While a good story is key, I think of accuracy in an e-book in terms of correct spelling and grammar and formatting that doesn't drive the reader crazy. I use every tool available to make sure that my books are accurate but the law of averages always makes me wonder if I haven't missed something. Lately, there's been quite a lot of discussion on the self-publishing group I follow about Amazon instituting a new rule that investigates reviewers complaints when a book has too many spelling errors.How many is too many? How long will it take to convince Amazon that your character is speaking in dialect and that the word isn't really misspelled? How many complaints will they accept from any given reviewer before the reviewer is questioned? I believe this is a fairly new policy so only time will tell.
Nobody said this would be easy. I wouldn't have believed them if they had. My only plan at this point is to just write the best book I can and keep moving forward.
While I work on new projects, I'm revising and self-publishing my back-list. Last year's experience with the Romance Books '4' Us author boxed set, ENTICE ME was so much fun that I decided to try it on my own. NO HOLDS BARRED is an erotic romance novella first published in 2009 and now available at Amazon, iTunes, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. The sparkly new cover design is from SelfPubBookCoversCom./Shardel.
Blurb:
What's a woman to do when the sexy younger man she can't forget tracks her down after a night spent celebrating her fortieth birthday? Charmed into a year of long-distance Sunday morning calls, Raphella Dotti agrees to spend a sensual week with Jake Truhorn, exploring all of her no-holds-barred-anything-goes, fantasies.
Jake doesn't understand why anyone would suggest that Ella diet, get a nose job or change at all. She's smart, funny and an artist's dream. She's also the challenge he's been looking for his entire life. He isn't wasting one minute of the seven days he has to explore every one of Ella's desires and convince her that she's the woman he wants forever.
Snippet:
She’d been leaving
first for a long time now, before anyone could suggest a diet or a nose job or
her personal favorite, liposuction. Before she fell into the trap of loving
someone so much she allowed herself to become their latest project. And she
could fall hard for Jake Truhorn. How ridiculous would that be? How dangerous?
She spent the next
twenty-four hours convincing herself that she’d done the right thing, all the
while frowning into mirrors at least once an hour, trying to smooth the
crinkled little creases around her eyes and the laugh lines that she hadn’t
paid any attention to before.
From now on she was
just going to celebrate the anniversary of her fortieth birthday. And she was
probably going to stop looking into mirrors. At least until she found a really
great industrial strength night cream.
Two days later Jake
Truhorn laid siege to her email, her phone and her sense of humor. She very
gently informed him that the ten-year age gap was a problem. He made a joke
about being the only one who’d be able to keep up with her in her old age,
smoothly transitioning the conversation into their shared love of campy B-movie
horror classics, ethnic food and a single-minded, obsessive passion for their
work.
One year and
innumerable emails and phone calls later he was still making jokes, still
charming her—and he knew it.
“Where are you
planning on celebrating your forty-first birthday?” he asked during their
latest regular Sunday-morning-brunch-with-the-phone-to-their-ear-conversations.
“I’m not. I’m only
going to celebrate the anniversary of my fortieth from now on,” she quipped
before she thought better of it. The moment of silence that followed felt as if
it lasted ten minutes. When he finally said something he sounded as if he’d
been holding his breath.
“Then I say do it
right. Spend a week with me. We’ll do all of the things we didn’t have time to
do a year ago.”
Jack and Ella will always have a special place in my heart. I hope they've found their way into yours:)
Have a wonderful month!
Paris Brandon
No Holds Barred
Available now:
Kobo:
https://goo.gl/XiBjFw
Barnes & Noble: http://goo.gl/7Oyq4j
8 comments:
Paris, I love your new cover. The story sounds like fun. I'm a stickler for making sure my books are free of grammar or punctuation errors. Somehow, no matter how careful I am, a few errors sneak in. I've read books, self-pub and by trad publishers that have errors that take me out of the story.
Excellent post, Paris, and so wise. Writing fast or a lot of words isn't the key. Producing a professional product that entertains readers is what matters. Those who slap anything up on Amazon to be a 'published' author are only kidding themselves.
Congrats on the new cover and updated story. It sounds like a winner. :)
Cara,
Thanks! I loved this story and had a blast writing it. I know how you feel. I'm super careful but I always worry about that one little mistake that comes through. I'm forgiving to a point but I'm, with you--too many errors take me right out of the story.
Tina,
Thank you. I still envy writers who can write more than 3k per day but that's only happened once with me and that story practically wrote itself. I think we'll see a day when the formatting process is going to kick out errors that will need to be fixed before you can hit publish. Just my 2 cents.
Melissa,
Thank you! I love the pretty new cover, too:)
Great post. Your characters practically jump from the page in your excerpt...Loved it.
I share your concern about Amazon's new editing process. I've already heard from a couple of authors whose books have been pulled for a single "error" that wasn't even really an error. It should be an interesting ride! #:0)
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