Luckily, no one would want to hide the fact that they’re reading Lifeliner. If you’ve been waiting for it to become available on the Nook or to be more affordable or just because, wait no more. Go to Barnes & Noble, order the eBook (or click here), and within seconds you’ll be reading Lifeliner. Or if you prefer your books in paperback or hard cover, Barnes & Noble stocks those formats too. And if you have another eReader and want to check out the eBook version, Smashwords.com has every format available. Just click here.

———————————

In other news, I’ve submitted Lifeliner to Amazon DTP. Look soon for the eBook for the Kindle to be downloadable from Amazon.

If you’ve bought Lifeliner from Smashwords.com — or Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Chapters, for that matter — I’d  be very grateful if you could take 5 minutes to write a review!

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LinkedIn is the “world’s largest professional network, helping people find and share opportunities every day.”

I don’t know exactly how it’ll work for me, but I hear many authors find it useful. In the coming days, I’ll explore more how it works, but for now I have most of my profile completed. If you’re on LinkedIn, please join my network — you may find my public profile here.

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1. Lifeliner, the eBook
2. Lifeliner, the screenplay
3. She, the novel

Lifeliner, the eBook is out. Currently, I’m in week 2 (or is it 3?) of the hard part: marketing it. To market, one must be persistent and consistent. But brain injuries interfere with both. Even if you can start a project, some little hiccup like a bad day or questions on how to fill in a form or a distracting phone call, will make you stop in your tracks and not pick it up again. Other times you may be chugging along nicely, when all of a sudden you forget or you get out of your routine or your second brain the PDA dies and all your tasks go down the drain as you struggle to remember what you’re supposed to do and all you perceive is great blankness. These problems are worse, of course, if you don’t really want to do it, like with marketing. The great thing about having organizing help is that the hiccup or forgetfulness lasts a week at the most; the greater thing is having help to break down the project, identify its priority, and schedule it in a way that ensures it’ll happen. We’ve done that, and I’ve started regularly writing and submitting press releases. I received an enormous boost from a fellow Twitterer who gave me valuable feedback on the first one. With a solid foundation, it was easier to write the second one.

It’s been over a month since I finished writing the Lifeliner screenplay during Script Frenzy. Since my therapist and I had decided my priority was on something that could generate income – republishing Lifeliner as a multi-format eBook – I had put off revising my script. I can only do so much at once, you know! But after an abortive attempt last week, I got down to it this week. Step one: read the script through all in one go. Step one was tough. My reading ability continues to be weak. It’s partly because the brain injury reset the frequency of my brain’s alpha waves down (more on alpha waves here). Sooo…I tried but I couldn’t do it all in one go. I did, however, do it all in one day in four 30-minute increments, with the help of copious amounts of chocolate, sugar-laden foods, and coffee (the brain uses glucose for energy, and caffeine is a stimulant).

I continue to search for an agent for my novel She, which I wrote last November during NaNoWriMo. I had a nibble or two but nothing came of it. I could forego the headache of searching and go straight to a small publisher or publish it as an eBook, but I’d like to have an agent for all those other non-print rights – film, foreign, game – plus an agent is a good person to help one chart a career. One advantage of publishing it as an eBook right now is it would help me build up a library quickly. Authors with more than one published book under their belt are more credible – unless you’ve managed to write a debut-hit wonder. Not so in my case. Sigh. The problem with myself publishing it as an eBook is I would have to invest about $1,000 at least in a good editing and proofreading job. I don’t have that kind of money anymore. But having worked as both an editor and proofreader, I know how valuable those services are in producing a polished, enjoyable book. And, as a writer, I would not want to skip having those smart pairs of eyes looking over my manuscript, catching problems, ensuring flow, suggesting good ideas to improve upon it.

I have another way to build my libary: put all the short stories I wrote pre-injury, stories that are polished and ready to publish, in one eBook. That is on my ToDo list. And then there is the rare moment I stumble upon a story, a story that is best told in a photograph but provides fodder for one of my blogs, each of which enables me to both practice my writing and engage my readership in the now as I work towards building my library for the future.

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DRM allows “copyright holders to prevent unauthorized duplication of their work, either to maintain artistic integrity or to ensure continued revenue streams.” (Wikipedia)

A book with DRM on it controls where an eBook can be read, how many copies — if any — can be made of it, if it can be printed, and if it can be shared. The idea is that the digital nature of eBooks allow books to be widely pirated in a way that old-fashioned print books cannot be (never mind that the inside page of a mass paperback usually had some sort of statement that if the cover was missing, the reader was reading a pirated book), and only DRM prevents that. Only DRM ensures authors — and publishers because this is really about the publishers — earn an income from eBooks.

However, after my experience with the trade paperback and hard cover versions of my book Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story, I think DRM is pointless. And I dispute the idea it ensures a continued revenue stream.

The first reason I think it’s pointless is because I have way more readers than purchased print books. After Lifeliner was originally published, what often happened was one person would buy and read one trade paperback version of Lifeliner. That paperback then moved from hand  to hand over and over again. I think one book was passed around to 16 people. If every person who read my book had bought it — something that DRM tries to enforce on the theory that it happens with print books — I may actually have an income. At first, when I discovered this mass sharing, I was shocked, then pissed, now I’m at the Gallic shrug stage. It would be nice if all those readers posted reviews or talked Lifeliner up on social media, but I’ve given up on that idea too. A few have sent me wonderful comments; fewer have helped me spread the word; one reader gave it 4 of 5 stars on Chapters Indigo. And those have made my day.

The second reason: DRM irritates the reader, like one person I follow on Twitter who bought the kobo only to discover her previously purchased eBooks can’t be read on it because of DRM. She owns the books; why can’t she read them on any eReader she wants to? It’s like saying I can read a paperback I purchased as long as I keep it in my bedroom, but if I store it on my kitchen bookshelf, then nope, no reading allowed.

The last reason I think it’s pointless is because I’m quite familiar with computers and know that someone somewhere is going to be able to break it. That person is the real pirate. Or someone rising to a challenge, as things like DRM are red flags to a bull. Or more likely those people who think there should be no copyright, who think that artists live to serve their reading and music needs and those artists ought not to earn a dime from their work but live in noble penury because they’re owed. Or maybe they just think we’re all U2s and Madonnas, Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings, and are so rolling in dough we shouldn’t be demanding people pay for our music or books. I wish. Anyway, the pirates and entitled will always find a way to get a book for free. Meanwhile most readers who have no trouble paying for artistic work will just be annoyed with me, with the DRM, and not purchase my book. And my main goal is to have as many eyeballs on my book as possible, so it’s a bit counter-productive to put DRM on Lifeliner. I also think it’s a lot easier to share a paperback than an eBook. With a print book, you just pick it up and hand it over, with no thoughts of piracy. With an eBook, you got to find the file, attach it to an e-mail or a wireless message of some sort, send it over, etc. etc. Sounds like too much work to me as a reader. It’s way easier to download it from the library or eBookstore and there’s no latent guilt involved. Copyright notices are much more visible on an eBook than on a print book.

Which brings me to the second big discussion about eBooks: price.

Recently, most big publishers went to war with Amazon to enforce what they call the Agency model of pricing. They have always made their money on hard covers because although those are few in sales numbers, the profit margins are high, and by releasing just the hard cover a few months ahead of the trade or mass paperback and the eBook, they force those who can’t wait to read their favourite author’s books to buy a hard cover. Some people prefer hard covers over any other kind of book, true, but most don’t want to pay the high price and heft the heavy book when reading and so wait. But publishers want to keep this tradition going. As a reader, and as an author who wants to maximize sales, I say bah to that.

Let readers decide which version they want to read: hard cover, paperback, eBook. Let readers decide on which platform they want to read their eBooks on: kobo, computer, Sony Reader, iPod or iPhone, iPad, Kindle. Let the massive marketing push done at the launch of any book benefit sales of every version of a book, not just the hard covers. Once the paperbacks and eBooks come out, months after the hard cover and after the big launch, they can no longer benefit from all the initial publicity. The author is left to ensure the word gets out, and readers are left to remember they were going to buy that book once it came out in paperback and eBook. I find that intensely annoying as a reader, waiting months for a book to come out in paperback so that I can read it.

iUniverse published Lifeliner in hard cover, trade paperback, and eBook (with limited distribution) all at once. Surprise, surprise, several people bought the hard covers even though it was $18 more than the eBook, and more bought the hard cover than the eBook. Meanwhile, I’ve just released a multi-format eBook, which is available much more widely than the iUniverse one, and already people who were happy for me when I published Lifeliner originally yet had not bought it then are buying it now. Why? The only difference between then and now: price and availability.

I’m issuing a limited-time coupon to celebrate this eBook launch, and this eBook is available in any format you can think of with no DRM attached. And even though the coupon — code TX53X at check out, good for 4 more days only, until May 31st — drops the price of the eBook from $4.99 to $1.99, I’m still receiving in royalties almost as much as I would if someone purchased my $16.95 (all prices US) trade paperback on Amazon.com. That’s how little authors receive from print books — and I receive higher royalties than if I’d gone the traditional route. That means, to put it crassly, I will earn more from low-priced multi-format, DRM-free eBooks than print books, assuming my marketing campaign works. And, in the end, so what if people share the non-DRM eBooks with their friends and family, co-workers and neighbours? They already do that with the paperbacks.

Technorati Tags: Medicine, Biography, Inspiration, eBook, Publishing, Digital, DRM

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“A compelling story.”

“Shireen Jeejeebhoy has written an extraordinary account of Judy Taylor and her fight for life starting in the 1970′s when medical science was not as it is today.”

“When (Judy) was drugged up, she’s going, ‘I can’t die cause there’s no way that Cliff can raise those three girls by himself. He can’t do it. I have to live.’”

“Jeejeebhoy’s style of writing sets the right pace as we follow Judy’s medical difficulties….It is truly a fascinating and eye-opening story which was well written.”

“Reading it will make you laugh, smile, cringe, cry and most importantly, think. If you want inspiration, Lifeliner has no shortage packed into its pages.”

“Thank you so much for telling the story of your father’s care for her and the strength and courage she displayed in such a compelling and interesting way!”

Just some of the nice things reviewers and those who knew Judy said about my book Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story when it first came out in print and limited eBook distribution. Recently, Smashwords made it possible for authors to publish their books in multiple eBook formats and have them distributed to all the big virtual bookstores from Amazon to Sony to Kobo to Apple’s iBookstore. It was time to properly join the eBook digital revolution.

Judy Taylor relished her simple happy life. She had a loving husband, three young daughters, a beautiful suburban home. Good health. Suddenly, intestinal blood clots annihilated her guts. Judy faced the certainty of starving to death in a cold Toronto hospital. “Don’t let me die,” she cried out. The year was 1970. There was nothing they could do. And then they heard of a radical young doctor doing revolutionary work on artificial feeding. She went for it; she agreed to become a guinea pig. And Judy lived two more decades without eating again. And because of her courage, she gave people a better chance at living with AIDS or cystic fibrosis, recovering from traumas, and surviving the rigors of chemo. Lifeliner is Judy’s inspirational story from death to life, from ordinary woman to medical pioneer.

Today, I’m proud to announce that Lifeliner is available on Smashwords and has been approved to be distributed to Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Amazon, and Apple. To celebrate this awesome occasion, I am offering — until May 31st only — Lifeliner for a measly $1.99 at Smashwords. Simply enter coupon code TX53X at checkout to receive this special introductory price.

At that price, I would buy it even if I didn’t know what it was, said one reader.

Read a free sample. Then take advantage of this amazing offer and download it in your eBook format of choice. And if you have a moment, please leave a review too!

Technorati Tags: Medicine, Health, Inspiration, eBook, Publishing, Digital

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Smashwords will take your MS Word document and convert it to many eBook formats, such as HTML, Java, PDF, ePub, Mobi, etc. They will make your eBook available on their own website as well as distributing it to Amazon, Kobo, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, and eReading apps for all mobile devices from iPhone to Blackberry to Android. The cost to do this is zilch. Author royalties range from 85% of net sales on Smashwords; 70.5% elsewhere. The catch: you have to go through the extremely tedious process of ensuring your manuscript conforms to Smashwords style guide. I am just about comatose from the process. Chocolate helped revive me, sort of, by this afternoon.

Although my brain injury necessitated reading and rereading the style guide over a period of weeks in order to absorb it, reviewing the steps and writing down which ones apply to me, setting SMART goals to get it done, being methodical in making each change, the process is a good one for anyone to follow because the task is tedious, and tediousness can lead to errors. I used to do this back in my consulting days when programming databases and debugging them. I’d look for one type of error or do one formatting thing at a time. For Lifeliner, I went through and fixed the double paragraphs and spacing (that is, look for double spaces, spaces at end of paragraphs) all at one time, then changed all the paragraphs as per the style guide, then worked on the exceptions, then changed the headings, and lastly changed the style of each chapters’ first paragraph. Because I used the NUCLEAR OPTION — I had only a PDF as the final version with all the proofing changes done, which I had to convert to basic text — I had to put back in all the italics and bold and centring. I did italics first, bold second. That way you don’t lose track of what you’re doing if you try to do italics and bold all in one go. The last thing I did was follow the steps for creating a linkable Table of Contents. My head hurt doing that, but the links worked when I tested them!

I have absolutely no idea if my methodical way has produced an acceptable DOC, I have yet to acquire a new eBook ISBN for it and submit it to Smashwords Meatgrinder, but at least I know the errors should be small (I hope!), I understand the process a little bit now, and I am one step closer to being able to create my own ePub. I will no longer be at the mercy of publishers when it comes to eBook versions of my work. Also, I used to do desktop publishing pre-injury; this is a natural extension of that work. I am not as interested in it as I was (in fact, not), but being able to do it is a good skill for an author to have.

Technorati Tags: Smashwords, eBook, Biography, Publishing, ePublishing

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This April, I learnt a lot about folks. Although I set a big goal for raising funds for The Office of Letters and Light (OLL), and was hopeful about meeting it, I really didn’t expect much response. So I was ecstatic when right away, several sponsored my Script Frenzy writing marathon and even more sent me good lucks.

I hadn’t intended to send more than one e-mail out to my contacts, but I was a bit unclear in the first one and had to send out a correction. Then older, wiser people said you gotta send another one out, you need to remind people because some may have thought, yeah, I’d like to contribute but got distracted. So with great trepidation, I did. But I didn’t send the same message, I added something about my progress, different details about OLL so as to let people know I was not just blowing smoke about writing a screenplay in 30 days and that OLL was a legit nonprofit. And so it went.

I expected no replies for the most part. I also knew from having been the recipient of fundraising e-mails, one feels annoyed, or forgets, or barely takes it in in the busy-ness of life when receiving e-mails like mine. Usually, the annoyed ones probably feel the better side of valour is to stay silent and hit that Delete key. The forgetful ones are probably happy of the reminders and then promptly forget again. But many didn’t stay silent; they replied. They sent me congratulations or good luck or told me how excited they were that I was adapting Lifeliner. How awesome! The overflow of kindness buoyed me up and kept me writing. But then there are the grumpaloos of life, the three who told me to stop it. The weird thing about these grumpaloos, so much like those paper route door slammers, was that they all knew me in “real life,” not just a little bit, but quite well. In contrast, although the nicest, kindest people included the expected friends and relatives, they also included those whom I’ve only met online or know me through my parents.

I’m not sure what that says about me. But it’s interesting how the same stimulus can create such a variety of responses. One person thanked me for “the tickler,” while another told me to stop it. A few donated but didn’t say anything to me directly, while some said no thanks but best of luck. Several encouraged and congratulated me, while a relative told me to, uh, stop asking for money. And it slowly dawned on me that this is what some experts mean when they say people can’t make you mad; only you make yourself mad. I’m not sure I entirely agree with that, but the way people respond to e-mails or events really is determined by the kind of people they are. Generous people, confident in themselves, get excited for you. Even when busy or in pain, people can choose to be kind, to see life through a lens of good will. The grumpaloos…well, they’re not worth bothering about.

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When I began, I wondered if I’d be able to survive the first weekend, it being Easter and all, meaning that I’d have to write extra before since I wouldn’t have any time or energy during and after Easter. I not only survived, I exceeded my goal. And then I kept piling up pages, page after page after page. Oh, oops, too many pages for where I was in the story. Now I worried about writing so many I’d have to hack at it drastically to get it back down to 110 pages at least. You see, even though the Script Frenzy challenge is to write 100 pages minimum, for a screenplay to be taken seriously it needs to be 100 to 110 pages, from what I’ve read. And I want my screenplay to be taken seriously.

But worrying about page numbers was not enough for me. Oh no, I soon realised that writing a screenplay was way tougher than writing a book, draining me faster, making me stop my day’s writing sooner. So of course I worried about whether I’d be able to finish the story by end of April. To top it off, I had also decided to get my script sponsored. “It’s like a walk-a-thon. But seated. With coffee.” I find asking people for money, even though it isn’t for me, difficult. And watching the goal meter inch up slowly then stop short of goal excruciating. But with encouragement from older relatives and my therapist, I went for it, kept at it. And it paid me back by being my motivation when fatigue and doubt almost stopped my fingers typing.

I reset my writing schedule. I began each morning with 30 minutes of writing right after breakfast, before the draining distraction of checking e-mails. I tracked the page count against the chapter I was on so as to harmonize the two better. I took a day off each week to recharge. And I won 5 days ahead of the end!

Since then, I’ve fixed some formatting issues with the scene headings and action sections. I next need to go through the whole screenplay to ensure I haven’t chucked out a crucial piece of the story (screenplays are so much tighter than books, even short ones like mine) and to ensure it flows. Meanwhile, I’m going to republish the eBook format of Lifeliner to make it available on all the big platforms like Apple iPad, Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle. I’ll announce here and on my Twitter stream when it’s available. I will also continue to look for an agent for my novel She, which I wrote during NaNoWriMo. And I’m going to start work on my next book. I’m still looking for volunteers to help me with the research for the latter: financial, government policy and legislation, car crash statistical research.

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But I had no idea just how difficult.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t wedded to every chapter and every scene. I’ve had ruthlessly toss out scenes and even entire chapters in order to keep on top of my page count. Some days my fatigue helped. I did not want to wrap my brain around one more time how to shrink a scene into two lines of dialogue. So out the scene went instead.

Speaking of fatigue, the one thing I didn’t expect was how tiring writing a screenplay is in comparison to a book during NaNoWriMo. There is an awful lot of thinking involved, the creative kind, not the research kind. Research is exhausting when you have little stamina, but trying to think through how to stay in the truth yet make a scene work is guaranteed to put head to couch pillow. Now I know why films are docudramas and at times loose with the truth. Some scenes just do not work when you remain faithful to how something really happened.

I usually begin my mornings like many people do: checking e-mail, conversing on Twitter, following others’ game updates on Facebook (does anyone do anything else on FB but play games?). But one day I was unutterably weary; I did not want to write this damn screenplay anymore. Let someone else do it, even if that possibility was as remote as the moon is to NASA astronauts today. But then I remembered my sponsors, the generous folk who pledged to sponsor my Script Frenzy efforts and are helping me reach my fundraising goal of $2,500 (only halfway there!) by donating to The Office of Letters and Light, the nonprofit parent that puts on the international National Novel Writing Month and Script Frenzy, as well as the Young Writers Program. I couldn’t let them down. Maybe the best thing was to write through my weariness then spend the rest of the day on the couch. Lo and behold, I found the rest of the day easier to deal with once I’d completed my writing goal. I was still whacked but writing always improves my mood. I could face my fatigue easier in a good mood.

So far, I’ve stuck to my new routine; I take Sundays off and less and less other days off. I have 17 pages left, six chapters left. I hope to complete it all before the 30th and take the rest of April off to soak up the sun. Of course, it’ll begin to rain as soon as I finish.

Technorati Tags: Script Frenzy, NaNoWriMo, Screenplay, Writing, Scriptwriting, Biography

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As you may know, I’m writing an adaptation of Lifeliner during the month of April for Script Frenzy. It’s a challenge to write a 100-page screenplay in only 30 days, but to up the ante, I also asked for sponsors for my writing marathon, sponsors whose donations would all go to Script Frenzy. That challenge is both motivating – can’t stop writing now! – and scary. I can’t believe I set a fundraising goal of $2,500 for The Office of Letters and Light, the nonprofit that hosts Script Frenzy, National Novel Writing Month, and youth writing programs in communities, libraries, and schools around the world. But I did, and it’s given my writing wings and sent a package to my door today.

This postcard is for all you amazing, wonderful, beautiful people who sponsored me, who donated your hard-earned monies to a worthy cause – Script Frenzy and the Young Writers Program – and, at the same time, said I believe in you:

For those who’ve not yet sponsored me and would like to get in on this and help promote creativity around the world, please click this link.

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