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| Clikc on image to view on Amazon |
Selection
It’s always good fun putting together The Best of CaféLit books. For the last couple of years we’ve asked
the writers who appear in the current book to select their five favourites for the
next volume. We use a points system: five points for the top story four for the
second, three for the third etc. We’re currently going through this process for
The Best of CaféLit 9. This year may
be interesting: we may have more stories than make a comfortable paperback volume.
There seems to be less overlap in choices than in previous years. However, the
solution will be simple: we’ll make out usual volume of about 35,000 words to sell as a
Kindle book and paperback. Then we’ll make an extra e-book of the rest. No one
will be left out!
Freedom from editing
All CaféLit stories are edited as they go on to the site. The
very best story is chosen each day anyway. So, all that needs to be done as the
book is made is a light copy-edit and a proof read. However, the stories do
have to be formatted and this can be tricky sometimes; all sorts of random code
is embedded in the texts and it can make formatting the books tricky. Help us by
first creating your story in a simple Word document then paste it into your email.
A new financial model
We experimented recently with publishing our paperback version
of a book via Amazon’s own print on demand service rather than Lightning Source
whom we usually use. We were pleased with the results so we’re now going to use
that for future CaféLit books.
It’s difficult to get Amazon paperbacks into bookshops. But
that’s okay for CaféLit book; we don’t want to get them into bookshops, we want
to get them into cafés!
We’ve tried to keep prices down to £6.0 RRP and £5.00 for authors.
We may have to revise this. Currently The
Best of CaféLit 8 hasn’t covered costs though authors are getting a reasonable
royalty.
It’s important that we cover the costs of a book. We can’t
offer a new contract until we do.
Making the video
This is always fun. However, I’m still using Movie Maker but
as this is now obsolete I’ll need to start using something else. I always use https://pixabay.com/ for free and copyright
free pictures and https://freemusicarchive.org/
for free and copyright free music. (Be sure if you use the latter to put the
right filters into your search) It’s a shame about Movie Maker. I’ve really got
to know all its tricks and foibles.
For the The Best of Cafélit books I list drinks, themes and authors.
I find pictures to go with some of the drinks and themes, then list authors in
the credits. I look for a piece of snappy, lively music.
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