Writing Advice: From My Experience

Writing Advice: From My Experience

Hi.
I'm Robert E Kreig and I make stuff up.
After processing this for a while, I decided to share something I experienced recently that may be of use to other writers, especially those who travel along the independent tracks. I will place links throughout this text for those interested in finding out more regarding certain things mentioned.
I've been writing books for a few years and, previously, distributed my books through a third-party publisher. Basically, I paid them to format and distribute my works to all available channels in the e-book market. Recently, I pulled all my books from their services. After making a few changes here and there, I redistributed through Ingram Spark under my own publishing label (Whitekeep Books).
While this involves more work from me, it is less costly on my hip pocket and I have more say in the look of the book. Not only that, my work is now in both print and ebook formats. Nothing beats seeing your work in a physical, held-in-the-hands book with paper pages.
For my first book, Long Valley, I created the cover myself using Affinity software. I repeated this process with The Calm Voice but, I knew I needed something beyond my abilities for The Woodmyst Chronicles. So, I hired a couple of cover designers, just to see who fit better. Eventually, I went with Dee Dee Book Covers who captured the tone of the series on each cover. Dee Dee has designed the covers of every book I've published since.
So, where does the advice you promised in the title come into this?
Right here.
I like my books to be on as many platforms as possible. Only because it allows my works to be distributed to audiences who may have a preference of where they obtain their books. For me, it's Amazon and Apple Books.
​I noticed, when creating sales links for two of my latest ebooks, The Woodmyst Chronicles: The Complete Collection and The Pit Guard: The Tanner's Boy distributed widely to all platforms, but not Apple Books.
Perplexed, I contacted Ingram Spark and inquired about this. After some digging, they discovered that the imagery in the books surpassed Apple Books'  limitations of 40 000 000 pixels. In other words, my images were too large. Particularly, the cover images inside the ebook, not the cover image used for the thumbnail. Basically, any image inside the book's pages needed to be resized to 40 000 000 pixels or less for it to pass Apple Books' recommendations.
Something to point out here is that these books are already in the marketplace at this stage. To remove them and upload new versions (which I needed to do if I wanted them on Apple Books) would incur a cost through Ingram Spark. It is your responsibility as publisher to be aware of any issues like this, hence why I'm writing this article. Needless to say, I would have pulled my hair out in frustration, if I had any.
​I use Atticus to format my manuscripts. I find this software unbelievably satisfying. I highly recommend it.
In Atticus, there is a section where you can upload a cover image which will appear at the very beginning of your ebook. It was this image that prevented my most recent ebooks to upload onto Apple Books' catalogue. 
So, I made a copy of Dee Dee's beautiful covers and resized accordingly before placing them back into Atticus. The cover art uploaded to Ingram didn't need any alterations, just the images in the ebooks.
Once done, I downloaded an ePub copy of each book from Atticus (required) then uploaded them into Ingram Spark.
A wonderful person from Ingram Spark who guided me through this process later informed me that it worked and now my books are appearing on Apple Books.
So, the lesson learnt from this exercise is that all images I place inside my books, when formatting, need to be at most 40 000 000 pixels.
And that is my writing advice from my experience.
I hope that helps someone.

Until next time, happy reading, keep writing and all the best,
Robert E Kreig

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