I am simply stunned by what has happened for the last two days as a result of the gracious online review of Darkness Folding Inward, Light Emerging by the wry and astute financial analyst George Ure at Urban Survival. In the hours since his review went live, I have had both robust sales and a flood of requests for additional information.

Thank you to George for expressing an interest in my book, taking the time to read it, and then sharing his thoughts about it online. You are a star, George!

Now — allow me to change the topic a bit and give some credit to someone ELSE who has been an essential part of this whole process.

Yes — I did the hard slog as the writer, but I am ever so aware of how a visual impact plays into people’s decision-making process about what to buy. I don’t think that the books would be having this splendid success if those people who made purchases hadn’t (1) first been piqued with curiosity by George Ure’s charming and generous review and (2) were then pleased with the appearance of the cover art.

The credit for the cover design sits squarely on the shoulders of a talented man named Greg Calvert. I found a graphic for the cover of Darkness Folding Inward and he implemented it beautifully — and in the case of the striking cover for The Dreamkeeper Messages, he created the entire image from scratch.

Every aspect of the beautiful layout on the front and back cover, every page and header of the internal workings of the book, all of this is the diligent labour of Greg Calvert who has been my friend and editor for many years now.

And thank heavens for the connectivity of the Internet! Although I live in Australia and Greg lives in Colorado, the collaboration has succeeded beautifully because we can send the documents and the graphics and the endless revisions back and forth to one another via broadband connections instead of the post.

Again — thank you for your patience as I get to your individual emails. The ongoing positive thoughts from my readers worldwide are greatly appreciated!

The PRINT version of my brand new book — Darkness Folding Inward, Light Emerging — is now available for purchase at Lulu.com.

This book has taken longer than expected to write and produce due to the challenging nature of some of the psychic visions within it, but I am very proud to be able to announce that it is finally launched into the world.

If you would like to read a brief summary of the contents, just go to my primary website, Deborah Harmes, Ph.D. at deborahharmes.com and you will find the description.

My books are now printed at several locations around the world, so you are no longer charged for shipping from the USA if you happen to live in Great Britain, Europe, or Australia. The books are printed locally and shipped locally.

For those interested in an e-book version, I have made sure that all formats currently available are at the SMASHWORDS website.

Finally, for my readers around the world who have waited SO patiently for this book to be completed, I thank you for your ongoing love and support over the years. It is greatly appreciated!

You might wonder why we changed the cover art when the original lovely starry field and red nebula were quite stunning. Well, I felt that we HAD to change it because the image was from the NASA archives and could be used by other people.

I’ve had a particularly unpleasant situation to crop up lately over at Smashwords. They are lovely people to deal with and I have chatted with their CEO online several times. None of this was their fault at all — truly — none of it whatsoever.

Exactly one month from the time I published The Dreamkeeper Messages over there, some other writer created an exact duplicate of my cover and uploaded it with his own badly spelled, clearly unedited piece of ‘fiction’ with an almost identical name. In order that I don’t get sued, I will decline to name that person’s book or the writer.

Lovely friend and editor Greg noticed it first and when I lodged a formal complaint with the CEO of Smashwords last month, I was told that since the NASA image was in the public domain, I couldn’t do a darned thing even if that man DID ‘accidentally’ duplicate my cover. Perhaps it was just a ‘mistake’ by the other writer??? Aarrgghh!!!

So, the cover below (which is now on both Smashwords for the e-books AND at Lulu for the print version) is a completely original work of art which DOES HAVE a copyright! And Greg is responsible for creating this wonderful image that really captures what the Dreamkeeper looked like all of those years ago.

This kind of ‘borrowing’ of other people’s covers and other people’s book themes goes on ALL of the time in the writing and publishing world and it is one of the reasons why I don’t release the names of my books to the public until they are online, available, and have an ISBN attached to them with a copyright. The stories that I have read on writer’s forums would turn your hair white!!!

Interesting times we live in, eh?

The Dreamkeeper Messages in PRINT at LULU

When you order a copy of the book in print (and yes, they have finally fixed the broken link-up at Lulu and it is working just FINE now!), whether you order in the USA or Great Britain or Europe or Australia — the book will be printed locally to where you live and will be shipped at local mail rates, not overseas mail rates. I took a reduction in royalties to enable my readers around the world to not have to pay ridiculous overseas shipping rates.

Here is the Smashwords link.
The Dreamkeeper Messages in E-book at SMASHWORDS

Enjoy!

My NEW book, Darkness Folding Inward, Light Emerging is now live online at Smashwords and available for download in ALL e-book formats including Kindle.

Hooray!!!

This one is chock-full of psychic visions and contains some tantalising info on time travel in the past AND the present.

The print version should (fingers crossed!) be online at Lulu.com within a week or so.

Enjoy!

First of all, more and more of you seem to be specifically interested in e-books. But a question that I got several times in the last four days was WHY did I go with SMASHWORDS and not just use Amazon’s Kindle Reader upload program.

The Amazon program is probably lovely for rather a lot of writers — but ONLY if you happen to live in the USA and do your banking there!!! That’s more than a bit limiting.

Since I live in Australia and have no financial accounts in the USA, that precludes me from using the Amazon program unless I want to ‘redeem’ my Kindle-version e-book sales in a gift certificate to be SPENT at Amazon. Sorry, that’s a bit of a joke as far as I am concerned. I write to generate income — not gift certificates!

To be really honest, I think that Amazon is cutting themselves off from a vast source of additional income stream by NOT allowing anyone who lives and works overseas to contribute. They are perfectly happy to sell the print version of my books since the publisher sorts out payment to me, not Amazon. But how EASY it would be for Amazon to increase their e-sales by just paying their authors via PayPal which can be received in your own local currency anywhere in the world!

By using SMASHWORDS (which pays via PayPal), I can sell my book in an entire array of electronic versions including Kindle. You can download the book to read on your computer or via a Kindle or a Palm reader or even on your iPhone. And there are zippy-doo new versions coming out every day. My book is in SO many version at SMASHWORDS that you can find a version for any reader — not just Kindle. So that’s exactly why they were my first choice — because they offer my readers so many options.

Now, about my choice of LULU as an independent publisher, I own my own small publishing company – Paper Paradigm Press. If I could even FIND a printer in Australia that could do the work as required from my already proofed manuscript and cover art at a price that was comparable to American costs and not 2 or 3 times the cost, then I might consider that. But LULU offers the complete printing package once I do all of the hard work of writing and editing AND they offer an international distribution package so I don’t have to hire someone to fill the orders and run to the post office. That is a blessing and a time saver as far as I am concerned. And they make sure that my book is offered at everyone from Amazon and Barnes and Noble to the local bookstores who can order it by ISBN number. Again, I would have to hire a book distributor in this country — so working through LULU is an excellent option for me, they produce beautiful quality books, they are wonderfully reliable, and in the end I am essentially using them on behalf of my own publishing company as a printer and distributor.

The writing and publishing world has certainly changed and the Indie Press option is more and more viable as we see small publishing houses folding or being absorbed into larger ones and even the ‘big boys’ are cutting back due to the global financial downturn. So independent publishing no longer carries a ‘stigma’ and is considered quite viable and sensible, especially if the author does not wish to wait for an 18-24 month turnaround time from acceptance of manuscript to actual publication. Independent publishing isn’t exactly instantaneous because there are so many factors involved including truly thorough editing, cover art design, and sourcing ISBN barcodes and such, but it is lightning speed compared to the traditional publishers!

My next book will be out in a few weeks and it too will be published with SMASHWORDS for electronic formats and LULU for the print version.

Hope that helps answer a few of your queries.

And by he way, know that I am seriously giggling as I type this — I did NOT get compensated by Smashwords or Lulu for writing nice things about them!!!