If I Had Known

If I had known then I would have been there for you, I would have held you to the end. I would have sung songs of sweet surrender until your soul was free again.

I would have made your days more sunny, I would have talked you through the rain. I would have been there to the end, my friend, had you just called my name.

I couldn’t know what you were feeling, you kept it all inside. If I had felt your desperation, I would have eased the pain.

You always wore a smile, no matter how heavy your heart had become, and I’ll always remember you happy because that it how I get by.

Now you are free and I hope you spirit soars, but I’d only wish I’d been there to hold you through it all.

This poem was originally published on Expertscolumn. You can read the original at: http://expertscolumn.com/content/poem-if-i-had-known

Poem: When I Am Gone

When I Am Gone

 When I am gone I’ll send you snowdrops, tulips, roses and daffodils too. The spring will always bloom even though I can’t be there with you.

 In the summer, I’ll send you clear blue skies and sunny days that will never end. I’ll be the bird that swoops down and calls your name then ascends to the heavens again.

 Come autumn, I’ll send you showers to wash away your pain and I’ll leave a blanket of leaves and acorns so when you walk along our path, you’ll know that that I have walked there with you.

 In the winter, I’ll send you snowstorms and dark and endless nights. I’ll send you wild winds and restless days till you are ready to be free again.

 The come the next spring time, once the last year has gone, you’ll learn to live again, my friend, once the seasons have all passed.

 A version of this poem was originally published on Expertscolumn. You can read the original by going to: http://expertscolumn.com/content/poem-when-i-am-gone

Amazon's Kindle Singles

I received an email on Friday afternoon from Amazon about Kindle Singles. Kindle Singles has been running in the US for awhile now and was introduced to the UK last year.

Kindle Singles has taken over from Amazon Shorts and gives writers a platform to publish their short stories, essays, news articles etc.

Kindle Singles can be written by new or established writers; Stephen King has made the headlines recently for publishing his gun essay on the singles format. Amazon states that Singles have to be 5,000 - 30,000 words long.

Any writer who wants to contribute has to submit their Kindle book to kindle-singles@amazon.com. If the work is yet to be published, the writers have to send a manuscript or pitch to the same email address.

Kindle Singles will go through a submission process first before being published and writers can expect to hear from Amazon within four weeks.

Books will be made available via Kindle Direct Publishing and will need to be priced at £0.99 - £1.99. More information is available here.

Writing for Expertscolumn

Late last year I joined a writing site called Expertscolumn. I wasn't very active on there to begin with but in the last few months I've made sure to write there every day.

They are honest and helpful, and have been about for a relatively long time. They offer payments via PayPal or Moneybookers and you can cash out once you've reached $5. From my experience, payments are done within a few days.

Unlike some other writing sites, articles on Expertscolumn are highly ranked on Google. I've found several of mine on the first page and this obviously helps with page views: You can read a couple of my articles by following these links:

http://expertscolumn.com/content/ways-promote-your-articles

http://expertscolumn.com/content/finding-ideas-write-about

If you would like to join you can either use my referral link which is:

http://expertscolumn.com/referral/65788e25

alternatively, you can just sign up directly at expertscolumn.com

E.L. James: An inspiration for self-published writers?

I'm not saying that every aspiring writer should try and be the next E.L. James but her success is to be admired. I don't imagine even E.L, James herself ever expected this level for success for her Shades of Grey series and it's the same for every writer:  No one knows what will happen once they publish their work.

When I looked on Amazon earlier, I noticed that the books were getting mixed reviews; some said that the books weren't that well written but they are still a runaway success.

Books don't have to be perfect in order to be a success and the fact that E.L. James is self-published should serve as an inspiration. You can read my article about E.L. James at:

http://expertscolumn.com/content/why-el-james-should-be-inspiration-self-published-writers

Harry Potter comes to Kindle Lending Library

 If your one of the handful of people who have yet to read the Harry Potter books, then you might like to download them from the Amazon Kindle Library once they become available on 19 June.

Hundreds of millions of J.K. Rowling's book were sold and they became the best selling series ever and Amazon has signed an exclusive license with J.K Rowling's Pottermore to make the books available via the lending library.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, said:

We’re absolutely delighted to have reached this agreement with Pottermore. This is the kind of significant investment in the Kindle ecosystem that we’ll continue to make on behalf of Kindle owners."

“Over a year, borrowing the Harry Potter books, plus a handful of additional titles, can alone be worth more than the $79 cost of Prime or a Kindle. The Kindle Owners’ Lending Library also has an innovative feature that’s of great benefit for popular titles like Harry Potter – unlimited supply of each title – you never get put on a waiting list.”

The Harry Potter books will join more than 145,000 other books already available free in the Amazon Kindle Lending Library

Jennifer Crystal Johnson gives tips about publishing on Kindle

A few days ago I wrote about Jennifer-Crystal Johnson's new book  co-written with N. Jones called If you're human don't open the door which has recently been published on Amazon's Kindle.

With Amazon announcing that Kindle books are now outselling physical books, and given that Kindle is a free and assessable resource that can be used by anyone wishing to self-publish their own work, I thought that some advice on publishing on Kindle would be useful to readers of this blog, I emailed Jennifer and asked if she had any advice for people considering publishing on Kindle. Here are a few tips from Jennifer on formatting for Kindle:

 "As far as having advice on self-publishing for the Kindle, I would say that the most important aspects of having a professional eBook out are editing and formatting. Word can be tricky to do formatting with because it adds so much unnecessary html into the document that it gets to be pretty confusing for the Kindle to display quickly; for example, if you have something in bold and then take the bold formatting off, the html will keep the tags in front of the word or phrase but it won't show up bold. I get pretty OCD with that kind of stuff because I went to college for website design, so looking at html and having it appear messy is a "thing" for me."

"Since the Kindle only has one font face, if I want to make a title appear in a specific font style, I save it as an image and then put that into the document as a title. You can do this with opening paragraph letters, too, although you cannot wrap text around images in the Kindle yet."

"For now, I'll say this: one of the best investments for formatting eBooks that I have ever made is buying an eBook by Joshua Tallent entitled Kindle Formatting: The Complete Guide. It outlines everything from reducing your file size to spacing, line indentation, inserting images, and the pixel aspect ratio of the Kindle screen so you can make the most of the images you include."

 And some tips from Jennifer on editing:

"Once you have the formatting down, the other aspect of self-publishing that is important is to have an editor; not just someone to proofread, but having someone who can help with technicalities as well as suggesting minor changes in sentence structure and word usage. You can often hire editors through freelance web sites like oDesk, a site that provides me with clients on a very regular basis. I write, edit, and work on other random projects in graphic design as well, so I work entirely from home and write fiction when I'm not preparing publications for authors signed under Broken Publications."

Finally, for any out there writing short stories or poetry, here is a chance to submit your work for two anthologies:

"Broken Publications is open for submissions for two anthologies: Soul Vomit, focusing on domestic violence, and the Apocalypse Project, featuring end-of-the-world stories of all kinds (zombies, disease, natural disasters, planetary collisions, you name it!). I'd like to invite people to submit their work for one or both of these projects =)."

You can find out more about Jennifer's work by visiting: http://www.jennifercrystaljohnson.com/index.html