I have decided to produce a large print edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror for the visually challenged. I don’t know when it will be out, hopefully soon. Changing the font to 18-point vs. 12 was easy enough, but now I have to contend with the font that was larger than the original 12-point and the space between paragraphs. What size do I want to make them? The larger print, of course, means more pages, so the price will have to increase accordingly, but I will keep the increase to a minimum. I will also have to review the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines and ensure that I am following their advice. This means I may have to change the font from a serif to a non-serif and make other minor adjustments.
Once I have accomplished changing A Tale of Hell… I will look at adapting Click, The Scent and Other Stories, and Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover to large print as well.
I have decided to produce a large print edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror for the visually challenged. I don’t know when it will be out, hopefully soon. Changing the font to 18-point vs. 12 was easy enough, but now I have to contend with the font that was larger than the original 12-point and the space between paragraphs. What size do I want to make them? The larger print, of course, means more pages, so the price will have to increase accordingly, but I will keep the increase to a minimum. I will also have to review the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines and ensure that I am following their advice. This means I may have to change the font from a serif to a non-serif and make other minor adjustments.
Once I have accomplished changing A Tale of Hell… I will look at adapting Click, The Scent and Other Stories, and Nocturne: Poems of Love, Distance, and the Night, a callous and disinterested lover to large print as well.
I recently published a new print edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror to make the cover more appealing and to reduce the price.
A few days ago, I had four works of micro/flash fiction accepted by Ezine 51. The next day, I took one of the rejected pieces, a drabble (i.e. a horror story of exactly 100 words) entitled “Special” and submitted it to another magazine.
Since then I have been trying to finish a sci-fi/horror short story of just under 5,000 words, entitled “Laughing from B’con” to submit it somewhere. This story centers around the hostile interrogation of the leader of a defeated alien fleet that attempted to invade Earth at the end of a decade-long war. Even though it is short, this story has a intricate backstory and is thus challenging to bring to a satisfying denouement without any plot holes.
As I tried to fall asleep a little while ago (insomnia), I remembered another horror story that I have been working on for a few years that is called “The Confession of Father Lactance”. It will be a little under 5,000 words. In it, a man in Hell encounters a priest named Father Lactance who wants to confess his sins to someone. In the year 1634, Father Lactance had participated in the judgement and execution of another priest named
Father Urbain Grandier, 1627
Urbain Grandier for witchcraft and consorting with the devil. This story is based on an actual trial and execution that occurred in Loudun, France, in 1634. Aldous Huxley wrote a non-fiction novel about it entitled The Devils of Loudun, which was eventually turned into a play in 1960, a movie entitled The Devils (starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed in 1971, and into an opera by Krzysztof Penderecki. When I left off working on the story about a year ago, I was very close to completing, but I wanted to read Huxley’s work (I had been using other sources for my research) to ensure I was making the story as historically accurate as possible while keeping it in the realm of fiction. If I can complete this soon and have it published by December, I will include it in the third edition of A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
If I can include this story, the drabble, and the other microfiction into A Tale of Hell… I will probably raise the price of the book by a buck or two. I might leave it where it is too. While at the Barnes and Noble in Little Rock last weekend, I did a quick survey of novels of about 300 pages, which is the current length of A Tale of Hell… and found they generally range in price from about $15 to $28. Paying $16 or $17 for a print edition of this work should still be a bargain.
I will consider maybe adding a few black and white illustrations like the one above to add to the reading experience.
Thoughts? Comments?
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Available on Kindle. A revamped print edition is coming soon.
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note this story is included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note: These stories are included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
Coming hopefully soon.
Prevent the spread of Coronavirus/COVID-19 for the sake of yourself, your friends, and your family.
Available on Kindle. A revamped print edition is coming soon.
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note this story is included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note: These stories are included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
Coming hopefully soon.
Prevent the spread of Coronavirus/COVID-19 for the sake of yourself, your friends, and your family.
Available on Kindle. A revamped print edition is coming soon.
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note this story is included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note: These stories are included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
Coming hopefully soon.
Prevent the spread of Coronavirus/COVID-19 for the sake of yourself, your friends, and your family.
Available on Kindle. A revamped print edition is coming soon.
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note this story is included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note: These stories are included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
Coming hopefully soon.
Prevent the spread of Coronavirus/COVID-19 for the sake of yourself, your friends, and your family.
Available on Kindle. A revamped print edition is coming soon.
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note this story is included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Available on Kindle and in Print. Note: These stories are included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror.
Shadows and Stars is my first, full-fledged novel. It is a science-fiction tale about a scientist who invents a portal and transports to an alien world where he becomes caught up in a revolution. I am finishing the first draft. The final draft will probably not require many changes. At approximately 135,000 words, it will be about 300 pages in 6 x9 format. This is how I visualize the cover currently.
Coming hopefully soon.
Prevent the spread of Coronavirus/COVID-19 for the sake of yourself, your friends, and your family.
Since Tuesday, I have spent some time trying to improve my book sales by using keywords better on my Amazon site.
When I set up the site, I saw that they had seven fields for seven words up to fifty characters long. Mistakenly, I thought you could have only seven keywords, I feel like such a dummy now.
Below are the things I decided to do. What I took away is not as important as I what I decided to do, so I won’t bother you with that.
First, for Kindlepreneurs, jam as many words into each of the seven boxes Amazon gives you. The maximum number of characters is fifty. I did not see anything that said the words have to be separated by commas.
For keywords, choose words that are not in your title or description. This makes sense because that would be redundant.
Google search engines put more emphasis on the titles and description than keywords. So, maybe it would be good to put any words you would use as keywords in the title and/or description.
Sometimes it might be useful to think of an exact phrase that someone would use in searching for your book and put that in as a keyword. Google search engines sometimes look for that.
I tried to think of as many keywords as I could for my books, but after a few, my imagination was crapping out on me. I came up with an idea to help with this though. This is something not taught in either of the two articles I mentioned. I would think of a word describing the essence of my book, something that people might search for, and looked up its synonyms on line. My reasoning is that words have nuances and the meaning and nuances may vary somewhat from speaker to speaker. For example, someone wanting to read my book Diabolical: Three Stories of Jack Thurston and Revenge(I may change this title to make it more marketable), the primary theme of this book is evil. Thesaurus.com gives 48 synonyms for evil. Therefore, I selected several keywords from this list trying to choose one used widely today such as: wicked, malevolent, depravity, misery, suffering, etc. Then I moved on to another descriptive word and its synonyms. I changed all my keywords on Tuesday and still haven’t seen any results, but it is only Thursday.
Try out some of the suggestions and let me know how they work out for you. Leave any recommendations of your own in the comment box below.
As you may know, I am exploring marketing and publicity primarily as it pertains to books. You may also know that I dabble in the stock market. Today, on Ameritrade, I found a business that demonstrates why choosing a good name for your business or a good title for your book is important. Bear in mind that I have no knowledge of this company’s products and as to whether they are good or bad. They may be top of the line and on the cutting edge of their field, but you cannot tell that by the name. The blurb below is taken from Ameritrade.
Holy Crap Brands Inc
Based in Canada
Company profile: Holy Crap Brands Inc. is a Canada-based company that provides breakfast cereal and related food products. The Company produces and sells cereal from its Gibsons, BC facility.
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As you may already know, I have written the manuscript for a children’s picture book entitled Bobby the Brave Brown Pelican. This morning I have been trying to find a publisher for it. This is considerably harder than finding a short story publisher. I did submit my work to a few publishers a few weeks ago, but I have had to date only negative or no responses. In short, I am having little success in finding just a possible publisher for my manuscript.
Nonetheless, I shall press on.
The two submissions engines I have for short stories, Duotrope and The Submissions Grinder, list very few publishers for children’s books. Consequently, I must resort to doing an internet search. Fortunately, there are few articles which list children’s book publishers. This morning, I have been working my way through a list of thirty publishers that can be found on johnfox.com. After I finish this list, I have another of 75, but this will no doubt include many on the first list.
I have had to develop an Excel spreadsheet to track my submissions. In this spreadsheet I am including the publishers I considered but decided not to submit to for one reason or another. This is to ensure that at a later date, I don’t go forget that I decided not to submit them and don’t go through the effort of researching them again.
Some accept manuscripts by mail, whereas I prefer to submit electronically. This does not mean I won’t submit to them, just that I won’t submit to them right away. I an trying to submit to as many as I can as soon as I can and submitting by mail slows this process considerably. Luckily, it seems only a few won’t accept simultaneous submissions, or at least they don’t state so on their website. Given that, I am submitting to as many as possible and will probably accept the first decent proposal that pops up.
Another stumbling block I am encountering is that, as with many publishers, many do not accept unsolicited manuscripts either throughout the year or during a good portion of the year.
Of course, there is the obvious matter that my subject matter is not to the taste of all publishers. Some have narrow requirements. For example, Arbordale Publishing accepts only manuscripts that are math or science related. Kids Can Press accepts manuscripts only from Canadian authors.
One big stumbling block is that it seems most children’s book publishers won’t send a message or letter declining a work. They state that if the author doesn’t hear from them in a certain amount of time, he/she should consider the work not accepted. Unfortunately, this time period is usually in terms of months. Three to four months is not unusual. So far I have found one that says 6-9 months.
Some publishers don’t go into detail about what they would like to see and basically say to just to submit the manuscript while others go into excruciating and exacting detail.
Another big stumbling block for my particular work is that most publishers want a picture book to be under a 1,000 words. My manuscript is 1,388 words and it is as concise as I want to or can make it and still get my message across.
I know that these obstacles are common to just about all genres, but, at least compared to the short story market with which I am most familiar, they seem more numerous and frequent with children’s books. Children’s book publishers also seem less organized. There doesn’t seem to be a standard or preferred way of submitting manuscripts whereas publishers of short fiction seem more consistent in detailing what they accepts. Of course, that is only a subjective observation.
I feel like I am taking pot shots in the dark.
Anyway, I will keep plugging on even if I have to go through hundreds of publishers. This is not unusual for novelists or short story writers and, as I am learning, it is apparently not unusual for children’s book authors either.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Having dinner with my wife at Ray’s Italian Bistro, Midland, TX, May, 2019
I am considering collecting all my short fiction published to date into one volume. This would include all the works in A Tale of Hell and Other Works of Horror, The Scent and Other Stories, and Click (Alien Embrace and Diablolical are already included in A Tale of Hell and Other Works).
The working title for this collection is Les Danses Macabres. According to The Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory (J.A. Cuddon, Penguin Books, 1991) the danse Macabre is:
Also known as the Dance of Death…The Dance of Death (in art and literature) depicted a procession or dance in which the dead lead the living to the grave. It was a reminder of mortality, the ubiquity of death and of the equality of all men in that state. It was also a reminder of the need for repentance. Apart from its moral and allegorical elements, it was very often satirical in tone…Death is, as it were, presented as a kind of sardonic joke.
Notice that the title of my planned work is Les Danses Macabres, which is the plural of danse macabre. I chose this variation for two reasons:
To distinguish my book from other books and other works which have the name Danse Macabre, which is not an uncommon name. In fact, there is even a tone poem for orchestra by Camille Saint-Saens called Danse Macabre (Opus 40, 1874) and a non-fiction book by Stephen King entitled Danse Macabre.
“Danse Macabre” is a single way to death . By using the plural, I am intimating that there are several ways to death (or to hell, if you prefer). I think the stories in the collection illustrate that.
I have rearranged the stories, somewhat, to start with “The Scent”, which is a very pleasant, poignant, but a little spooky story. From there the stories gradually increase in intensity until the collection ends with the intense, violent microfiction at the end of A Tale of Hell….
The total word count of the collection is over 87,300, which puts it into the same size range as a novel. This should make it more marketable as people like to buy longer works. In fact, I have read that Stephen King likes to write long works, so that his readers get something for their money. This seems to bear out in my sales, as my longest work (A Tale of Hell…) has accounted for 43% of my sales since January, 2018. it is 62,054 words in length, which puts it in the range of shorter novel. According to my research on Duotrope, most small publishers are looking for novels to be about 40,000 to 100,000 words in length with the majority being around 40,000 to 50,000.
I am designing this work initially to be marketed on Amazon Kindle, but I am also keeping it simple to make it easily converted into a hard copy book.
This planned work will include only prose. Nocturne, therefore, will not be included in this collection. However, I am planning a second edition of it that will include poems that were not included in the current edition.
.I have started designing covers for Les Danses Macabres. Here are the possibilities I have come up with so far. Let me which one you think most suitable. For easy reference, I have put a name below each. Let me know your thoughts on my other plans too as well, if you will.
Another stumbling block I am encountering is that, as with many publishers, many do not accept unsolicited manuscripts either throughout the year or during a good portion of the year.
Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher 