{"id":11612,"date":"2018-10-08T17:42:59","date_gmt":"2018-10-08T06:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=11612"},"modified":"2018-12-21T16:05:13","modified_gmt":"2018-12-21T05:05:13","slug":"winter-tales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/?p=11612","title":{"rendered":"Winter Tales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Presently I’m waiting for a number of my translated stories to come out. Progress in the publishing of even one short story can be truly glacial, so I was surprised at the result of my experiment last week with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP); in just a few days a book (or rather novella) I had translated years ago, and had unsuccessfully proposed to many publishers, had become a published e-book. Reading other literary translators’ reports of positive experiences with self-publishing convinced me to give it a go.<\/p>\n

The novella that I think is worth the risk is Winter Tales<\/em><\/a> by the French author Eug\u00e8ne-Melchior de Vog\u00fc\u00e9, a small collection extracted from a larger book of stories, C\u0153urs russes<\/em> (Russian Hearts)<\/em>. If you’re a lover of Russian novelists like Turgenev and Dostoevsky, then you’ll enjoy these 19th-century tales set in Russia. This is the first English translation in 123 years.<\/p>\n

\"Winter<\/p>\n

Winter Tales<\/em> is a little like a Russian doll: there’s one main story with several smaller stories tucked inside. The narrator visits a former serf owner who tells of the ups and downs in the lives of individual peasants struggling to live freely after serfdom is abolished.<\/p>\n

Various publishers and one agent had said they liked it, but didn’t think it would be profitable enough to publish. The stories are old, a wee bit quirky, and one is quite grim. But I feel the novella hasn’t been totally rejected, and so to fill in time while I wait for my work to appear in traditional journals and books, I’ve learnt the ropes of KDP. And now it’s out there. I published it a few days later again with Kobo<\/a>. Self-publishing is free with both KDP and Kobo.<\/p>\n

The experience on these platforms was not too draining. I began on Wednesday and by Saturday night Winter Tales<\/em> was there on the Amazon web site, and then I repeated the process on Kobo. For Kindle I simply had to upload my story prepared with Word, format it into a book with their user-friendly styling buttons, have fun making a cover, give Amazon some account details, and press ‘Publish’. Kobo didn’t have the cover-making facility so I re-used the one from KDP.<\/p>\n

There’s a feast of images on Creative Commons that suited my theme of a Russian winter, and when choosing a 19th-century painting I was like a girl in a French chocolaterie<\/em>. At last I settled on the cover image you see above because of the vast sky where I could put the title and the snowy ground for the author’s name. Not to mention the peasants and ox cart in winter, a scene that could have come from one of Vog\u00fc\u00e9’s stories.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Eug\u00e8ne-Melchior de Vog\u00fc\u00e9<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You can read a Kindle preview here<\/a>. The preview is not as bookish as the actual e-book, but the words are the same.<\/p>\n

May I encourage you to leave a review on Amazon or on my blog if you read Winter Tales<\/em>?<\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Presently I’m waiting for a number of my translated stories to come out. Progress in the publishing of even one short story can be truly glacial, so I was surprised at the result of my experiment last week with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP); in just a few days a book (or rather novella) I … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Winter Tales”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1308,157],"tags":[241,1356,1355,844,156,1353,1361,1362,716,2,1357,1351,1352,501,3,1354,270],"class_list":["post-11612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-french-literature-and-translation","tag-19th-century-literature","tag-aivazovsky","tag-coeurs-russes","tag-eugene-melchior-de-vogue","tag-french-literature","tag-kindle-direct-publishing","tag-kobo-self-publishing","tag-kobo-writing-life","tag-literary-translation","tag-literature","tag-little-russian-ox-cart-in-winter","tag-publishing","tag-self-publishing","tag-short-stories","tag-translation","tag-winter-tales","tag-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11612"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12069,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612\/revisions\/12069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/soundslikewish.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}