“Not only did I finish Upload, I read it during nearly every free moment during less than thirty hours. As the hundreds of unfinished novels on my shelves will jealously attest, such a feat is quite extraordinary for me and is perhaps the greatest endorsement that I have to give.”
A huge thank-you to Jim Grisham for his carefully considered, well written response to “Upload”. The full review can be found on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes &Noble, and iTunes.
So far, I’ve had really great experiences with the customer support folks at Lulu. In this particular case — and this is one to watch out for, Lulu authors — I discovered that the first forty-or-so pages of “Upload” were repeated.
I ordered it as a sample copy, and just happened to be flipping through it when I noticed that the page numbering seemed odd. I discovered the title page… on what should have been page 41.
I filled out the complaint form on Lulu’s website, and they responded immediately, requesting that I send photos of the error. I snapped a picture with my phone. Within a couple of days, they got back to me asking whether I would prefer a refund or a replacement copy. All rather painless. Thanks, Lulu!
“Like Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon, Upload is fast paced and full of action, a story-noire set in a not too distant dystopian society; and the characters and worlds are well developed and very believable.”
My first full-length review comes from fellow Lulu author, Hazen Wardle: http://smallmarkbooks.yolasite.com/bookreviews.php
Thank you so much, Hazen, for taking the time to write such a thoughtful and well-structured review!
Hey Goodreads members… Help “Upload” find its audience! Vote for it on the Goodreads list, “Indie Science Fiction – October New Releases“. And if you’re not already on Goodreads, you should be. It’s a great way to connect with authors and fellow readers, and to discover new books.
Thanks to Goodreads author Bennett Gavrish for creating the list!
For those of you with Nooks, now there’s no excuse — you can finally purchase “Upload” straight from Barnes & Noble, via Nook Books. This is an especially important distribution channel, because B&N is the default bookseller over at Goodreads. The blurb for “Upload” hasn’t shown up yet, but fellow authors at Lulu assure me it’s just a matter of time.
So far, Barnes & Noble has been the slowest of the booksellers, by far. Over the past few weeks, I’ve searched for “McClelland Upload” at least once each day, to see if it had finally made it through whatever process they have for reviewing and releasing eBooks from Lulu. I was shocked this evening when the search results consisted of one book, and it wasn’t “Upload: Etherpunk“, which, by remarkable coincidence, was co-written by one Nigel McClelland. I repeated the search, double-checking to make sure I was on the right website, and it worked again. Then I hopped over to Goodreads, to make sure their ISBN-driven link works, and it does. All’s well.
Now it’s time to consider running an ad on Goodreads, which would be my first real attempt to promote the book, outside of spreading word of its publication among friends.
“Have you ever found a book so different and intriguing and just plain good that you wished you were the first person you knew who read it? That’s this book! I finished it a week ago and I am still thinking about it. Riveting from start to finish and guaranteed to make you think. You won’t sleep til you finish it. Get this book!” –David Gill
Earlier this morning, I saw this review on Amazon from an old college friend, and I’ve had a goofy grin ever since. Couldn’t ask for a more rave review.
Fresh delivery from Lulu.com today: Draft copies of the new 9″ x 6″ trim size (Amazon doesn’t do the 8.5 x 5.5 Digest trim size), with a new font on the font and a blurb and link to uploadthenovel.com on the back. This new print edition will have its own ISBN. I’m working to get it finalized in time for my book release party at the new Century Guild art gallery in Logan Square!
When you publish a book, you put it out there for the world. Or rather, the English-speaking world, in my case, but that’s still an awful lot of people, and I have no control over who will choose to read it. As an abstract fact, I know this and am comfortable with it. Excited about it, actually. The image that initially comes to mind for me is of a total stranger in a bookstore picking up my book, glancing at it, and maybe even skimming the first few pages. I stand at a distance, watching, hoping to catch some hint of their reaction. Then my mind jumps to another imagined scene: I’m on my morning commute, on the Blue Line, and I suddenly notice that the book being read by a fellow train-commuter isn’t just any book — it’s my book. There it is: the cover of “Upload”, and the curious feeling of wondering what scene they’re in the middle of. (Now that so many commuters read e-books, the odds of my spotting someone reading my book went from extremely low to essentially zero, which is a little sad. It has also been pointed out that the move away from physical books, with their publicly visible covers, also makes it harder to hit on bookish girls on the train. “I see you’re reading Heidegger,” you say, holding your copy of “Being and Nothingness” such that it cannot be missed. This exchange just can’t happen if you’re both reading from nondescript e-readers. Now it’s, “I see you’re reading a Kindle”, and being fellow Kindle readers just isn’t much of a conversation-starter.)
The concept of sharing the personal investment of my writing with an unpredictable, unknown audience is something I can easily get my head around. What I didn’t see coming was this, at the bottom of an email from an old friend:
“P.S. My Dad finished Mark’s book, and really liked it! I just gave it to him Saturday night.”
I know this friend of mine has a Dad, and I vaguely recall meeting him once or twice in high school. But now his Dad and I have a somewhat intimate personal connection: he’s read my book, including all the moments that are secretly glimpses into my own mind, my own life, my own fears. Now, if I meet him, I’ll be thinking, this guy read my book. I’ll be wondering what sort of preformed ideas he has about me, and in what ways I fit them — or don’t. And, if the story made a lasting impression on him, we’ll actually have a fairly meaty topic for discussion.
It also means his Dad read the naughty bits. Since I know he enjoyed the book, I’m unlikely to feel judged on this point, but there’s still a degree of awkwardness here, more for me than for the reader. But what happens when I meet someone who didn’t particularly care for the book, and perhaps even found aspects of it offensive? Am I ready to stand proudly behind my artistic expression to someone I know? To my own Dad? To my Mom?
Towering far above all of this is the joy that comes from knowing my friend had enough interest and faith in my novel to give a copy of it to his Dad. I poured a whole lot of myself into this book — time, philosophical reflection, emotional release. I’m not typically a very open/sharing person, and there’s something profoundly thrilling and uplifting about a friend of mine sharing my work with his own family, and having it be well received. I feel like I’ve participated in my own community in a way that’s entirely new to me — like my art has the potential to put me in touch with my own friends in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.
For all you iPad, iPhone, and iPod users, Upload is available via iBookstore. Click here to view information about the eBook and purchase it through iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/isbn9781300206705. You should also be able to download it directly to your iOS device. At the time of this post, here are the latest instructions from Apple:
iBooks includes the iBookstore. Tap the iBooks icon and your bookshelf appears. In the upper corner, tap the Store button and the bookshelf flips around to reveal the iBookstore. From the iBookstore, you can browse books by title, author, or genre. You can also view featured books as well as books available on the New York Times bestseller lists (United States only). Tap on a book to see more details and download a free sample. When you buy a book, it will automatically appear on your iBooks bookshelf.
First, for anyone who is trying to solve this problem, here is the solution (at least for now):
Add or edit summary of Partner Program book
The basic issue is that Google typically gets its book summaries from third-party meta-data providers. If you’re self-publishing, those third parties probably don’t know your book exists. If you go through the help materials, you won’t find a solution to your problem. Only once you attempt to contact Google directly for help do they walk you through a questionnaire that eventually leads you to the precious web form that I’ve linked to above.
If you would like to appreciate the value of a good — or even moderately competent — user experience designer, attempt to publish a book on Google Play. It’s like a parody of bad UI. Please, Google, you gotta do something.
For those who want to know the background here, read on. For everyone else, I hope you found this post helpful. The rest is just my tale of woe.
Background
In going through the painfully obtuse process of making Upload available on Google Play, I encountered a problem that had me baffled: how to add a summary/description/blurb to display alongside the book. This concept of a brief introduction to your book is ubiquitous on bookseller websites. Even on Google Play, most books have a short paragraph explaining the book, to entice the buyer into reading customer reviews, skimming the preview, possibly even buying the book.
Knowing this, I expected at some point during the not-at-all-straightforward process of getting a book onto Google Play to be presented with an opportunity to enter a summary for Upload. I was not. Nor did I come across any little note, friendly or otherwise, mentioning that Google prefers to fetch this information from someone other than the publisher. When my book finally popped out the other end of the black-box process — an event which I feel warrants an email to the publisher, since it takes days and may result in pricing other than what the publisher intended — I discovered that it in fact did not have a summary, where other books on Google Play did.
Where had I gone wrong? What step or piece of crucial information had I missed? Other people are making it work — why can’t I?
So I sunk another 30 minutes or so into trying to find a solution. Only to discover that you have to endeavor to register a complaint before they tell you how it works? Maybe I missed something along the way, but I’ve gone back and forth over those pages and come up with nothing. I guess the engineer-driven business model at Google has its downsides. And that’s coming from someone who’s been coding for money for the past twenty years.
All part of the joy of self-publishing. Of course, I imagine I’m lucky to be arriving at this game now, and not four years ago.