I’ll probably add an author’s note at the end, too.<\/p>\n

This is exciting stuff!\u00a0 I’m interested to see how the stories take off.\u00a0 For those of my writer friends who are thinking of doing something like this for their own stuff, I’ll be sure to let you know how they do!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just released my first short story on the Kindle. “Memoirs of a Snowflake,” a whimsical short story about the life and times of a December snowflake, is available for $.99 on Amazon. The publishing process was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.\u00a0 Because this is a short story, I didn’t… Continue reading Memoirs of a Snowflake available on Amazon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[170,1],"tags":[515,529,369],"class_list":["post-4639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-stories","category-uncategorized","tag-ebooks","tag-indie-publishing","tag-publication","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-1cP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4639"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4650,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4639\/revisions\/4650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}