Kindle Fire, Burning Bright!

I return from the eventfulness of the holiday season with a great deal of excitement for a very good reason. I have been blessed with an extremely generous family, both in love and in things more material. The case in point is my combination birthday/Christmas gift of a brand-new, sparkling Kindle Fire. I am so thrilled not only by the incredible features on this piece of machinery (oh, Words with Friends, how addictive you are!), but also because I now feel equipped to finally venture out into that strange world of self-publishing in the digital world.

I have been reading a lot about ebooks and epublishing in these last few months, and I know I have a lot more to read and a lot more investigating and looking around, but I’m definitely eager to embark on this new journey. I intend to use these next few weeks to gather up a bunch of my short stories, edit them up, and put them together in a collection to send out as my first digital offering. A grouping of some of my favorite tales to put up for sale at a low price to hopefully get people interested and to maybe line my pockets with a few extra bucks if I’m lucky. And just as exciting as trying to get my own work out there and ready to download for an ereader is the fact that I can now download some of these things for myself. I have been following many authors who have inspired me to make this step, and I can’t wait to get the chance to download their books and start reading. Thank you so much to everyone blogging about this topic and opening the doors up for a reluctant technophobic such as myself.

I know I have a lot to learn and a lot to do, and I plan to buckle down as soon as I get back into the post-holiday grove of things to figure things out. So let me open up the platform to everyone else with a few requests:

1. I know there are a few authors and blogs I’ve been following that explore this topic, but the Internet is certainly a vast machine full of knowledge. Do you have any links or blogs to share that you have found particularly helpful regarding epublishing? I’d love to read them! Also, if you have any thoughts on preferences for uploads, the technicalities of creating a document for upload, etc, etc, etc, that you’d like to share, please do!

2. As far as reading goes, I know I’ve been itching to get at a few of the books my fellow bloggers have put out there (Kait Nolan’s Red, Lauralynn Elliot’s Haunted Lake, and Catherine Ryan Howard’s Results Not Typical are at the top of my list right now!), but I know I’ve missed an awful lot, too. Who has some suggestions for some of their favorite ereader downloads? Who has books that they’ve got available that I definitely want to check out? There’s so much to choose from that I’d love some guidance on where to start!

3. As these next few weeks wind down, would anyone be interested in taking a look at the collection of short stories for a beta read? I’m not sure how many stories I’ll have collected, but I do know I’d like some second opinions before I send anything out. The help would definitely be appreciated!

With that done, I’m off to try to catch up on a few more books before the end of the year for the 100 books project and to go back to editing, editing, editing! I hope you all had an incredibly grand holiday and that the New Year arrives with as much excitement and promise as it has in store for me!