Final blog from reflection and comments

For my FMP I have decided to write a book. The theme of the book is that it is a short story book with the story themed being Horror/thriller. Along with the stories all relating to car journeys or road journeys. Throughout my project, I would say my main five strengths were: Coming up with the road journey story ideas because it became easier when I had a themed it was easier to come up with some ideas for my stories. Coming up with sketches of the book cover, I had an image I wanted to be the main focus for the cover so what I needed was to build something around it. Research - For the self-publishing, I was able to find different links about self-publishing and also find a group with other people who want or who are self-published authors and that meant being able to ask questions and getting a response from actual people. Knowing who my audiences our - I had and knew who I was aiming my book towards and even had an Idea of where and when would be best to read the book. I would say keeping up with my deadline, at this point everything else that's left to do can all be done before my FMP deadline date (10th May) So I would that keeping up with my deadlines is a strength. My five weaknesses are: Photoshop drawing - In my mind outlining the car I wanted should have been easy but once I started it I found out it was a lot harder to do then what I realised it also needed more detail and the colouring it didn't look right, it just wasn't going to plan. First started coming up with story ideas - Without a theme, it was difficult to come up with the story idea, form this I learned that having a theme for the stories helps a lot to come up with story ideas. Cover (being more prepared) - Again with the covers, both had something that I needed help with but had trouble finding information or a video link to help with my idea. So in future, if I have a book cover idea, look for a link that has what I want instead of starting it and hoping to find a link that has what I need. Question - I still feel like I need to improve when writing out a question and to make it more understanding. InDesign - Even though I have used it before of my other FMP's, it still Adobe that I need more improvement on.

The main idea was to write a short story book and to self-publish it. Why I decided to do a short story is because I thought it would be a good start with a short story book than a novel and save the novel for when I decided to self-publish and to also get money out of it. The main reason was for my future. I know there are little chances of getting publish and even getting into university, so I thought why not just self-publish and why not start now where I have teachers to help and give me advise and opinion, so that in the future when I self-publish a proper novel, I'll know what to do.

My inspiration was from Amazon self-publishing with the stories of others who self-publishes and doing well. This one women Rachel Abbott, who unlike the rest actual wrote about how at the beginning she was selling a few copies a day or a week and maybe eight at Christmas, unlike the rest who went straight in and told about their success, she spoke that at the beginning it was doing ok and then how it went up and became more popular, and that's what I liked about her it showed that with time it will slowly become a success and not getting peoples hopes up in thinking they'll become a success quickly.

Another author is Amanda Hocking, a woman who made a million dollars from self-publishing her book. This shows that you can be a success with self-publishing and might even get picked up by publishers.

Like I said the plan was to self-publish, which I was all for, I had signed up to Amazon self-publishing, I also sign up to another self-publishing website (With this I could get actual printed copies) and looked link on how to make a success on Self-publishing. But then I started looking up to see which is better traditional or self and doing this did begin to change my views and gave traditional another thought.

Another experiment I did was with the book cover. I found sketching them easy, but designing them was another subject. It was harder to do then I thought, and it ended with me creating two more, leaving me to create four book cover. So for me, it showed that I should try to do something more straightforward in the future. The similar type of media I'll be comparing is my book covers.

This is the closest cover I could find. Similar's are the road with trees on each side of the road. Both are using dark colours with some light. Differences are the stories and the book type. Mines a short story, with road journey story themed, whereas The road is a novel set around the post-apocalyptic with the main character of a father and his young son on their journey. Also on the cover, I have a person (motion blur) standing on my cover whereas The road is just that, A road, with the tree,'s on either side. I feel like even those it goes with the title that maybe they could add the back of the father and son to show them walking along the road as that is part of the story. One of the key areas of development was the stories. Starting with a theme, leading with titles along with keywords and short sentences, to the writing all out, next proofreading and grammar checking. Another is the book covers. I think this was a good development because it started with two sketches, then moving to photoshop, to a new design and back to photoshop to another photoshop cover a finished cover. I think that because there were a few challenges in designing the cover, which lead to new sketches and a new cover it was quite a development from what I thought would be easy, turned into more of a challenge, but I've come through and created my book cover even if it wasn't what I originally thought it would be it still looks good, and to me that shows quite of a development.
The first time I showed my book cover to my mum 

The first time I showed this book cover to my mum, she thought that it was ok, but it could have done with maybe the front of a car. That did make me feel a bit sad since I liked this one.

Nick, he said that I could do better and that the red line is the white line in the middle of the road didn't look like that because it's close to that one line. Again a bit sad, but he did show me design similar to what I wanted then left me to create a new one. On my survey most liked my cover, the only comments had both fonts the same and others like the glow effect.

I think that development could be trying to see if I could sale one, this would show if it's looks and sound good that someone might be interested in buying it. 

Final Book cover

   

Now when I showed this cover to my mum, she liked this one. She said it's more eye-catching, she like the shadow effect on the title and she also like the van that's hidden away in the background. She also gave some opinions like the colour of my name, it was red, but she suggested trying black to help bring my name out. I also created a survey with book covers to see which would read/pick up to look at and so the three people picked out this one, which shows that even though people did like the old, they would all choose this one over the past cover. This did make me feel happy knowing that I created an even better cover than before, that people like a lot more and not making much comment about it.
With the book in hand, It looks great, thin and light but a good size book. There were a few things that could have used improving which was how high the writing was when a continuing sentence was on the next page it was quite close to the edge. Now I didn't have a problem with it, but my mum on the other hand did and has now made me question whether it does look ok. So that's mixed reviews. Another which is what I pointed out is that on the cover you can see part of the white line from the spine which does annoy me a bit but it's not a big issue. As for improvements, I think that maybe I could have done better with the stories. What I could have done was try a little harder at writing the last two stories or replaced them with different stories so that I could have accomplished the six short stories liked I had the plan. So that's one improvement I could have done. I think for the cover what I would have like to have improved on was the road. In the road you can see some smoke effect, what I wanted to do was create a mist along the road, but the closes were the smoke, and even then I think it could have looked a bit better, but I'm happy with the way it came out. On the first part of my statement of intent, I talked about creating a separate blog for self-publishing, and what you need to do, that was something that I created an opening but never really started. With writing the stories, creating the book covers and writing out blogs for the brief, I didn't get time, so that was something that I ended up not doing.

I did use my FMP schedule I had created. As I was getting closer to the end, I started to add empty blog links to each section needed, That way I didn't have to go to blogger and create and link each time. This way I could go straight to my schedule and press the link and get started. Another good thing was that using a schedule; I could colour code it and also add little notes which helps me know what it is that needs finishing on the blog that is orange. Green = Finished, Orange = Midway , Red = Not done

For the audiences I would say I have achieved my target, I think teens and adults who are into horror/thriller would read this book. For added resources, I did write down that I might need a graphics tablet, but at the end, I didn't use one. And last were the questionnaires. I think I did achieve on most of the surveys I asked, On the ones I didn't active was because the people or company didn't get back in contact with me or answered my questions. When I did the pitch, I found that it wasn't so bad. I think it was because instead of standing up and presenting I got to sit down and was able to present it in a more calming way and didn't feel as nervous as I would have if it were the other way round. I think it went better because it felt more like a chat then a presentation, I didn't need to feel worried and I felt like I could say everything I needed to say because I wasn't as nervous whereas if I were standing I think I would have left words out just to help speed it along. The feedback I got from Nick was that for the stories I need more than one deadline for all the stories, that I should get my target audience to read the stories and see what their feedback are, and what they might have wanted. I think next time I could have improved by doing more practising beforehand, that way I won't mumble some words when talking.