It took awhile for “Heroes & Villains” to show up on BookieJar.com, then I had to go back over it again and make some changes. In the process, I figured out a few things:
1) For chapters use Heading 1 so that each chapter becomes a separate section in your table of contents. If you do it wrong, if you have any sample chapters, you can end up giving your entire book away for free. Not so cool.
With “Heroes & Villains,” I used Heading 2 for each of the chapters, then offered 5 chapters for my sample, since I have 21 sections (20 chapters and 1 epilogue.) Because I used Heading 2, everything became one piece and for however long my book was listed, I guess I was giving the whole thing away for free. Whoopsie.
2) To load your book on BookieJar you have to load the entire thing as one piece. So even if you’re doing it as an ongoing project and adding chapters as you go, you have to reload the whole document each time.
Being somewhat familiar with the AO3 story loader, it’s somewhat frustrating to use BookieJar, but it is what it is. So I shrugged off my irritation and worked with what I had going. I also looked to the brighter side of things: I can make changes to earlier chapters as the story progresses and I don’t have to re-upload earlier sections.
3) You can add an author’s autograph to your book, which is actually pretty cool. You can make a generic autograph that goes to everyone, but you can also make available
personalized autographs, each with a different message. There’s also a way to autograph someone’s Kindle/ipad, so you can do book signings at like Barnes & Noble and Comic Con and stuff. Very cool and they’re the only ones offering that function at this point.
So if I’m imaging things correctly, you could have an Author’s Appearance at someplace with wi-fi (like a coffee shop!) and you can have the book link and people can buy your book while you’re there, and you can have a book signing. That way you can have a table of print books to sell, as well as online books, and you can offer autographs for both.
4) Unfortunately, one flaw BookieJar currently seems to have is that the search doesn’t seem to work. That’s probably something they’re going to fix very soon. Hopefully.
BookieJar seems to be a good thing thus far, though I need to see how it goes sales wise. So far, there doesn’t seem to be much of a customer base on there, but if we all spread the word… Ya think?
Here’s “Heroes & Villains” on BookieJar.com http://www.bookiejar.com/Home/Book/508?cat=19922944. You can read the first 5 chapters for free. “The Panic Pure” is also there and you can read the available chapters. Non-abusive feedback is much appreciated. Thank you.
