I have still sold no copies of Consarn Christmas and Other Stories (hey ho) but was disturbed to see it twice on Kobo. One version was from Draft2digital and one was from Smashwords. Not good. Not ethical, probably. I published it through both – which is allowed – but neglected to pick distribution channels for each.

I have now corrected it. On Smashwords dashboard, you can opt out of some distributors. Draft2digital cover the main ones – Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble etc. – so I opted out of them on Smashwords. This may seem unkind to Smash but I mainly want to be on Smashwords own page, because my Alban Lake book Brigstowe Dragons is on Smashwords, along with other good stuff from Alban Lake and Nomadic Delerium Press, namely magazines with my stories in. I couldn’t have formatted the book for Smashwords without Draft2digital’s brilliant converter so I think I owe Draft the ones they cover. Without them, I could only publish on the big beast-Amazon.

I’m glad I’ve sorted it. This note of warning is just to help other self-publishers who might have done the same thing in honest error.

In my ongoing struggle with the technical side of self-publishing on the cheap, I had cover trouble. They say people judge a book by its cover. I think this is unwise but there’s no doubt that first impressions count. I designed quite a striking cover for Consarn Christmas and Other Stories. I typed the title and my name in a word document then transferred over a robot/clockwork picture I obtained free from www.FreeImages.com.  After that, I chose the background colour, a bright yellow that reminded me of the old SF books put out by Victor Gollancz years ago. It seemed suitable.

After some more wrestling with the computer, I changed this Word document to a jpeg and used it for my book cover on Draft2digital, Amazon and Smashwords. They all accepted it but Smashwords wouldn’t put it in their Premium Catalogue because the cover didn’t have enough pixies. Or was it pixels. How do you add more pixels?

After some deep thought I googled ‘Free Book Covers’ and top of the list, I think, was www.canva.com. Their system was so easy even I could use it. I found a design very similar to my own, substituted my photo for the well-dressed young man in the original, rewrote the title and  Hey Presto! I replaced the old one on Smashwords with it and today they e-mailed me to say that Consarn Christmas and Other Stories had been accepted into their Premium Catalogue. That wasn’t essential because I’ll get to most of the same retailers through Draft2digital but all those red warnings popping up on Smashwords every time I logged in were annoying.

If even a techno-flubber like me can make a book, anyone can do it. Of course, you should write something worth reading before getting to this stage.

Eamonn Murphy