Tag Archives: ace books

Cover Contest!!!!!

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Happy Friday and hoping you’re all going in to a wonderful weekend.

That being said, you’ve got some work to do first, so no shirking your responsibilities, Mister/Miss!  I’m proceeding on the depressed assumption that my standing queries with Baen and Ace are not going anywhere fast, so it behooves me to move forward with the Stealth Books e-publishing option.  This is much more of a do-it-yourself affair, so I have done the cover myself, but I can’t decide on exactly which one to choose.  This is where y’all come in!

Please peruse the following covers and pick which one you like best (i.e. which one is most enticing/professional and would instantly make you WANT this book).  I eagerly await the judgement of the internets.

Cover 1, centered title.  This one is standard, but the title might be more difficult to read in a thumbnail on Amazon.

ASID Ebook Cover 1 Desktop

Cover 2, the “Z” layout.  This one makes more effective use of open space and pushes the Sword of Liberty further back.  Oh, and if you noted it’s not as bright as the other pic, that’s easily fixable.  Specifically, which layout is best?

Aegis Ebook Cover 2

Cover 3, the “S” layout.  This one uses the pic from the first post, but maximizes title size for thumbnails.

Aegis Ebook Cover 3

And that’s it.  If none of these appeal, or one appeals particularly, or you think a particular tweak is needed, please leave a comment below.  Otherwise, absolutely please vote in the following poll.  Multiple visits and votes are allowed.  May the best cover win!

That First Step Into the Abyss Is a Doozy

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Hmmm.  I don’t know whether to be proud of myself or angry.

I’ve stuck to my “traditional publishing first” guns since day one, despite the advice of MANY.  Now, with the opportunities to achieve that waning, I . . . wavered.

I just spent the free time of the day reformatting the manuscript for ASID in order to conform to the Nook Press requirements.  Then I tweaked it, wrote a book description, filled in my metadata and publishing info, uploaded a cover, and voila!  A whole damn book, ready to publish.  And it was so EASY!  I wonder if Kindle Direct is just as smooth?  How does the trade paperback on demand thing work?

I can’t hit that Publish button yet though.  I still haven’t heard from Ace yet, and I do still have the ever-dwindling number of books ahead of mine in Baen’s let’s-give-it-a-deeper-look pile.

So how long should I wait?  How long would YOU wait?

 

A “Pyr”less Effort

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Well, the bad news just keeps on rolling.

Got a rejection e-mail, this time from publisher Pyr.  I’m only waiting on a pass from Ace to officially declare I’m batting .000.

Yes, I’m still on hold from Baen, and no, I have not yet submitted to any small indie markets yet, but once this final, delayed rejection comes in, it puts a cork in my fantasy of being pro-published the traditional way right out the gate.  As for the agent hunt, I’ve submitted to 6 major agencies, targeting their newly listed agents who are actively searching for clients.  So far, I’m 0 for 6.

I’m still engaged in writing, working on Echomancer, “Bumped”, and “ILYAMY” intermittently, but I really had high hopes for A Sword Into Darkness.  I even re-read it this last week and sent it off to another reader who had expressed a fascination with the book.  I think it’s good.  What could be the factor turning editors off about it?  What could I tweak or re-write to make it past those initial gate-keepers?

Ah, well.  I’ve pulled down “Bumped” this week and I’m finishing off a re-write now.  It’ll go off into the aether this weekend, along with “ILYAMY”. Maybe I can put my count of pro-published shorts to 3 or 4.

Any advice from the internets?

 

Well, “DAW”n It. :(

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After a great weekend working on la casa, having a patio and porch put in, and then painting and decorating my office/writer’s sanctuary (a future post with pics, to be sure), I both returned to The Job and snuck in a little writing.

Things are progressing well at The Job, in that I am learning the ropes and becoming more of a solver than one whom relies upon others for solutions, but so much of the work there consists of us being a clearinghouse for negativity. And in other locales which report to us at The Job, there was a great deal to feel negative about. This weekend, people were uniformly awful to one another, with many a heinous crime committed upon one another, and we get all the dirty (both literally and figuratively dirty) details.

So, needing a pick-me-up, I turned to fiction, specifically creating my own. I was able to chop quite a few more pages into the re-write of “ILYAMY” and I finally broke ground on the new “Strategic Deployment” script. I’m buoyed by both projects and hope to be able to show something here soon.

Refreshed and optimistic once more, I got home and checked the snail-mail out front.

Yep. Mistake.

I saw my own handwriting on a letter, the self-addressed, stamped envelopes from one of my ASID submissions. That’s never good. I’m pretty sure publishing contracts don’t come in slender business envelopes. Dreading the obvious, I opened it to reveal a lovely form rejection letter from Peter Stampfel of DAW books.

He thanked me for the contribution, it’s very hard for a new writer to get picked up and be successful these days, we don’t feel your manuscript would be a commercial success at the present, but we’ve rejected gold before, so don’t stop trying and remember us when it comes time to submit your next un-sell-able manuscript.

On the good side, that’s a pretty quick turnaround. I submitted the full manuscript to DAW by the regular post on May 1st. Give it a week for mail routing, a ten days to languish in a slushpile, 15 seconds to hate everything about all 116,000 words (or as far into the first page they’re willing to give it), a day to process the rejection letter, and then two to three days for it to show up in my box, then you can obviously see they gave it their full consideration.

Who’s next on the rejection train? Ace? Baen? Pyr? C’mon, I’m ready for it!