The Lola Project

[Rokia]

Hey folks,

I am putting Lola's first compilation together, then I am going to see how hard CreateSpace is to use.

Here are the stories in the first compilation - I am wanting to see what you all think.

Compilation Name: Either Moonlight and Roses (and other stories) OR Love Comes Softly (and other stories)

1) The Crush (Digest, features Joe and Iola making their tentative steps to be together - and dealing with interference from a jealous girl.
2) Paradigm (Digest, features Joe and Iola & the whole game having to deal with a team of bullies bent on revenge. Again, Joe and Iola are finding their way to each other)
3) Love Comes Softly (Casefile/AU - features Joe and Vanessa finding THEIR way to each other, as well as a car theft!)
4) Remembering Iola (Casefile - pretty self-explanatory, takes place a year after Iola dies in the Casefiles)
5) Moonlight & Roses (Contest story - lots of romance between Joe and Vanessa, Frank and Callie and even Fenton and Laura!)
6) The Ballad of Joe Hardy (during a happy event, flashbacks to Joe's life)

What do you all think? Is there anything else I should add to it? In Word, at 12 pt font, the compilation would be about 124 pages... I don't know what it'll end up being in book format.

--Rokia

[JD]

I think I'd go with Love Comes Softly.  

[alaina]

I like Love Comes Softly.  It seems very appropriate given the story descriptions.

[Rokia]

Cool beans .

Does the list of stories look okay for this compilation? I didn't want to get into anything too agnsty for this one...

[Purple]

I have some experience with Createspace, so am willing to offer help. I also know how to format ebooks and am willing to offer my expertise to do that and I know multiple ways to distribute for free.

Love Comes Softly os a wonderful title, but it's also the title of one of the most popular Christian romances of all time. It's set on the Canadian prairie in the late 1800s.

[Purple]

I'm going through and reading all the stuff about the Lola project. It's a great idea. I can offer some avenues most of you probably don't know about. I'm an indie author, which means I'm my own publisher. I'm also my own formatter and I enjoy doing it.

For something like this to keep any money from being involved, the best option is an ebook download through a service called InstaFreebie. I use it as an author and a reader. It's just that--free. For the creator too. It's fantastic! There's another one called BookFunnel, but it's not as good at the free level.

Files are uploaded, which I know how to do, and anyone who wants it gives InstaFreebie their email and they send you the file format you want. It can also be set as a private giveaway, which means only those with the direct link can access it.

There's no way to do Createspace without money changing hands, and there's a HUGE potential for running into copyright issues. They're owned by Amazon, and Amazon is unpredictable when it comes to copyright. They've been known to lock authors out of their accounts because they don't believe the published work is really the author's.

I really don't recommend doing fan fiction through Createspace. The potential for legal action from S&S is too great. Doing it in paperback that way is totally copyright infringement.

InstaFreebie doesn't have that potential issue. It'd be ebook only with no ISBN and no way for anyone to track it.

We'd also have to make sure each collection has a notice about it being fan fiction, who owns the original characters, and that no one is making money off this.

[Purple]

Also, on InstaFreebie, Love Comes Softly as the title wouldn't be an issue.

[JD]

Excellent points, Purple!  

[Purple]

Took a few minutes and read the threads on the old board about this, looking them up on my phone at work was too much work, lol. For paper copies, I recommend limiting those to just Lola's family. Because copyright and potential legal issues and also the IRS. Createspace reports all of that and whoever sets up the account is the tax history it gets attached to. Author copies tend to run in the $5-7 range. Author copies for my two paperbacks are almost $6. But there's also shipping, which is almost $4 for one book.

For anyone else who wants the collections, the InstaFreebie would be a great option. No money changing hands anywhere since it could be done on a free IF account. There are also significant differences in formatting for ebook versus paperback. I'm a whiz at the ebook, and can do Createspace too but it takes longer. An ebook takes me 30 minutes, whereas Createspace takes at least three hours.

[Rokia]

Yeah, the real purpose of this is to come up with one hard copy of each story compilation for Lola's dad - that would be the only hard copy that is created. Zen's been helping me some with it but she's not been around much lately - I think her health is down. Anyway, Lola's dad won't do anything computery/technology-y... so we gotta stick to hard copies.

I'm not going to get into e-books, even freebies - I don't want to deal with anything resembling copyright issues - running a fanfiction website is as far as I'm willing to go on that. If people want to get e-books of stories, they're welcome to go do it. (btw, if you have your stories on ff.net, you can turn them into e-books using fanfiction downloader and Calibre (I WILL grant - Calibre is a pain-in-the-hootie to use, but it does a good job once you finally conquer it. Also, I've never been able to get it to work with my Ipad...

Anyway, sorry -- just had to explain what we're doing and what I, at least, am willing to do -- what OTHERS do is up to them.

[Purple]

Alrighty. I can still help with formatting for a paper copy. Bit covers are out of my league! Zero skills there and I won't touch them.

[Rokia]

That would be very helpful Rachel -- I made an account but I haven't made it much further on CreateSpace .

Thanks mucho!

[Purple]

Just PM or email me. I've set up two books for sale in CreateSpace, and formatted two and a half 300+ page novels. I've got a lot of it figured out already.