Read an E-Book Week - WOW What a Success!

Thank you to everyone who took advantage of Read an E-Book Week to download a free copy of my book Options. 55 of you took the time to go to http://www.smashwords.com/ and download the book. Some of you even stopped by here first and read my blog entry before going to smashwords.

I took advantage of my 100+ friends on Facebook and reminded them everyday this past week that it was Read an E-Book Week and gave them a link to my blog to get a free copy.

It's hard slogging to get the word out about a self-published book and this week has definitely paid off. There are now 55 more copies of my book out there and hopefully some of those readers will post a review of the book on smashwords, or send me an email with their comments (rosemarie@rosemarie-damico.com). All comments, good, bad or indifferent are welcomed.

My book also showed up this week on http://www.kobo.com/, which is the website for Chapters/Indigo that sells electronic books. So, the word is spreading and thanks to people like Mark Coker (founder of Smashwords), self-published authors are actually getting a toe-hold (albeit tiny) in the publishing world. Now if I could only convince Heather Reisman to put my hard copy book on the shelves at Chapters!

Free E-Books

Have you have tried reading e-books on an e-reader (Sony, Kindle, i-Phone, etc.) or on your computer? I have and I LOVE it!

I hear a collective gasp out there and about a year ago, I would have sucked in my breath too at the thought of someone my age accepting the new technology. But it was Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/) who was the reason I self-published my book Options (http://www.rosemarie-damico.com/) in the first place.

You see, it is now easy to publish your own book, and a big piece of doing that is having your book in an electronic format (.doc, .pdf, etc.). I think the only people in the world not to 'write' their books on computers would be the Amish, so you know what I mean when I say having your book in electronic format is the first step. Once it's written in Word or WordPerfect or whatever, it's easy to convert it to a format that allows readers to read your book on their e-reader of choice. My son-in-law does all his reading on his i-Phone, which has a screen far too small for me to enjoy but the generation behind me are using smaller and smaller devices for their reading. Imagine reading a book on a cell phone? I don't think so!

Smashwords published my book on their website as soon as I gave it to them in Word format. They converted it to several various e-formats and it is available for sale on their website. They have since signed agreements with Barnes & Noble, Sony, Amazon, Kobo and a few others to sell our books through those websites too.

In January this year I made the big step and purchased an e-reader for myself. After much research I chose the Sony e-Reader and I am VERY happy with it. I still read paper books and will never give those up. It only makes good business sense as far as I'm concerned, being an "electronically published" author as well as a "paper published" author, if you know what I mean. I can store up to 3,500 books on my e-reader and that makes travelling a heck of a lot lighter. Now my suitcase/briefcase isn't loaded with books when I travel -- I just have to throw my e-reader in my purse!

e-books are generally less expensive than print books. AND, imagine how happy I was to find out that my local library has e-books which I can borrow for 20 days (plus two renewals). Fantastic! So, don't knock it until you've tried it. Log on to your local library's website, search for the e-books, and download a couple to your computer (the library will likely advise you to download some free Adobe software first). Try reading a book on your computer.

Go to http://www.smashwords.com/ where my book and several hundred more are FREE starting March 7th (until March 13th). Smashwords are participating in a global event -- "Read an e-book Week".

To view my book and download a free copy starting on March 7th, go to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/2075

If you find that e-books aren't your cup of tea, I would be glad to sell you a paper copy of my book. Just go to http://www.rosemarie-damico.com/ -- I will even autograph your copy!

Happy reading!

In the category of "every little bit counts".....

.....831 words produced tonight. Not a ton, but yours truly is proud of herself for doing some writing on an weeknight when I'm usually brainbusted!

January 6, 2010: 831 words!

Another Fruitful Day

Another banner day.

I was lucky to have a visit this morning from my grandchildren so I didn't get down to the writing until about 1:00 p.m. It's now 5:45 p.m. and I'm calling it a day. Two chapters completed! Yay me!

January 3, 2010: 3,111 words

The Final Leg of the Race

Okay, it's the New Year and time for resolve and determination. I have about two-thirds of my second book done and haven't made the time in since the end of September to get back at it.

Today, January 2nd I cleared the decks and spent the WHOLE day writing. What a giddy feeling......writing excites me so much! The day is almost done and I'm happy to report that I've written almost 5,000 words today. Which means if I'm aiming for a 125,000 word novel, I have about 8.5 days of writing 5,000 per day left to finish the book.

Now I'm not kidding myself to think that I might be lucky enough to clear the decks for eight and half days of straight writing or that I can write 5,000 in each sitting but .... there does appear to be an end in sight. Yeah!

I will keep this blog up to date to keep us all informed of progress.

January 2, 2010: 4,387 words

Where Have I Been These Last Three Months?

My loyal fans and blog followers (all two of them) must be wondering where the heck has she been these last three months? Well, I've been around, just not here on the blog.

Some amazing things have been happening: had an 'author's signing event', sold a ton of books (by my standards), had my book Options put up on the Barnes and Noble website, added another 10,000 words to the second book, but have been mostly blissfully enjoying my two new grandchildren.

Chloe Ann and Thomas George were born on September 27th. They are wonderful, mellow, happy babies. Jonathan, their big brother, and the wee man who I fell in love with over three years ago, is very accepting of the new babies and is happily ensconced in his new pre-school. New babies make it hard to concentrate on much else so the book writing hasn't been progressing as well as I had hoped. Several weekends when yours truly should have been pounding the keyboard have been spent babysitting the grandkids to give their parents some well deserved rest! January is just around the corner and new year's resolve will kick in and I'm sure I'll be back on track.

In November, as a fundraising event at my place of employment, I was asked to participate in an author's signing event with a fellow self-published author, Deborah Cholette. About a year ago in our company newsletter I read an article about Deborah and her journey of self-publishing. That story, along with a newspaper article about a month later about Mark Coker and his new company Smashwords were really the two events that sent me down the road to where I am today with my first book Options. Deborah is a wonderful woman who I have seen over the last many years at the office, nodding hello on the elevator but never getting to know her. When I decided to self-publish, she was very helpful with information. She has two books to her credit: a children's book and a romantic comedy.

I was a little apprehensive before the signing event because I had never participated in one. Deborah and I had agreed to donate all profits from our sales to the charity and between the two of us we raised almost 700 dollars! I sold almost 70 books. Unbelievable! And I'm getting lots of great feedback.

My book has now appeared in electronic format at Barnes and Noble thanks to Mark Coker at Smashwords. Mark has been working very hard for all of his authors .... next up we should be at Amazon and a few other on-line stores. When I saw my book on the Barnes and Noble website http://books.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=EBOOK&WRD=rosemarie+d%27amico+options I admit I squealed just a wee bit!

The Christmas season is upon us and for me this time of year makes my heart swell (really...) and race (really...) in anticipation of seeing my family from out of town, enjoying some social time with our friends, and waiting for Santa to arrive! As I said above, January will soon be here and for me the new year is always a time to suck in a deep breath, slap myself mentally a few times, and get at it! So watch out 2010, my new book will be published before the spring and I see some amazing things on the horizon for Options!

Merry Christmas!

Options - second edition has gone to print

Today I shipped (electronically) my book Options to First Choice Books in Victoria, British Columbia for a second printing.

Had a cheery email from Johanna at First Choice -- kind of a "congratulations" email -- she assumes I am printing a second edition because I have no copies left of the first printing. I wish that were true.....sigh.

Truth be told, the second edition is being printed because of the number of mistakes found by a reader (see my blog entry about that!) in the first edition. Shortly after my self-flagellation phase (which lasted a day or two), I sucked it up and made the dozens (and dozens) of changes/revisions. And then I re-read the book, again, and found a few more errors. And, I'm sure there are still several boo-boos, typos, extra words, words in the wrong place, etc., etc., which will remain, until a publishing house buys the book and does some copy-editing themselves.

I had a comment on my blog from a copy-editor (thank you!) who said that authors often don't see their mistakes because of what they "expect" to see/read. How true.

Glad the changes have been made -- it took up a precious day this past weekend -- a day which I would have preferred to have been writing in my second book. But hey! What's a little set-back? This is all for fun and I'm not curing cancer, as I tell everyone who gets down on themselves (lucky for me I don't know any depressed medical researchers....).

And who knows -- the first edition may well end up being a collector's item one day!