Writers vs. Cats

I started reformatting Trust with Kindle Create, and of course I've got that italics-and-paragraph-breaks problem, so I pulled out an old paper copy to check against. And a certain eau du chat assaulted my nostrils--yes, some member of the household (not me!) decided to use the cabinet I was stashing these things in as a urinal.

I think I can save one copy each of the really old versions of Trang, but I think every copy of Trust (and I had quite a few, with the proofs and whatnot) is going to have to be binned....

Interesting

I'm up to #24 on the Sword & Sorcery list--not quite the front page, but close. I really wasn't expecting for this campaign to have, you know, any impact--the book doesn't have any reviews!  At all! But I guess either I look more respectable now than I did back when I was first shilling Trang, or people just really like the cover! (I just started with the Amazon ad campaign and so far haven't had much response there, but the Facebook campaign is really resembling the first one I did for Trang.)

Anyway, I wasn't really planning on marketing seriously, but now.... I talked about it with my sister, and she basically gave me back the exact same pointers I gave her when she came out with a book, and I realized that, yeah, I can be a lot more efficient now because I know what's worth the effort. I feel like the next step is to get reviews, so I'm going to do a Member Giveaway on Library Thing, since that worked well last time.

If I get good reviews, maybe I'll try for BookBub again? That would entail doing another three months in KDP Select, but I think that would be worth it if I'm in a position to make BookBub work. (It still works, right? I think I read that people are still using it. God I'm out of touch....)

Hm.

So, The Weirld is up to #34 in Sword & Sorcery....

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...which is excellent except for the whole "Sword & Sorcery" bit? I mean, I guess I should just roll with it, but I certainly didn't put it in that category--there are no swords in the book at all, and while there's certainly some magic, actual sorcery isn't a big part of it. I guess Atlatl & Metallic Properties as They Relate to Magic just doesn't have quite the same ring to it....

Trang is done

I finished going through Trang and fixing the hard return and italic problems, so I submitted the fancier-looking version to Amazon.

I also felt vain and impulsive and started a Facebook and Amazon ad campaign for the free days of The Weirld. Obviously that's not going to pay for itself unless people get that book for free, then get Trang for free, and then pay for Trust, but I'm hoping it will get the book some reviews and maybe get the algorithms to work for it.

Sometimes it's good to have low expectations

My shot today wasn't entirely debilitating, so I fixed a lot of the italics and hard return issues with Trang (and did the same for the first couple of chapters of Trust, since they also appear at the end of Trang). Then I went through the Kindle Create process--that does seem to be pretty easy to use, although I've been screwed around often enough that I'm going to put in a 0.01" indent on everything that I don't want indented. It basically acts like a really easy-to-use HTML editor.

The main issue for me is that if you "publish" the file in their spanking new KPF format, you can't download the result or even sideload it onto your phone. I understand that they really, really want Kindle Create to be kind of the ultimate What You See Is What You Get editor, but 1. that's impossible, sorry, and 2. at least let me put this on my phone so I can switch chairs!

Oh well--I shall watch television instead and work on this tomorrow.

And The Weirld should become free at midnight tonight!

Uf

Well, today has been a bit of a grind. I wanted to reformat the Trang and Trust e-books using Kindle Create, and that's proving a bit more difficult because the only files I have are the MOBI ones, and the MOBI => DOCX conversion process creates all kinds of weird issues (with things like italics and paragraph breaks, sheesh). I should be able to get them done in a few days (I have to get my shot tomorrow, which slows everything down), but it's going to be a fiddly process.

I signed my book on for the five-day freebie and was going to e-mail the people who signed up for alerts...but there's a new law that's just gone into effect saying you have to include your physical address in any e-mail sent for commercial purposes. To which I say, FUCK, NO. Jesus, I've had enough problems with fucking stalkers for a lifetime, OK?

So, my apologies to anyone who ever signed up for alerts--you're not getting them. I'll take down the form.

The e-book has been submitted!

YEAAAAA!!!!!

God, that seemed like such a process--part of it being that, if you're going to force me to learn Kompozer, I'm going to go ahead and make the book a little nicer.

Anyway: I have submitted the e-book to Amazon, and hopefully it will be up soon. Then I can do the five-day free promotion, whoo! 

All righty....

So, today was spent getting the hang of Kompozer--you can do a lot with it, but my God, it is not an intuitive piece of software.

I had to use Kompozer because it's an HTML editor, and Amazon has actually gone backwards in terms of what you can do with your e-book without getting into the HTML. As I mentioned, chapter ornaments are suddenly this HUGE problem, and other things are harder to do, too--it's really annoying that they've actually managed to make it harder to create a decent-looking book, because it seems like with Kindle Create, you're going to have so many nice interiors now.

Anyway, I think I'm 99% of the way there.

ETA: I do think I'm going to sacrifice the chapter ornaments for Trang and Trust and reformat them through Kindle Create one of these days. I kind of want to update them anyway, because there's stuff like the links in the back that don't work any more.

Progress report

I (hopefully) fixed the cover issues, and I have submitted the whole, improved shebang to Create Space--I should be able to order a second proof tomorrow if all goes well. I turned the first proof over to my crack team of illustrators, who were both delighted and chagrined to see their artwork in an actual book.

The e-book stuff is still fairly aggravating--I'm having to slog away editing HTML, and honestly it feels like Amazon has really made zero progress when it comes to books with art. I think I can make this work, and of course it still takes less time than a paper layout, but I also think it's been six years, and maybe they could have made this process a little easier in the meantime? Maybe?

A little disappointing

I was hoping to be able to use Kindle Create, but it does NOT handle artwork well at all. I was thinking that, if it was easy to use, I'd go ahead and reformat the Trang books, but it can't even properly handle chapter ornaments, much less the actual illustrations in The Weirld. But it's made me a little more ambitious with my e-book formatting, so I'm fiddling with stuff by hand--we'll see how it all turns out.

Just a reminder to keep things simple

Today was spent appeasing the tax accountant, and I want to point out something: I've mentioned in the past that I (and my father) ran our own businesses for many, many years without ever doing any of the more expensive and complicated small business things that people sometimes say you have to do if you want to be a Serious Writer. 

That era is in the past now, and I have to say that I long for the days when I was a sole proprietor. It makes sense for us to be doing what we're doing, but JFC, the only reason to do it is because the alternative takes up even more of your time. I do not understand why any Serious Writer would voluntarily choose to spend the day generating fiscal statements when they could be writing, or even just formatting an e-book or fixing that proof that finally arrived from CreateSpace.

Progress report

I came home to...discover that CreateSpace had sent my proof to my old address (boy, it HAS been a long time since I've done a book, hasn't it!). I have now updated my shipping address with them, and hopefully it will come before long.

Tax stuff is pretty much wrapped up, with some exceptions that I'm sure will blow up in my face with delightful unpredictability over the next two months. In any case, it looks like I should be able to start working on the e-book fairly soon.

Thoughts on the road

I'm a-wandering in search of...everyone's damned 2017 tax forms! In the meantime, I've been thinking about the release of The Weirld as an e-book. (And I'm feeling quite thankful that I'm not using Word and not having to worry about all kinds of random extra coding getting shoved into the book for no reason. It's so much easier!)

I saw that Amazon has really upgraded their tools for authors! What they've got looks like something (assuming it's not buggy) that will very quickly turn out an especially nice e-book. I'm genuinely looking forward to playing with that when I get home.

It doesn't look like much has changed with Smashwords, which is also nice--they've always been easy to use.

Buuuut...because I don't intend to do the long marketing push I did with Trang, I'm eyeing going exclusive with KDP, albeit just for the first 90 days since I don't like relying on a single retailer. Exclusivity would give me access to some promotional tools that are very easy to use and hopefully would get me reviews so that I don't feel like I'm completely neglecting this book. Plus I like the idea of offering the people who follow me (especially those who have stuck out this long dry period) an early-bird special price, and with exclusivity I can just make the book free for five days. So I think that's where I'm headed.

Whoot!

I ordered proofs! It will take a couple of weeks, and if history is any guide, I'll have to do fixes, but! An Important Milestone has! been! achieved!

And you'll notice that I've put up sample chapters and prettied up my home page--oooh la la! I even posted to Facebook and Twitter...trying not to notice that the last time I've put anything up on either was 2016. Yoikes.

The reality is that I'm quite a bit busier now than I was. Like, obviously the next step is to format the e-book and release it, but...that's going to have to wait a couple of weeks as well because I've got to go focus on the family business for a bit. I'm actually really happy that production fell as it did, because tax time is usually a bit too distracting to get much writing done, but I can do things like formatting or inputting copy edits between putting out the inevitable fires. It's nice to feel like I'm making meaningful headway even though I'm not writing.

And I'm thinking about what's going to happen after the book comes out. I still want to do a large-print edition--that actually should be much easier to do now because I'm using real layout software. (And I should note that at this point, I have actually sold a few!) But I'm just not going to have the time to experiment with lots of different kinds of marketing like I did in the past. Maybe I'll run some Facebook ads and branch out to Google or Amazon, or maybe not.

The more I think about audiobooks, the more I think that's just never going to happen, especially not me doing them myself. Maybe one fine day I'll hire somebody.

Hm, better start gearing up....

Seeing that I'll probably have an actual book out fairly soon (!!! It's been so long!!), I decided to finally, you know, act like a real writer and get Mail Chimp going. I've been collecting e-mail addresses and names from people who want to know when the next book is coming out (OK, so they really want to know when the next Trang book is coming out, but no harm in letting them know about this one), but I haven't really done anything with that information, because you know, no book was coming out.

So I signed on to Mail Chimp and put those names and e-mails onto a list, which was easy enough to do. Then I realized that I could have a direct-to-Mail-Chimp sign-up form on the Web site (much more easily done through the Web hosting service than through Mail Chimp). Its over there to the left now. I'll just keep the all-purpose Contact form the same--if people want alerts and use that form, they can just tell me that's what they want, and I'll add their information to the list by hand.

Whoo!

Finished the last read-over, glommed all the separate PDF files together into one HUGE PDF file, and uploaded onto CreateSpace! (Well, still waiting to get cleared there, but Whoooooooo! anyway!)

ETA: Man, the tiniest thing came up--the 5s in the font I use for page numbers stick juuuuust above the other numbers and into The Forbidden Zone. I'll have to move all the page numbers down juuuuust a smidge. Oh well!