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Thinking about Publishing?


Emperor Roland

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  • 4 weeks later...

so... it was a month ago that I put out there that Castle Roland would assist authors in posting.  I have not had anyone take me up on that yet.  I completely agree that we have many authors here that are more than good enough to publish.  So lets do this.  IF you see this, and you know of an author who you think should publish, email them!  let them know about the offer here, and see if they are interested.  There is a lot we can do to help get a book ready for publishing, if that is what is holding someone back.  

 

I just truly feel that we have authors here that deserve a wider audience than the castle!

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I have been working like crazy lately. Haven't had time to do my own writing. There have been three people who want me to edit for them and i have a contract that i need to complete because car payments are not things I should continue to be late for.

Sorry to all of you readers who are waiting for additional chapters to come out.  Know that there are chapters in about three or four projects that I have already gotten about half done. I just... have obligations of a financial sort that I got blindsided by.  Life is like that, and from those things in life is art born.  Work continues, I just have had to prioritize and keeping a roof, food on the table and a car so I can work have had to come first.

Do i want to publish? Hells yes! I am just not in a position right now where I can take that shot.

I'm sorry.

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I wouldn't mind publishing but Book 2 of From Trick to Treat isn't finished and Book 1 has parts that need to be highly edited or at least toned down. Maybe even rewritten in parts. The most likely good choice for publishing will be my next series that I just started working on. I would like to know about what would be needed in order to publish.

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A little more information would be useful.

Is this publishing to sell books commercially, using a third party business, like Amazon, Lulu, Smash?

I would like to have my books available in ebook format for readers to download, but from what I know it is a very complicated process. Authors whose self-published books I have bought on Amazon have not met any sort of professional standard (meaning they look DIY and have too many errors).

Up to now, and having discussed this before with other authors, the obstacles seem pretty huge, but if you have a simplified process for the non-technical which produces a professional product, that would be amazing.

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Hey William,

 

Yes, this would be through Amazon.  while i can not do anything about errors, since i can't even write my own stories without a team of editors, lol, we can discuss having some of the Castle Editors go through and work on it.  Just remember, even "professionally" published works, say by someone like Stephen King, are published with errors in them.  There is no such thing as perfect.  to be clear, I will take what is given to me, and publish that.  I would assume that as much editing had already been done as the author wishes.  as always, this is the authors work, and they have the final say.  I am sure that we have all heard the horror stories of people being told that they have to change things to meet what the "professional" editors feel is proper.  Sorry, i don't buy that.  as the author, YOU Get the final say on everything.  (sorry, little rant there.  I feel better now.  lol)

As far as simplifying the process, well yes, i think i have done that.  as in, all the author has to do, when they have what is to them, a satisfying work, then all they need to do is send it to me, with some other information, and i will take care of actually getting it published.  

Let me know if you have any other questions.  

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Yes, my main question is not about editing the story. It is this: does your simplified publishing guarantee that the book formats correctly? The front cover does not overlap, the chapters start on new pages, the pages are formatted correctly. In short, the published book looks as professional as any book you would buy. A lot of self-published books have formatting problems and the presentation is some way removed from what a person buying a book expects.

Do the books get published under the Castle Roland banner? 

How much does it cost?

Do you have an example of a book that has been through this process?

Thanks for your response. Sorry, but I have lots of questions, because when it's published, there's no going back.

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Hey there!

Okay, so lets break this down.  

This is done through Amazon KDP Publishing.  The book is published under the authors name, with no mention of Castle Roland, unless the author puts it in there.  There is no cost, unless you wish to pay for advertising, which, depending on how things look, may or may not be worth it.  Examples of book that I have personally worked on.  (Shameless plug here....)  I assisted Kyle Aarons with the publishing of "The A.I.M. Chronicles, Ripples of Aggression".  I also did the publishing for Arthur's "Drummer Boy"

Now, as to

4 hours ago, William King said:

does your simplified publishing guarantee that the book formats correctly? The front cover does not overlap, the chapters start on new pages, the pages are formatted correctly. In short, the published book looks as professional as any book you would buy. A lot of self-published books have formatting problems and the presentation is some way removed from what a person buying a book expects.

The answer is simple, yet complicated.  Yes and No.  Yes, i can get it to look the way you want it.  everything is based on how it is uploaded into the Amazon system.  The author and myself will work together to make sure that I know what it is the author wants, and what they do not want.  We have the option of looking at every page before it's published, we are the ones that set the book cover and how it looks.  I should say I will be, since the author is involved only if they want to be.  

There is one other major thing to keep in mind if you ask Castle Roland to publish your work.  you would have to provide me with your Amazon Account information and password, so that I can upload everything in your account.  If i don't do it from your account, you don't get the royalty checks.  lol.  Obviously i would suggest you change your password when we are done.  

I hope that answers more questions then you had, but of course, if there are more, please feel free to ask.  Also, William, I know you are chatting with the admins and authors on other sites, please feel free to relay all of this to them.  We all do the same job on the net, at least thats my feelings.  IF they know, or are someone that wishes to publish, I would be more than happy to help them as well.

 

Roland

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Well for myself, to have Drummer Boy published was something I dreaded as i did not have the technical training to carry it forward. Now when i mentioned all this to the Admin boffins (Al) he suggested I talk with the big boss and so we now have the first volume published with the second following in the next few days.

Was I happy with the results of the first volume? Undeniably YES; in fact David far exceeded my expectations and both versions came out better than i thought they would. Yes there have been a few minor alterations i wished to now do but that was all my fault for not fully understanding what David required but  both the paperback version and the Kindle version have so far been well received and it is only due to David taking up the sword on my behalf that any of this was accomplished; hey even I bought a copy and am happy with it (even though the postage cost more than the book but that's the price we pay for living in paradise; also soon to be called the 51st state)

I have to agree with some of the comments above, there are many fine stories and authors on the castle and they deserve a wider audience so get onto David and make his life a misery and get those good stories published. None of this has cost me a cent apart from what i would have donated anyway and except for deciding to pay for the Amazon advertising which has already been recovered by the extra sales there is not cost to find out if you have the right stuff.

What has also occurred to me is that if your story holds up without the over use of any sexual pornography then it is publishable to the wider readership; it is for this reason that Drummer Boy had only the faintest of suggestion of anything a little risque for the characters which made it far easier to put it into print even though i did get a few emails about the lack of grunt and groan but now it was all worth it for publishing reasons.

Hope this helps any of you that are sitting on the fence; personally there a some really great stories that should be told and printed and sitting on the fence only gets barbed wire stuck up your ass.

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One thing to think about, if you publish in this manner and decide to use the Amazon advertising, you will be required to take down all free copies on whatever websites you have them on.

This actually fairly standard for any publishing house.

I'm not adverse to taking stories down for published authors (it's what we did for Drummer Boy 1 & 2). It is simply something you, as the author need to be aware of.

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There are a couple of things I think are worth mentioning, talking about. I don't want to take anything away from Arthur having got his book into print and available as an ebook. But of course, I took a look on Amazon.com at that book and Kyle's. There were a couple of negative reviews for Drummer Boy. One you can ignore, I think, because it talks about not getting the whole story, when the book is one of a series. The other though slams it as an unprofessional product, which is a little worrying. Most of the five star reviews are from fans who read the books online. 

The other issue for me is that I would like an ebook version available for free. I'm not too interested in publishing via Amazon, but I'm thinking if you can produce the finished product it could be made available as an ebook on the website for readers to download to their devices.

As an aside I would think that any book going through the process could carry the Castle Roland label, as in Published by Castle Roland.

 

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Hey there.  

 

As far as just transferring it into an e-book, not sure how to do that, with Amazon, you can't just take it, and make it free.  That is something though, that i could look into at a later date.

As far as "Published by Castle Roland"  no.  This is for the authors, and they deserve all the credit.  if they wish to put on the dedication page that Castle Roland assisted them, that's great.  The way i look at it is this.  I may put in a day or two worth of work to get it ready for publication.  that's nothing compared to the years that an author would put into creating their work.  Castle Roland is a small side note to the work they have put into creating the story.  

Finally, as far as the unfavorable review.  I put very little stock into reviews like that, since we know that you can never please everyone.  remember, the people doing the editing are volunteers, the people doing the conversion are volunteers, if someone is so fickle that a few spelling mistakes in a book would bother them, then frankly, i don't really care about their opinion, and they should know better then to buy something that is published by Amazon, knowing that it is all self publish.  we do the best we can, but even those that do this as a living still miss things, so i am not at all worried about people being upset because we're not perfect, and miss something here and there.  Just my personal opinion

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