Kindle Direct Publishing

KWelcome to the blog! I struggled with what to write about for K for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. I didn’t think I could write a long enough post about what a kill fee is. Then my husband suggested Kindle. Which led me to Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP for short.

KDP is actually a big topic that could take up a lot more than 500 words so I’m just going to give an overview. Running a writing group I get a lot of questions from new writers when I tell them I’m self published and one of the most common is how much does it cost to self publish your book. A lot of writers are under the impression that it costs a lot of money to self publish. And it can cost a lot if you go through a “service” that charges you for a bunch of things you don’t need. Or you can do it for free, or almost free by publishing directly to Amazon with Kindle Direct Publishing. They don’t charge a fee to upload your books. They get paid when you sell your books. Royalties are based on price. They get a cut and you get a cut. Costs come into play when you hire an editor, hire a cover artist. You can also hire a formatter. For my short stories I do the covers myself and I get a friend to do the edits.

First things first – if you have an Amazon account you already have a KDP account. You just need to log into it to start uploading books. If you go to https:///kdp.amazon.com it will prompt you to log in.

KDPScreen

From there you can easily add titles. Once you click on add new title the process of adding your title, uploading your content and cover is pretty easy. You’ll select keywords and add a description. On the next screen after you’ve saved and previewed your book you’ll select the rights you have. In the case of my books, since I self published I had world rights so I left that clicked. Then I set the price, royalty level and clicked publish.

KDPScreen3

Then you can obsess every day and check your sales every five minutes. 🙂 I’ve tried to limit my time checking my sales but it’s nice to see those numbers go up.

KDPScreen2

All that in mind, self publishing isn’t for everyone. While a lot of authors like the control they have when they self publish, a lot of other authors would rather give that control to someone else so they can focus on what they love the most. The writing. Self publishing is easy to do but it isn’t easy. It’s a business and you the author must wear a lot of hats. While it’s true that no matter which way you go – self publishing or traditional publishing – you still have to market your book on your own, a traditional publisher will do a lot of other jobs (cover, editing) that let you focus on writing the next book.

So, if you’re so inclined, jump into the self publishing world and let me know how it goes.

Keep writing!

Inspiration is everywhere

ITime for I on the A to Z Blogging challenge. Pressed for time so today I’m talking about inspiration for writing mostly in the form of pictures. 🙂

Some writers find it hard to come up with ideas but I’ve always found ideas everywhere. For the writing group we’ve often used pictures to inspire us to write a scene, start a story, come up with a character.

Take a look at the pictures below.  Can you write a scene based on any of them? Do any of them give you ideas about what might be going on? Who was killed in that crime scene? Whose bed is that? Some I took myself, some I found on a stock site. Feel free to brainstorm in the comments section.

20111112_283

IMG_9382

IMG_9466

Futuristic Cityscape from DepositPhoto

Futuristic Cityscape from DepositPhotos

Bio:

CindyCarrollECindy is a member of Sisters in Crime and a graduate of Hal Croasmun’s screenwriting ProSeries. Her interviews with writers of CSI and Flashpoint appeared in The Rewrit, the Scriptscene newsletter, the screenwriting Chapter of RWA. She writes screenplays, thrillers, and paranormals, occasionally exploring an erotic twist. A background in banking and IT doesn’t allow much in the way of excitement so she turns to writing stories that are a little dark and usually have a dead body. She lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and two cats. When she’s not writing you can usually find her painting landscapes in oil or trying space paintings with spray paint.

Join Cindy’s exclusive club to get new release pricing, the inside scoop, free reads: http://www.cindycarroll.com/blog/newsletter/

To be a reviewer and get books before they’re released in exchange for an honest review on release day sign up here: http://eepurl.com/bfN0bL

Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CindyPCarroll

Like her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorCindyCarroll

Amazon Page: http://amazon.com/author/cindycarroll

Thanks for stopping by the blog today!

Keep writing.

High concept – not just a marketing gimmick

HToday we’ve got me on the blog! I’m talking about high concept, taken from lesson three of the loglines class I teach.

Ever heard an agent or editor say they want something fresh?  Have you heard them say they want something unique?  How about they want the same but different?  Any of these ringing a bell?  What I think they mean, but aren’t saying, is they want high concept.  A lot of movies have been based on high concept books.  I Am Legend for example.  Great high concept.  Lousy movie.  Jaws.  High concept book, high concept movie.  The Silence of the Lambs.  Jurassic Park.

What is high concept?  Is it just a marketing gimmick?  People tend to think if they can boil their concept down to that twenty-five word logline they have high concept.  That’s not what makes it high concept.  I can do that with a lot of my stories but only a handful are actually high concept.  So then what is it?  And how do you get it if you don’t have it?

I’ve seen “rules” that say there are three components to a high concept.  Others that say there are five. And one even that says there are six.  No matter which one you listen to they have three in common:

The concept must be unique

The concept must appeal to a wide audience

The concept can be told in a single sentence and you see the whole movie (or book).

High concept is not Star Wars meets The African Queen. This is a framing technique mostly used in Hollywood. It should be used sparingly and only if asked. It’s also not the blurb or the synopsis. It’s not big budget, blockbuster movies either. You can have high concept without the big budget.

Star Wars was high concept. Star Wars fits all the criteria for being high concept in spades.  The Blair Witch Project, by no means a big budget film, was high concept. I didn’t care for the movie myself but millions of people did. It had a unique twist. The protagonists were likeable.  The stakes were high enough for them. Even Peggy Sue Got Married was high concept.

Not high concept – Little Miss Sunshine.  She’s All That.  Head Over Heels.  Twilight.  Brokeback Mountain.  American Beauty.

High concept is a powerful tool to have as a writer.  High concept pitches can make it easier to communicate up through the chain of command.  If your idea is too complicated, by the time it reaches the top, it may sound like a totally different idea.  Anyone ever play telephone as a child?  It also forces you to determine what the story is really about.  What the core of the story is.

Now some of you may be thinking, but my story is too complex for this logline business.  Or this high concept business.  But the God Father was high concept.  Boil that complex plot, with complex characters and great subplots and what is the core?

When a powerful gangster is gunned down, his reluctant son must seek revenge and take over the family business.

Everything in the movie relies on that core.

How do you improve a concept to make it higher concept?

First, I suggest you find the essence of the concept or logline.  Figure out what it’s about and then what it’s REALLY about.

Here’s where we have fun.  Take your concept or logline and change it.  Make it better.  How?  Is it unique?  No?  Can you make it more unique?  Change the setting to be unique?  How about the characters?  Change the gender, race, species of your characters.  Change their traits.  Throw some opposites in there.  You’ve all heard the make the heroine an arsonist and the hero a fire fighter suggestion.  Raise the stakes.  Play what if?  Give it a twist.  Have something unique about it.

So go ahead and try it on one of your concepts. But only ones you haven’t done a lot of work on. Authors tend to get married to their ideas and find it hard to make changes to the concept even though a change could make the concept stronger. Feel free to share your loglines if you like.

Bio:

CindyCarrollECindy is a member of Sisters in Crime and a graduate of Hal Croasmun’s screenwriting ProSeries. Her interviews with writers of CSI and Flashpoint appeared in The Rewrit, the Scriptscene newsletter, the screenwriting Chapter of RWA. She writes screenplays, thrillers, and paranormals, occasionally exploring an erotic twist. A background in banking and IT doesn’t allow much in the way of excitement so she turns to writing stories that are a little dark and usually have a dead body. She lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband and two cats. When she’s not writing you can usually find her painting landscapes in oil or trying space paintings with spray paint.

Join Cindy’s exclusive club to get new release pricing, the inside scoop, free reads: http://www.cindycarroll.com/blog/newsletter/

To be a reviewer and get books before they’re released in exchange for an honest review on release day sign up here: http://eepurl.com/bfN0bL

Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CindyPCarroll

Like her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorCindyCarroll

Amazon Page: http://amazon.com/author/cindycarroll

Thanks for stopping by the blog today!

Keep writing.

Follow Us!

Subscribe via RSS

Categories

This site uses cookies. Find out more about this site’s cookies.