Just letting you know that I’ve got a couple of new books in the making. Continue reading →
Category Archives: Books
KDP – How to self publish your book
In the past few years, I’ve managed to write and publish four books. Three of them are in English while only one is in Dutch. But, writing a book is just one of the many steps between the idea and the book being bought and read by someone.
As I live in Sweden, and none of my books are in Swedish, I presume my readers are most likely be found abroad in Europe and the US. Reaching out to established publishing companies abroad to persuade them to publish my books seemed like a stretch for a newbie writer, so I did not pursue this avenue. Of course, it would be easy to have my books printed locally and then sell each copy myself, but that would require a considerable investment in printing. And I’d have to go door to door to sell them, which is not my thing. Thus the idea of self-publishing them came up. Continue reading →
The slippery slope of AI in books
‘What, AI in books!’ you may say. Indeed, with generative AI you can ask your AI application to write a text, given a set of parameters such as number of words, subject, genre, and much more.
When I recently was editing the blurbs of my books on KDP, the publishing platform for the Amazon book store, I was asked this question:
Of course, my answer was a solid No as I do not engage any AI form in writing my books for me. Or do I? Continue reading →
Writing and hobbies
One of the many perks of writing is that you get to incorporate things you fancy in your stories. After all, as a writer, you own the story! I regularly make use of that perk. Readers who know me will recognize these details, while others take them for regular book content.
One of the things that always has had my interest, apart from reading, are cars, motorcycles, and sailing. So I eagerly jump to every opportunity to put in my favorite cars or incorporate cars or sailing in my stories.
Nuremberg:
When I was working on my first book Nuremberg in 2021, I could not resist using a 2CV as a means of transport in the center of Amsterdam in the 80ies. Even if the make and model are never mentioned in my book, when reading the attached text snippets you’ll probably agree the car cannot be anything other than a 2CV. Continue reading →
Paperback weekend!
This weekend I’ll be publishing all my four books on amazon in paperback format. Until now, I had my ebooks on amazon (Kindle) and my paperbacks on bravenewbooks.nl. This last webshop turned out to be quite expensive for readers outside of the Netherlands, myself included, that had to face excessive shipping costs up to €25. With amazon, I hope y’all at least get better shipping costs as the books can be printed on demand more locally. Continue reading →
Mijn boek ‘De Grote Dag’ in het Nederlands
Inderdaad, sinds vandaag, de 6e mei 2023 is mijn short story ‘The Big Day’ nu ook in het Nederlands beschibaar onder det titel ‘De Grote Dag’. Eindelijk!
Audiobook – Follow-up
A short message this time. This is a follow-up to my previous post on creating an audiobook with an AI voice. You can read that post here.
While all the techy bits were sorted when I posted that article, there was still quite some administration and distribution going on after I posted. Today it was pointed out to me that my audiobook ‘The Big Day‘ is now available for listening on several websites specializing in Audiobooks. Here are a few of the webshops: Continue reading →
The Art of Translation
My all time favorite SF-writer is Jack Vance who died at May 13th 2013 at the age of 96. He wasn’t a follower of the hard science fiction category, there are far more qualified writers for this genre like Larry Niven with his fabulous novel Ringworld, full of hard core science.
In fact Niven had to write a sequel to Ringworld because he wanted to correct a rather stupid technical error in the original story. One which was pointed him out by MIT students. Continue reading →
Translation, human or AI?
As the idea came up to translate one of my books from the English language it was written in, to what is supposed to be my native tongue: Dutch, I decided to have a go at this challenge. To be fair, it wasn’t really a formal challenge, more like a curiosity of mine if I could do it or not. After all, with all the AI presence online, why would one be as mad as to undertake such a laborious task manually Have I gone mad? Continue reading →
AI? For an audiobook? Are you mad?
Well, that remains to be seen. The question is if I can publish an audiobook using AI?
Good question, I’ve written a few books, and published them both in paperback and ebook format, but never given the idea of publishing them as audiobooks much thought. While I’ve always been an avid reader of printed books and more recently also of ebooks, audiobooks never really became my thing. I tried one of them once a long time ago but never managed to finish it. Mind you, that was in the age when CD’s had just become fashionable. Continue reading →
The Deep – Paperback and Ebook!
My latest book, ‘The Deep‘, was already out in paperback format. Since today, it is also possible to read it as Ebook on your Kindle ebook device.
The Nord Stream blowout
Nordstream:
As was reported yesterday on international news, and perhaps even more in detail out here in Scandinavia, there seems to be some serious trouble with both Nord Stream pipelines since yesterday. Both seem to be showing all the signs of massive leaking. While Nord Stream 2 was not yet deployed, even that has been blowing bubbles since yesterday. Continue reading →
My new book, The Deep, is out!
Since today, my new book ‘The Deep – An ecological thriller’ is out in the paperback format. An Ebook may follow shortly.
Here’s the cover: Continue reading →
Pricing issues
As much as I like helping others, giving away my books for free makes no sense to me. As it turned out, at bol.com I virtually did just that.
Due to the excessive amount that bol.com takes off my profit, I was giving away each book at €0.60 per copy, which is a steal on their behalf as I see it. As a result of this, I decided to no longer sell my paperbacks via bol.com but only at bravenewbooks.nl. Obviously, sales of ebooks and pocketbooks continue via amazon.com and bravenewbooks.nl (Nuremberg, The Big Day, The Deep, and De Grote Dag).
That said, I am reconsidering the pricing for my ebooks. I’ll keep y’all posted.
Paul
2022-09
Click here for all essays on books and writing this site
The Big Day – A deadline thriller
Published today (10th of June, 2022) my new book: