Good-bye and Hello

Aloha can mean both good-bye and hello in Hawaiian, or so I’m told. So it seems fitting as we try to plan for the new year, to say good-bye to some old friends, and hello to new plans for Findley Family Video Publications.

First, a sad farewell to Smashwords as our upload site for all the “other” ebook sites. When we started indie publishing Smashwords was the only simple way to get our books up on sites like Barnes&Noble (Nook), iTunes, Kobo, and the rest of the non-Amazon sites. It was a blessing to have it, but it was often a struggle to format books just so and please the “meatgrinder.”

When I recently tried to upload a revised version of a book there, I got an automated message saying it was rejected due to “text inside tables.” There weren’t any tables in the book, so I scratched my head over it a few minutes. Then I realized how many times I’d scratched my head over what Smashwords had found wrong with our 72 books and umpteen revisions over the years, and I said, enough.

We chose to go with Draft2Digital from now on. Possibly we will miss one or two different sites that Smashwords distributes to, but we have to make choices, and this seems to be the right choice. Draft2Digital even has a site, Books2Read, where customers can link to all the other ebook sites and choose how to get their books with a single link. That was really the deciding factor, a universal link to compete with, if not match, Amazon’s world links to all their stores.

Draft2Digital formats ebooks and even print layouts, and is a great timesaver. I’ll still remember fondly learning to format the Smashwords way and I know it will help in preparing to upload clean ebooks. So thank you, Smashwords, for the good times and the learning experiences, but it’s time to say Aloha. you may see some stray Smashwords links on older parts of the site. Think of them as tributes to a mostly great relationship. Remember you can always find our current links to books by clicking the colored genre images on the right and left sides of the blog.

Good-bye also to Atlantis Word Processor. It’s a good program, but it doesn’t do some of the things we need, like track changes for editors and, though it still does epub conversions, converting to mobi format for Kindle readers no longer happens since the Windows 10 operating system arrived. Since we need professional editing services, and don’t need conversion (see above, regarding Draft2Digital conversion), it seems like a good time to say Aloha to Atlantis.

Now on to what we want to embrace and welcome. The blog has been extensively updated, with some shiny new images, layouts, and links. Enjoy browsing among the posts and pages. Many book pages have new free snippets from the stories. Get a taste of our writing and our purpose.

We also have begun publishing a newsletter. The first issue went out a few weeks ago and we’ll be trying to keep subscribers informed about our plans, new releases, our progress toward returning to video creation, and, of course, special gifts and other disclosures just for our subscribers. You can find the link to subscribe just under the search box at the top of the left sidebar. Please join us as we try to keep you more informed, and give you a chance to inform us. If there is anything you want to see or receive, an email to mjmcfindley@gmail.com will definitely get our attention. We take praise or complaints with grace and want to hear from you.

Now, on to the planned releases for this year. It may be too late for New Year’s Resolutions, but, since Spring Cleaning just happened on the blog, we hope you realize our schedule is not quite normal. These are listed in no particular order of release. Just a plan for now, with hope and prayer.

1. The Captain’s Blade (Sequel to The Baron’s Ring, and book 2 in the Men of the Realmlands Historical Romance series)
2. Beware the Bustle (Book 4 in the Alexander Legacy Steampunk series, featuring Fun See as narrator)
3. As the Sparks Fly Upward (Book 5 in the Benny and the Bank Robber YA Historical Adventure series)
4. I Just Can’t See It (A contemporary romantic suspense)
5. Amber and the Preacher (Book 2 in the Marshals of New Mexico series)
6. His Sign 2: The Ezra Solution (episode 2 in the Paranormal Urban fantasy serial)
7. The Hawk and the Kite (sequel to YA Historical Adventure Hope and the Knight of the Black Lion)
8. An expansion of Carrie’s Hired Hand (a Civil War romantic suspense novella) into a novel-length story
9. Guilty Stains, a Resurrection-themed sequel to Fall On Your Knees (Christmas Romantic Suspense Novella)
10. Who Cares? (Book Three in the Fifty Shades of Faithful contemporary short story series)
11. A revision and re-release of The Acolyte’s Education (an allegorical retelling of Little Red Riding Hood.)
12. Updating Write for the King of Glory (nonfiction advice for Christian indie authors)

Newsletter subscribers are going to get samples of all these books, so if you want to know more, please sign up. There will, of course, be a special bonus to those who do. What is it? That would be telling.