WHY HAVE A PRIVATE ARC CAMPAIGN?
The one main reason I have right now is that I want to avoid offering this to the general public because I am not sure if the book, even though it is edited, is in its final form.
I normally will offer the ARC copy knowing that people want free copies, but this book I’m unsure about. I want to at least start with my newsletter readers who I can ask to help me with feedback and fill out a questionnaire about the book.
I’m not sure I will go with this exact ending. So this is not set for pre-order and although it has been edited, I may change the book based on feedback and then it will need to be re-edited. So I don’t want a lot of copies of this book floating around.
By limiting the number, I can make sure I send a free copy to the ones who read it for me and I can tell them where and why I changed the text.
THE STEPS I WILL BE PASSING THROUGH:
In order to offer a limited ARC copy, I will use my newsletter list, which is really my reader list, and my website. I will limit the invitations to these two places.
Here is a list of the steps I will need to go through. I will be making short videos and/or blog posts to share what I did in each of these phases. Nothing is hard, but it all takes time.
- Finalize the ARC copy of the manuscript in Word docx file. Add a watermark indicating this is an ARC copy. Make sure this copy has a link to the ARC Questionnaire where readers can share their feedback with you.
- Convert the docx file into an ePub. I use convertio.co, which is a paid site. It costs $9.00 a month. I used it more than the old plan used to give you as a free trial. However, I believe it is all paid now. So you can go to Fiverr and search convert docx to epub and choose the budget of $5 or $10 — because it now defaults to people who charge $25.Once the document is converted, download it onto your hard drive.
I usually bring these epubs into Sigil, a program to create and/or edit ePubs in order to make some global changes and/or clean up the extra codes it may bring inside. I will have a video on this one.Create a PDF from your docx file. Once you have the epub and PDF, you are ready to upload to KDP and test it. I will cover this in one of the videos.Upload the PDF and the ePub up to google drive and copy the links; you will need them later.
The next steps are done with my website. They have to do with pages and forms. So if you don’t have a website, then you can use google forms or whatever system you presently use to get signups. I use Mailerlite and could have set this up through them, but I want to receive the emails and names myself so I can keep a list of who the ARC readers are so I can ask them for a review when the book is ultimately published.
I need a page with graphics introducing the book.
I need a graphic and link for the front page of my website.
I need a Contact Form 7 with an auto-reponder where I put the two links from Google Drive to download either the PDF or the ePub. I need to check the form to make sure it works.
I need to create a form for my feedback questions and post it on a separate page on the website.
Then I need to create a list to keep track of who my ARC readers are and their emails.
So that is the process I am now going through. In the next blog posts and videos, I will be addressing these very creations and/or changes.
The first thing I noticed is that the story needs to be contained or confined to a shorter version than a novel. This means that you won’t have the same space to build the characters.
There are templates all over the internet for story crafting, but they all seem to follow the hero’s journey, which I find doesn’t work for mystery books. At least I was never able to make them work for me.
There are many blog posts and videos on the internet about how to write a novel. Much of the advice is general in nature and only broad-stroke tips. This video seeks to go one step further and open my last book, which is still being proofread in Layer 8, and show a work-flow demonstration.
I am in the process of finishing my 14th novel. I started out like many of you as a self-taught author who took in unorganized, uncurricularized information and had to make sense of it all. I devised this 8 Layer system to try to write a novel as efficiently as was possible. I offer it to you for whatever weight you wish to give it.
