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Blogs by Elaine Olelo Masters
Oops! 10/21/2012 2:22:57 PM
Writing for e-books and setting up a website: challenging! If you've been reading my blog or following me on Facebook, you know that I'm venturing into the e-publishing venue. I've published my first e-book. For kids ages 7 to 10 or thereabouts, THE DRAGON WHO STOLE THE HOLIDAYS: A RUSTY THE RED-BEARDED PIRATE STORY is now available on most e-readers. I hope to have a whole series of Rusty books, fun adventure stories based on what my own four kids loved to hear when they were little.
Meanwhile, I've made bunches of mistakes which you can profit from if you're trying to do likewise, or just laugh about if you aren't.
Anyhoo, one thing I did right was, I paid Book Baby to format the manuscript. My friend, Ellie Crowe, had done her own formatting and told me it was a real pain. Being averse to pain and wanting the book to be readable, I paid Book Baby to do it ($150) and it looks great. So that was okay.
Next problem, not being an artist and knowing that an attractive cover helps sell books, particularly on the internet, I hired Book Baby to do a cover. What they did was all right, but not totally accurate according to the story. Oops! So my friend, Beth Greenway Skinner, did a much better one. Got my money back from Book Baby and sent it to Beth. Yay!
I thought a website to go with the book would be fun: I'd call it the "Rusty Pirate Club" and there would be interesting stuff for kids to do on it. Oops! I thought I could follow directions, but when I did what Host Baby had written for me to do, it never worked. So several Hawaii friends (in person) and the West Coast techies (by phone) finally got it more or less cleaned up and ready to go. It's not really finished yet, but I guess it will always need something tweaked, so yesterday I made it available: www.rustypirateclub.org. Check it out. Fool around with the links. Let me know what still needs tweaking.
It's all a learning experience, right? It takes a lot of oops to make an ahhh!
Are you e-publishing? Tell me about your adventures.
