One of my frustrations with WordPress has been what I thought was a lack of versatility in terms of colors and fonts. In fact, when we first migrated our blog from blogger to WordPress a year or so ago, I tried to alter the template so we could have a black background, different fonts of various colors, but couldn’t figure out how to do it. Blogger simply had made things so easy I didn’t have to think about what I was doing to make changes. Click here and there and the magic happened.
At the time, learning how to use WordPress felt like learning Greek. Every time I went to one of the support forums, my brain became hopelessly entangled in html code that I didn’t understand. I lacked the patience and the time to do the research. Some months back, Gypsy suggested I should highlight our page headings so they stood out. Her blog is a visual feast; ours looked tired. Again the html stuff threw me.
I thought about taking a course in html, but knew it would eat up time in the evenings when I’m able to get some of my best writing done.I kept going through the new plug-ins, looking for one that would facilitate what I wanted to do, but couldn’t find anything suitable. I was astonished by all these hundreds, maybe thousands, of plug-ins created by programmers for the WordPress platform, offered for free, and wondered how these people make a living.
Then late last year, Rob and I decided to bring some of our out-of-print books back into print through digital media. I suddenly had a pressing motive for figuring things out. We wanted to set up a storefront of some kind for these digital books, but where to start? How to do it? Our first step was requesting rights reversions for our books that had gone out print.
This arduous task is complicated by the fact that many publishers drag their heels on rights reversions even though they have no intention of bringing the books back into print. Last fall, I requested rights reversions from Ballantine for 15 titles that have gone out of print. I also requested three titles from Kensington, and three from Hyperion. So far, not a single title has been reverted. So I started with a book to which I did have the rights – Your Intuitive Moon, an astrology book about using lunar signs and cycles to enhance intuition. Rob started with Romancing the Raven, a time travel novel involving Edgar Alan Poe.
We still have computer files for these books, we had the rights, so the next step was finding a digital publisher. We chose smashwords, which converts the book for free, and takes a small percentage from sales. Their guidelines are stringent, detailed, so we each hired formatters recommended by smashwords. I used Katrina Joyner, who formats and designs covers for smashwords and is also a writer. For a reasonable price, she formatted and designed a terrific cover. Once I had the formatted book, I uploaded it to smashwords, then to Amazon Kindle. Amazon immediately contacted me concerning the rights. Fortunately, I had my rights reversion letter, scanned it, and sent it off.
All of this led to my discovery of a wonderful plug-in, theme tweaker lite, which takes the colors in your word press themes and enables you to change them. It’s free. However, the developer offers a pro version for three bucks and change that I’m going to buy now that I know how well this plug-in works.
There’s no synchro in any of this, but there’s a process I appreciate. Publishing is no longer a game centered in NY, with agents and editors deciding what’s good and what’s not, what’s publishable and what isn’t. Thanks to Steve Jobs and Amazon and a handful of visionaries, the middle men in publishing may eventually go the way of the dodo bird.
Yes, it’s wonderful to be paid an advance for a book that someone deems to be commercial and that paradigm has enabled us to make our living for nearly 30 years, doing what we love. But the paradigm is shifting and if we, as writers, don’t shift with it, we can kiss our careers adios. This shift probably doesn’t apply to the big name writers who essentially carry the publishing industry – Rowling, King, Patterson, Roberts, Dwyer, Hicks, Hay, Weiss…we all knows their names. They’ve made it many times over and will undoubtedly continue to do so.
But in both the old and the new paradigm, as least as it relates to writers, the same cosmic truths remain: you must believe in your skill as a writer, believe in what you’re writing and have written, believe that it will make a difference in someone else’s life and will sell. If you don’t believe it, no one else will, either. You must continue to write from your heart, from the depth of your passions for certain ideas, relationships, from whatever moves you. In whatever venue you publish, these truths are impervious.
And this is the process that led to our blog having a different look!
Boo!
just me.
I love the new look.xx
Hi Nat, hope all is well with you!
Your new look caught me by surprise, but a good one!
aught me by surprise, too. You start fiddling and can’t stop…
It’s a good look I think.
I like how it makes the blue stand out (my favourite colour,as you probably know).
I wish you well in your e-book venture.
Cheers / Daz
It is, at any rate, a more interesting look!
well, you know, i absolutely LOVE the new look! 😉 you’ve done a fabulous job of putting it all together with a smashing result! and all that work behind the scenes – really is a story in and of itself – so happy to see your start of an e-store! so much change happening already in our world – and e-everything is just one tiny peg of the big wheel that keeps on turnin’! oh, and thanks so much for your kind words! thank you –
Thanks for this post. I know what you mean about the time it takes to learn everything and it is a never ending process. A suggestion: One problem I have is that it is much harder to read text on a black background and also your links are even harder to read.
I think it’s much easier to read on a black background.
It looks great!
MAJOR synchro for me. I have been held back from fearin terms of finishing my book but have finally dealt with where the fear is coming from and I have been saying what you wrote in your last paragraph a lot recently.
Not only that , others have been saying it to me.
In doing physical therapy for migraines the muscle massage work ( which is quite painful, my therapist keeps saying ” boy this has been Here for a long time, this is old etc) I have had some past life glimpses. One was that I was hung by a thick rope as a witch because I spoke out and helped people by using natural ways.
Another, which I knew about for years was that I was rounded up along with my little sister (now my oldest daughter) and brought to a camp (not Auschweitz) and murdered in a gas chamber because I wrote about the atrocities in Germany. When we watched the movie “Sarah’s Key” together we were speechless because we both knew we were not German nor Jewish. We both are allergic to cig. Smoke and dislike crowded elevators.
I hate all crowds and have to leave if things get too crowded. sometimes in NYC I just have to pull everyone aside to stop so that I can breathe.
Great Post!
Interesting, Vicki! Well, I don’t think you’ll be hung or gassed in this life for speaking out.
Thanks for your encouraging and positive article! You’re right, it is another paradigm, and the “times they are achanging”…….. as an artist, I sometimes struggle with this as well, and personally, get annoyed by artists who freak out if anyone uses their art. When I decided to publish my art on the internet in my website and blogs, I decided it was like casting it to the wind, my offering, and I had to let go of the idea that I would always be copyright protected or even acknowledged (although most of the time I am). Over all, I’ve been so happy at the way people have enjoyed my work, that I was able to make it available.
Your art work is exquisite!
… and great it looks too. Very interesting what you write about publishing. It’s certainly a changing world which is now accessible to all.
More egalitarian, I think!