Completion and Submission

Parts One and Two are completed and I'm writing the Kindle™ Serials submission package now. I'll update as things happen, but I plan to send them in to Amazon™ tonight.

Edit 1: Okay, I just sent it to Kindle Serials. Wish me luck!

Edit 2: Got an email this morning from the nobody@bounces.amazon.com robot that really threw me off. I wish I hadn't gotten an auto reply at all because it was basically just "Oh, you emailed! Cool. Here's how you submit to Kindle Serials. In the mean time we'll email you if we're interested," and rattled off exactly what I did to submit in the first place. This really confused me because I'd just submitted a few hours before exactly like they wanted and now they're telling me how to do it like I had a question, then said they'd get back to me if they want to publish me. Really mixed signals.

There's not a lot of info from authors who are or were part of Serials. I did manage to find an article from an author who was part of the program and he said he sent in a submission on a whim and forgot about it, then two weeks later they signed him on. So that means I wait, but two weeks is way less than the typical nine months of old-school publishing.

If I don't hear back in a few weeks I'll just have SEIA put it up, but then I won't have Amazon's marketing super power backing me up and promoting me.

I'm also a little worried that it might be a little too adult for Serials. We'll see.

Edit 1/15: I still haven't heard anything. Still waiting. After a little more looking it seems they prefer mystery serials, which my story is not, so I'm starting to think I should just let SEIA put it up on it's own. I'm so impatient :)

Edit 1/26: Well I gave up on Kindle Serials getting back to me even though I only waited a bit over two weeks, but I'm so excited to get the ball rolling. So I let SEIA put Part One and Two out on Amazon and decided to try out Kindle Select so Amazon Prime members can get the books for free and I'll still get paid for it. Select is a program that lots of authors are iffy about, but I intend to try an experiment. I want to see how much almost zero promotion except this blog, the SEIA blog, and Kindle Select. I hypothesize that I won't make much money from it that way, but since I'm broke right now anyways I can't pay the book promoters anyway! So yay!

I'll link to the books when they're finished being vetted by Amazon in the next few days.

Edit 1/27: Well the books are online and purchasable! Links are on the images in the side bar! Hope all goes well! Enjoy!

Part Three will be available after I get a first sale from a stranger or in about two weeks, whichever happens first :)

*pops some bubbly*

Edit 2/2: Not one sale, even from open-minded friends or family. I didn't expect any sales from outside sources, but I was hoping someone I knew might buy a copy lol. Oh well. I'll let SEIA start advertizing though the free channels ASAP and maybe do some paid adverts next pay day.

Intro, SwW Cover Art, and Updates

Hi, I'm Steph. Happy New Years. I don't talk a lot, but I work hard. I'm sure the more I do this blog, the more I'll come out of my shell. Screwing with Wizards, Part One is finished except for the cover art. It was finished before Christmas except for the cover and cover art, which I'm doing myself for now. I've never made digital art like this before and I'm learning more about Adobe™ PhotoShop (CS2 free release) than I ever thought I would. Here's the cover journal so far:

Original sketch scanned via phone camera.

Inked with Pen Tool in PS (that was a learning curve).

"Final" image (I'll probably paint it one day to fix it up)

There's still a lot of work to go on the cover, but everything is ready to go and get published on Amazon™. Should be up in the next week hopefully. This cover has taken a way too much time and has taken a lot of time away from my writing, but now I have new PS skills so I can do things a lot faster next time. I hope SEIA gets some artists soon so I won't have to make my own cover next time I need one.

I'll try to write more later and put up some samples of SwW so anyone interested can read it.