Merry Christmas and Happy Stories in the New Year!

Posted on 12/24/2016 by Shurik the Creator under Greetings

Dear Amazing Readers and Supporters,

I hope you are enjoying the preparations for celebrating Christmas and New Year. I also hope that the year 2016 was a very productive and successful one. It was so for me and my writing and book-publishing progress, an achievement that became possible due to your kind support, valuable contribution, constructive feedback, and, of course, appreciation of my works. And here I would like to express my gratitude to you for all this!

In 2016 my science-fiction novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” reached many more of Amazing Readers in different parts of the world. The books travelled to different places in my home country Moldova, then to Ukraine, Hungary, and even Myanmar. You can see it on the Pinterest page of “The Monster”. Moreover, as part of the serendii stand in the project StadtLesen, the English version of “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” made a tour around Austria and Germany, where it was exhibited in specially arranged public spaces for anyone to read it. For this I thank its publisher, serendii, and my Austrian friend and writer, Wolfgang Stricker.

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Also in 2016 a very important achievement happened: the “family” of linguistic diversity of the books “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” was enriched by one more language: Ukrainian. So, nowadays you can find the novel available for reading worldwide in three languages: Russian (original), English, and Ukrainian. This was achieved due to significant contributions of the three Amazing Readers from Ukraine, who are now co-authors of the Ukrainian version of “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”: Aleksandra Polivanaya, Alexandra Pakhurina, and Lada Merkulova. So, thank you for that, dear Ladies and friends!

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Finally, the year 2016 saw quite good progress in writing my current science-fiction romantic novel “Simply Love”, the prequel to “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”. I managed to write ten more chapters of its second draft version. In 2017 you can expect me to finish the final draft in Russian, proof-read it, and translate it into English. And, who knows, maybe you will see “Simply Love” already published by the end of 2017.

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All in all, 2016 was a very good year for me as a writer largely due to your interest in my works, support offered to me, your feedback shared with me, and, of course, your belief in me and the messages I share with the world through my books. Thank you very much, dear Amazing Readers and Supporters!

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy continuation of writing your wonderful life stories in the New Year!

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With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

How to Publish a Book in the Digital Age: Part II

Posted on 04/08/2015 by Shurik the Creator under Lessons

Dear Amazing People,

Some time ago I started the series of blog posts entitled “How to Publish a Book in the Digital Age” with the lessons about book writing and publishing during my experience with the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”. In the first part of it I described how sharing of a dream of publishing a book through on-line channels and off-line social interaction might bring you valuable contacts and community to make this dream come true. And now I would like to continue with the next lesson on how you can capitalize on these contacts and community to test your dream of a book and bring you the necessary resources through a crowdsourcing and crowdfunding campaign.

Lesson #2: Get Support through Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding!

Publishing a book is hard work that requires a number of different skills. Besides being the writer, you should also be able to proof-read it carefully, prepare good-looking illustrations, design the cover, develop an attractive and user-friendly website for it, make a promotional video, etc. Of course, if you have money, you can order all this as services delivered to you by professional companies. But if not? What if you do not have sufficient financial resources to pay for such services?

A lesson that I had learnt during working on the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” is that you might be the author of the book, but it does not mean you should be its sole creator. There are many people out there, who would love either to contribute to such a wonderful dream or to show their own talents and apply their creative skills in practice. Involve them by sharing the ownership of the final result. For example, in the case of the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”, it was translated, proof-read, and supplied with good-looking illustrations by a number of amazing supporters of my dream. In exchange I mentioned their names in the Gratitude Letter in the book and on the website and gave them their copies of the book for them to see the result of their talents and efforts and show it to their friends. The same thing I have done with supporters, who donated their financial resources through a crowdfunding campaign.

Crowdfunding is a practice of raising micro-investments from a large community of people for realizing a certain project. These micro-investments can range from one euro to thousands of euros, but when collected from a large number of supportive people, the end sum can be quite significant. But getting financial resources is not the only advantage of crowdfunding. It can also be a test for your idea in terms of whether the readers would be willing to read it. By presenting your book-publishing idea in a crowdfunding campaign and inviting people to “pre-order” your future book, you can see how many will be willing to really do it. It is sort of a market test of your dream. However, do not be discouraged if there are no supporters and financial resources. The issue might be not in your idea of the book, but in how you present it. To be successful, the crowdfunding campaign requires professionally looking video, good-quality images of your creation, and convincing description of your dream. You can do all these things by yourself, but once again I suggest you to request support from your friends and colleagues, like I did with the video for my crowdfunding campaign.

When the video, images, and text are ready, you can upload them to a crowdfunding platform. The most well-known and successful ones are Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but you can find the one focused specifically on your country and your target audience. Through some of them, like Indiegogo, you can receive the majority of the funds raised even through your campaign did not reach its monetary goal. For instance, my campaign for publishing the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” did not achieve its goal, but it still brought me first readers and financial resources enough to get the first 300 copies of the Russian version released and distributed. Nevertheless, I still recommend you to be modest and not to set too high and overoptimistic crowdfunding goals.

These are the main lessons about crowdsourcing and crowdfunding for making the book dream come true I have learnt. If you have more questions about this topic, you can always write to me by using the Contact section of this website. And in the next article I will describe how to organize that very important and memorable thing for every author – the book launch event.

Best wishes in getting valuable support for your dream!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

Note: This is a repost of the article on serendii publishing website.

Happy International Poetry Day!

Posted on 03/21/2015 by Shurik the Creator under Greetings

Dear Amazing People,

Today is the World Poetry Day. So, on this occasion I wish you to never forget about that young and perhaps shy poet / poetess hiding within you, and from time to time to let him / her out to amaze and inspire the world with the power of a poem! And I also wish that inspiration finds you a wonderful person to spend time with, and that it carries you through your life on its large beautiful wings!

Obviously, on the World Poetry Day people share poems with each other. So, as a gift to you please allow me to share the poem “I Love You!” that was written some time ago and was hidden in my personal poetry journal until today, when it has been brought before your eyes. I hope that you like it and that you find your own tender feelings described in it. And I also hope that one day (maybe today?) you will share your own poem(-s) with the world, or at least with me. I am looking forward to that!

Now enjoy the day and the flight on the wings of inspiration!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

How to Publish a Book in the Digital Age: Part I

Posted on 03/04/2015 by Shurik the Creator under Lessons

Dear Amazing People,

Have you ever thought of writing and publishing your own book?

Would you like to experience that unique moment when you see people around you reading your book and getting excited and inspired from it?

I know that at least some of you would reply to these questions with a definite “Yes!”, as there are people among you, who were inspired by the release of the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”. This fact makes me feel very happy, as I would love to read your literary works one day. And especially for such amazing people like you I decided to share some tips on how to write and publish a book in the modern digital age. Perhaps they will help you make your dream of publishing a book come true, as it has happened with me and my novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”.

Nowadays the process of writing and publishing a book is undoubtedly different than it was just some years ago. I cannot say whether it is more difficult or easy, as some stages of the process can be done easily due to modern internet technologies, while others are more challenging to execute. The challenges are related mostly to the fact that, from one side not many people read books nowadays, and from the other side the competition on the international book market is quite big with new titles appearing every month worldwide.

Well, to make things clear, I will not be able to give advice on solving all the challenges that you might face on your journey towards a released book. I will just share with you some lessons I had learnt while working on the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”. And I will do it step by step throughout a series of blog posts. So, here is the first one.

Lesson #1: Share Your Dream!

This is the lesson I had learnt only when I came to writing the final chapter of my novel. And I am certain that if I hadn’t learnt it and hadn’t acted accordingly, there would be no book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” being sold in on-line bookstores worldwide. Because it was due to me talking about my dream and sharing the idea of releasing a book that I’d got connected to Wolfgang Stricker, the founder of serendii publishing, and who kindly agreed to publish and distribute the English version of the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”. Also revealing my desire and intention to write and release this book with my dear amazing friends allowed me to gather a community of supporters, who then helped me collect the necessary financial resources through a crowdfunding campaign. I will write about this campaign in the next blog post of the series “How to Publish a Book in the Digital Age”.

For now my piece of advice to you is:

Whether you are just thinking about a book, have started writing one, or already finishing its concluding chapter, do share about it with your friends and relatives. Spread the word about your dream. The digital age offers a multitude of tools to do it, like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. Write about your vision of your own book on your personal blog. For example, in the blog post “Wish You MEGA Great Love!” I mentioned about my upcoming work “Simply Love”, although it is still far from being completed. Join special reading communities, like Goodreads, Book Blogs, etc. Let people know what you are doing and what you want to offer to them in the end. There will likely be a large number of people who will laugh at you and will try to discourage you from pursuing your dream. But there will definitely be some, who will appreciate your dream and will try to help you. Invite them to do it. And for their help you can (and should, I would say) mention them in a special gratitude message in the book and/or on its website, like I did in the case of “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”. Ultimately these amazing people will also become your most devoted readers and promoters.

This is it for now. I hope you have found something useful for you in this short article. In the next one I will share with you how to get initial funds and first readers for your book through a crowdfunding campaign.

Best wishes in moving forward with your dream!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

Note: This is a repost of the article on serendii publishing website.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Posted on 12/25/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Greetings

Dear Amazing Supporters and Readers,

Firstly, allow me to express my gratitude for your support and appreciation of my first large novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” and for sharing this dream with me. I am happy and honored that this dream is in your hands and you enjoy it! This means a lot to me!

And secondly, I wish you a MEGA Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year! May all your dreams also come true next year, like it happened to me this year! And I wish you to experience inspiration, success, and love each day!

See you in 2015!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

The Story of How Let’s Do It World! Heroes Contributed to the Dream

Posted on 10/04/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

I continue to reveal the story of writing my largest novel so far, “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”, bits by bits. And this time I would like to describe you how the global movement for a clean planet Let’s Do It World! (LDIW), where I had been a volunteer and researcher behind the Waste Explorer project, contributed to the publishing of this book.

You already know that the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”” has been created through crowdsourcing and crowdfunding support, and now it is available in Russian and English and in hardcover and e-book formats in more than 20 countries of the world. What you probably do not know yet is that the book was indirectly and directly created by a number of awesome people, who I like to call the LDIW Heroes.

The indirect contribution of LDIW to making this literary dream come true is represented by the “community action experiment” applied to the publishing of the book. During its preparation I joined efforts with other people to make it happen, just like the community of this movement helps to organize national cleanups in different countries.

The direct contribution is represented by the fact that the actual LDIW members together with me took part in transforming the dream about the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” into reality. The talented artist Kärt Viljalo made a number of wonderful illustrations that you can now see in the book and in the on-line gallery. The generous Toomas Trapido supported the publishing of the book through its Indiegogo crowdfunding page. And supportive Kristiina Kerge and Kadi Kenk helped in sharing the page and spreading the word about this literary dream. Their names can now be found in the Gratitude Letter in all “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” books, as well as on the official website of the novel.

All in all, due to the LDIW global network and my participation in it I have found all these talented, amazing, and extraordinary people. And together with other contributors we have succeeded in bringing the science fiction adventure novel about the interrelations between Human and Nature entitled “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” to the readers worldwide. And for that I am enormously grateful to LDIW and its heroes!

This piece of the novel writing story has been featured in the LDIW Newsletter #44 under the title “A book inspired by Let’s Do It! World heroes published”. Thank you, Kadi Kenk, for writing and sharing it!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

Your Translation, Your Book, Your Success

Posted on 08/24/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Updates

Dear Amazing People,

My novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” continues to penetrate into different corners of the world. It is now being sold in Australia, China, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Sweden, the UK, the US, and other countries. With such a large international distribution I have started receiving requests on having the book available in other languages besides Russian (original) and English. Most of the people, who request that, ask for the novel in Romanian, but there are also questions about German, French, Polish, etc. coming in. So, I suppose, it is time to start making such thing happen… in a traditional for my novel way.

In designing and publishing the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” I had been using crowdsourced support practically right from the start. The Russian text of the novel was reviewed by my former teacher in Russian language and literature Violina Mihalevskaia; it was then translated into English by my friend from Sweden Erika Rydergard and reviewed by my US friend from Peace Corps Barbara Jue; illustrations for both versions of the book were provided by my Ukrainian and Estonian friends Catherine Starostenko and Kärt Viljalo; and the English book was published and is now distributed by the founder of serendii publishing Wolfgang Stricker. Names of all these wonderful people can now be seen in the book and its official website.

Thus, I have decided once again to call upon the support of amazing people to contribute to making the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” even more accessible to the world.

So, if you know any other language besides Russian and/or English, and would like to contribute to the translation of the book into this language, I will be more than happy to collaborate with you. As a result of your efforts you will see how the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” translated by you and with your name in it goes global, how your friends and people around you read it with enthusiasm, and how they appreciate your work. Certainly we can agree upon your share in the revenue generated by the books sold. Just write me by using the Contact section of this website for us to start the discussion.

Like the American writer Helen Keller once put it:

“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much”.

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

The Historical Day for “The Monster”

Posted on 08/13/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Presentations

Dear Amazing People,

It has happened. The truly historical day for my novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” took place on the 9^th of August, 2014 at the Dendrarium Park in Chisinau, Moldova. It was the day, when I publicly presented the novel at the event “The Monster” and Dreams that Come True.

The whole event was organized in an informal setting in nature`s lap. The reason for that was that the main topic of the novel is related to the nature and environment protection, so I desired the setting of the novel presentation to be correlated with its essence. Besides that, at the first presentation I wanted to see mostly my amazing friends and people, who supported me in publishing the book “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”.

Overall, in my opinion, the book presentation event was quite successful. I managed to meet dear friends and colleagues, discuss the latest updates in our lives with them, present the story of writing and publishing “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”, express my gratitude and give the books to the contributors and supporters of this dream that came true, as well as sell a number of Russian versions of the novel with my autograph in them. The only drawback at the event was that I had not been used to be in the center of attention “under the spotlights”, so I was rather shy in telling the audience about my book. In fact, I tried to “redirect the spotlight” to the potential readers, as they were the true heroes of that event, in my view. It was they who had believed in me, supported me, contributed to making this dream come true, and now are spreading the word about my novel. For all that I am immensely grateful to each one of them.

“The Monster” and Dreams that Come True was the first novel presentation event, but will surely not be the last one. As “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” is expanding its presence on the global book market, there will be more book presentation and signing events. There you will be able to get the books in English, Russian and most probably other languages with my autograph, postcards with illustrations from the book, and other interesting things related to the novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness”.

So, stay tuned for more news from my side! And I am looking forward to see you at one of the future events dedicated to the dream that came true due to your support and appreciation!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander

Launch of the Website

Posted on 05/09/2014 by Shurik the Creator under Uncategorized, Updates

Dear Amazing People,

Today, on the 9th of May, 2014, I launch the website dedicated generally to my trilogy “The Monster” and specifically to the first novel here – “The Monster: Blade of Darkness“.

On the website, you will find the information about the trilogy as a whole, the gallery of illustrations for the novels, brief information about me as the author, the list of all the awesome people worldwide, who contributed to this literary dream so far, and contact information for you to reach me at any time.

The novel “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” is still in process of being translated and published. At the day of writing this update the final chapter is being translated and the whole novel is being reviewed by potential publishers. The website will serve to give you updates about the progress further on and inform you where and when the book presentation event will take place. You can subscribe to the updates by using the “Follow via E-mail” button below.

You can also join the list of supporters and contributors to the publishing of “The Monster: Blade of Darkness” by donating any sum you would like or sharing this website among your contacts:

Thank you for being with me at this special day and for staying together with me along the whole journey of making my literary dream come true!

With great respect and gratitude,

Alexander