Free Download: The Day Detroit Went Dark

To celebrate and help promote The Day Detroit Went Dark audiobook, the Kindle version of The Day Detroit Went Dark will be a free download on Amazon.com starting December 24th through December 28th.

Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Detroit-Went-Dark-ebook/dp/B00BIOR5K0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361485307&sr=8-1&keywords=the+day+detroit+went+dark

Here’s a few reviews:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrifying and excellent, June 19, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

As an ex-Detroiter I can assure you that if what happened in the book really did happen, this is about as close to what would happen without use of a crystal ball. Sadly the city of Detroit has been little more than a war zone for the last fifty years and it only gets worse with each passing decade. Mr.Silver has crafted a great and terrifying read. At once gut-wrenching and in some very small ways hopeful. I finished this in less than twenty four hours. Haven’t done that in a long time. Great book.

4.0 out of 5 stars good story!, March 30, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

This is one of those books you just can’t put down, plenty of action and you “just have to know what’s going to happen next.

5.0 out of 5 stars PHENOMENAL BOOK!!! February 22, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

This book is incredible. The author pulls me in and keeps my attention throughout. I love the characters. It’s like I’m literally watching a movie and it’s an easy read. Great Job!*****

4.0 out of 5 stars Much better than I had anticipated!, September 23, 2013

This review is from: The Day Detroit Went Dark (Kindle Edition)

So nice to be pleasantly surprised when giving a book a chance! Not to say that this was a pleasant book! No. In fact, both the implications AND feasibility of the story is frightening to say the least! The storyline was smooth and non stop. Not lots of flowery filler. Every word necessary to moving the story along. The short length of the story was enough time to get to know and care about thanks to the author’s style.

The audiobook is here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Detroit-Went-Dark/dp/B00HEFDJCK/ref=tmm_aud_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1361485307&sr=8-1

And here: http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Day-Detroit-Went-Dark-Audiobook/B00HCP9C64/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1387841012&sr=1-1

The Day Detroit Went Dark is also available on iTunes.

Thanks, everyone for making this book a success and Happy Holidays!

The Day Detroit Went Dark Audiobook

The Day Detroit Went Dark hit retail yesterday on audible.com and on iTunes.

Getting the book into production was a lot of work, mostly on the narrator’s part, Stephen Marsden, PhD. Steve is a great voice talent and his work ethic is unparalleled, making the whole process painless.

Before an audiobook goes into production deadlines are agreed upon, and Steve hit them way in advance. I think the worst thing that could happen is that someone, either the rights holder (author or publisher) or the narrator slacks. The disaster scenario is that the contract is voided and the rights holder starts the audition process all over again. This could set the production back by many months.

The System – A Detroit Story is categorized as “headed for retail” in the production process and will be available soon, both on audible.com and iTunes.

Steve has agreed to narrate Reckoning in Escobara which makes me very happy. Here’s the new cover:

Having a quality narrator is more than just a good voice. A voice without a professional behind it is the equivalent of a pretty face with no brains behind it. One tires of that in a hurry. I got lucky.

New Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR Cover

I’ve refreshed the cover for Thomas Edison: RESURRECTOR since I felt it needed a change. Here it is:

I took the photograph inside Edison’s Menlo Park lab at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

Also just got word that The System- A Detroit Story and The Day Detroit Went Dark are ‘headed for retail’ on Audible.com. They should appear on Audible any time now. The covers had to change, since Audible requires square covers (just like CDs) instead of rectangles.

The Day Detroit Went Dark Audiobook

The audiobook production for The Day Detroit Went Dark is complete and approved. We’re very happy the way The Day Detroit Went Dark turned out and it should be available on Audible.com soon.

The System – A Detroit Story – starts production tomorrow.

Audiobook Production: Help Your Narrator

Here’s something I learned fast working on audiobooks for audible dot com. Help your narrator.

The audible dot com process works like this. You upload a section of your book, and unless you’re a professional voice talent and plan to narrate the book yourself, narrators audition for you. You provide a small segment of your book and the voice talent narrates it. If you are the rights owner (either the author or publisher) you choose the narrator. Once you’ve selected a narrator, you or your publisher negotiate a royalty agreement.

There is no guarantee that anyone will audition for you. Narrators gamble their time and talent on your book and its anticipated sales. If you find a narrator that you click with, latch onto them, for now and in the future.  A big thing to consider is brand consistency, especially if your books are a series. Having the same person narrate your books presents a consistency to your work, literary voice, and brand.

What’s the first thing you can do to help your narrator, which helps your final product? Provide them with a detailed character summary. When listening to the auditions you might be surprised that the characters DO NOT sound the way you envisioned, in tone, attitude and rhythm. Put yourself in the narrator’s place. All they have to go on is the short segment of text you or your publisher provided. They make their best guess and interpretation. If it’s wrong, it’s not their fault. It’s yours.

This is where the character summary comes into play. Having a cheat-sheet of sorts prepped for your narrator helps immensely. They know who the protagonists and antagonists are and they know who persists throughout the story and who doesn’t. They know  who must be liked and who needs to be loathed. This helps them invest their time and talent in the characters that require it.

You, the author, will learn a lot about your book listening to the auditions. I learned an old trick from another author a long time ago. You’ve probably heard of it. To accurately proofread your book, say it out loud. That way it’s almost impossible to let a grammatical errors slip by and is a means for correcting awkward passages. You’re listening to your own voice. When you hear a professional narrator recite your book. It’s cool and puts a new, unique light on your work. To get to where you want your book to be, do all that you can to help your narrator get it right. A solid character summary will go a long way.

Covers for Audiobooks

Here’s something I didn’t expect at the onset of producing an audio book with audible dot com. The book covers need to be reformatted or recreated. You might think this is no big deal, but to complicate things, the cover must be square like a CD cover and not rectangular. No big deal? That’s what I thought before I dove into the details. The cover specifications are simple and must be adhered to, otherwise the cover will be rejected.

You can’t just scale your current book cover from a rectangle to a square. The aspect ratio will be askew and will be rejected. Besides, it will look squashed and amateurish. You cannot add white space by adding a border to the sides of your cover image. This will be rejected also. If you scale up or zoom your image to fit the square format chances are it will be rejected since there will be too much noise and pixelation.

Here are the format specifications that audible dot com requires: the native or default size is 2400 x 2400 pixels with a resolution of 72dpi. Squashing down your existing cover may be difficult or downright impossible. So what to do? Create a new one.

What about brand continuity? I look at this a little differently. Audio books are unlike print or eBooks, so why not give them their own identity? Check out some of the covers on audible dot com. The ones that catch my eye are the ones with the big print with simple covers, and not the ones that take a portion of an existing cover and trim it or expand it.

I decided to redo my covers from scratch. I also decided to keep them relatively the same for at least the first two books. Why? Brand identity, specifically tailored for the audiobooks. If this works I’ll do it for all the books that appear on audible dot com.

Here’s the original cover for The Day Detroit Went Dark

Here’s the audiobook cover.

Here’s the cover for The System – A Detroit Story –

Here’s the audiobook cover. Pretty much the same thing.

The Day Detroit Went Dark Audio Book

Sealing the deal and kicking off the audiobook production of The Day Detroit Went Dark. The audiobook will be available on audible.com, targeted for December 1st, 2013. Narrating the book is the voice talent Stephen Marsden. I’ll be posting progress reports here and what I’ve learned throughout the course of this project. It’s kind of like being a movie director (without making a movie).

Creating an Audio Book

I’ve uploaded The System – A Detroit Story and The Day Detroit Went Dark to ACX to create audio books to be made available through audible.com.  A lot of people really like audio books and have been asking for them, so I thought I’d give it a shot. ACX and audible.com are owned by Amazon.com, so that made it really easy to get started. You, the author or copyright owner, log in through your Amazon account and go from there. I found out about ACX via Hugh Howey’s blog. Hugh is the author of the WOOL series.

It works like this: you upload a sample of your book and actors and producers audition for the audio book. You, the author, choose who you like and the rest follows from there. There are essentially two ways of getting your book produced: A) you pay up front and then keep the profits if and when your book sells or B) split 50/50 with the producers  and pay nothing up front. I opted for plan B.

This is my first experience with audiobooks, ACX and audible.com. I will keep everyone posted how it goes.

Here are some links: www.audible.com

ACX: http://www.acx.com/