Having recently discovered how damn easy it is, I’ve published Gu in a Kindle edition.
At the moment, only Kindle – I’m giving their KDP Select thing a whirl, where you give it to them exclusively for 90 days, so it won’t go on Smashwords just yet. (I just want to see what happens. Don’t necessarily love the idea of platform exclusivity, just want to compare with City of Masks, which is on both Kindle and Smashwords.)
Part of what I can do with KDP Select is make it free for a period of time, which I’m doing – for two days, starting at midnight Pacific time on the 24th (I don’t get to choose the time, unfortunately).
The process didn’t take long. I used the Anthologize plugin – which is buggy as anything (and refuses to update) but is quicker than copying-and-pasting a bunch of blog posts – to get it out to an RTF file. Then I fixed up the missing spaces, lost italics and incorrect special characters, changed a few words and a chapter title, and there I was.
I then created a quick-and-dirty cover using a Creative Commons-licensed Flickr image and the online photo editor Pixlr (since I was on a computer that lacked either Photoshop or Gimp). I’ve since done a Photoshop version that’s a bit more cromulant (shown here).
I wouldn’t do this for a book that I thought would do really well, but Gu hasn’t exactly attracted a big audience in blog form and I don’t expect it to get one as an ebook either, so I wasn’t about to spend much time, or any money, getting a proper cover done. I just want to get it out there in basic form.
If you enjoyed it here on the blog, please go and leave a review. (The text is essentially the same.) Thanks!
Mike Reeves-McMillan lives in Auckland, New Zealand, the setting of his Auckland Allies contemporary urban fantasy series; and also in his head, where the weather is more reliable, and there are a lot more wizards. He also writes the Gryphon Clerks series (steampunk/magepunk), the Hand of the Trickster series (sword-and-sorcery heist capers), and short stories which have appeared in venues such as Compelling Science Fiction and Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores.
It’s had 227 (free) downloads so far, which got it into the top 10 free books in a couple of categories (unfortunately including technothrillers, which it’s not).
It’ll be interesting to see if there are any actual sales. And nobody has left a review yet… HINT HINT. Doesn’t have to be a 5-star review, make it honest.