Peg Herring, Mystery Author

Amazon is great for authors. Their print book division, CreateSpace, has been very helpful for me in publishing books on my own, either from Day One or when the rights revert to me from a publishing contract. Recently the news came out that CreateSpace will be going away, and KDP, Amazon's ebook division, will take on both print and ebooks in the future. I decided to convert my books to KDP now rather than later. It's pretty easy if the book is already in CS, though one needs to pay attention to the details. In the process, I did some updating, including altered covers and even new covers for some of my books. Above is Shakespeare's Blood , the old version on the left and the new one on the right. I'm going to do a print version, which I hadn't done before, and that one will have the cover on the right as well. I like having Mercedes featured and like it lighter, both in mood and actual light. I still might make some changes in placement, depending on how the

There was an article in the Sunday paper yesterday about a young man who'd chose self-publishing. He had a cute idea for a children's book, and after being rejected by traditional publishers, he went to work and got it together himself. And ordered 1000 copies of the book. I wish I'd met him before that point in his brand-new career. Here's my understanding of the scam some "helpful" publishers use to make money off earnest, unknowing writers: They "help" you publish your book, charging you every step of the way. They encourage you to buy a bunch of copies because "When this thing takes off, you're going to want them on hand!" They often charge the author full or nearly full price per book, so he gets no profit unless he jacks up the price, making dutiful friends and relatives shell out more than they should for a book in order to be supportive. Bookstores don't want them, because people don't want to pay big bucks for a b