X-ray vision!

The family busyness is still happening and will continue to require some attention, but I also took some time to put together those Amazon Kindle "X Rays." I'd never bothered before, but honestly, I have trouble remembering who everyone in the Trang series is, and then The Weirld is supposed to be accessible to younger readers, who of course need a little help knowing who Gracie Allen is. So I went through and did that. It's a little tedious but also kind of funny--I have to be careful to explain who someone is without giving away spoilers!

Whoo!

All right! The Weirld still isn't EXACTLY perfect on Smashwords, but 1. it meets standards to be distributed to other retailers, and 2. it looks good enough that I'm not going to worry about it. I went back and used a different source file, and that did the trick.

Oh my God, Smashwords

OK, Smashwords is officially driving me crazy. It was the easier one to use back when I was doing the Trang books, but it does NOT play well with illustrations, boy howdy. I'm realizing that I'm going to have to upload one version to be converted into everything, and then upload a special .epub version so that the .epub isn't completely fucked. Uuuuuugggghh......

ETA: OK, at this point The Weirld is on Smashwords itself, and seems fairly decent (like, it's readable, although not necessarily beautiful) in all formats. However, I don't know if I'll be able to set it up so that it can be offered at other retailers through Smashwords. Do I care? Should I just upload it directly? At the moment, I think this is one of those problems I'm going to kick down the road, because I'd rather focus on Trials.

Progress report

The Weirld is out of KDP Select today, so I got it ready to go to Smashwords. That's a process that hasn't changed much, but is still a bit fiddly. Once again file conversions led to problems with italics--I fixed those, but then when I went to look at my Kindle version to make sure the problems weren't there, I realized that the Table of Contents has vanished. Ugh.

ETA: Ooh! I published it on Smashwords, took one look, and immediately unpublished it--the pictures are not working. OK, I think I'm going to put off working on that until tomorrow....

Progress report

A very progress-y day, if I do say so myself: I edited the first two chapters, and then I went back to the end and realized that I really hadn't envisioned what the next chapter was going to be like. I am actually pretty near the end of the book, so I outlined the next chapter ramping us into the exciting! conclusion! And then I went through and drew out (it's complicated) exactly how that exciting! conclusion! was going to go. It's nice because I'm realizing that I can tie a lot of what happens at the end of the book into some of the things that happened at the beginning....

Progress report

I didn't sleep well last night, so I was trying to finish up the re-reading/editing, but I have to quit with two more chapters to go. Interestingly enough, these early chapters (yes, I'm still going through it backwards; no, I don't know if this is the best way to do it) seem to need more work.

Progress report

Continued reading--I did about a third yesterday, about a third today, and presumably will finish off tomorrow. It actually does not look bad--I'm pleasantly surprised, because I was thinking that it would be really rough.

Progress report

Yeah, there was a bit more to crawl out from under, but I finally got my shot (and there was much rejoicing, followed by a whole lot of sleep).

Today I started reading through Trials--I kind of haphazardly started at the most recent chapter and then worked backwards, which is maybe not what I would recommend. Anyway, at least it's getting me back up to speed--I also made some revisions to the most recent chapters that I had been thinking about before.

Crawling out....

Looks like that killer spreadsheet project is done with for now, so I'm going to get going again on Trust--but not today, because I got maybe six hours of sleep last night. (There's this whole unbelievably stupid insurance drama going on with my allergy shots right now--you know, at the height of grass season--which has gotten so fucked that I literally cannot get shots even if I pay for them out of pocket, even though everyone agrees that I should be getting them. Kaiser Permanente!)

I guess I should report on the eBookSoda and Free Kindle Books and Tips thing--the ads ran on the 12th for eBookSoda and the 13th for Free Kindle Books and Tips. Neither sold enough books to pay for itself, but the FKBT one did much better than the eBookSoda one.

Commence freaking out....

I took another look at Trials--JFC, it's 30 chapters already! Whenever I look at it after a while, I'm just like, Dear God, this is SO BIG! I'm easing into it--today I changed the formatting in hopes of making production a little easier next time around. Of course, that caused new and exciting problems with the italics, but I will sort it out tomorrow when I start re-reading the mother.

I had a bunch of ideas for it when I stopped work on it last, so I'm going to attempt to incorporate them in during this read. But not today--today is for feeling overwhelmed.

Hm, things have changed

As I've mentioned before, when I did Trang the things that really helped were 1. doing a giveaway at LibraryThing and 2. getting an ad with Bookbub.

This time around, Bookbub is WAY more expensive, and the people at LibraryThing haven't done squat. (My sister had the same complaint--I guess the culture there has changed. I have more ratings at GoodReads at this point.)

So I poked around, and thanks to the ever-reliable Lindsay Buroker I found these recommendations. I'm giving eBookSoda and Free Kindle Books & Tips a go, because both are willing to waive the review requirements for new books. (FreeBooksy also has a BargainBooksy thing--I might use one or the other some day, but both are relatively pricey, so I'm going to start with the cheaper services.)

Whew!

Things are frantic (I'm not going to be doing anything else book-related until May), and then The Weirld proofs arrived today--pant-pant! They look good, I think--I approved the large-print edition. I had already approved the regular edition, because the mistake was so bad, but looking at the hard copy...eh, you know, it's one of those things where it could be the print run itself--it's just a little bit off the spine--but then I felt like the title could stand to be moved too, so I changed it. I think I'll just let that go with a digital proof, though.

Progress report

Yesterday I proofed and input corrections for the large-print edition, and today I finished proofing it. (I'm tired, so I'll finish inputting the corrections tomorrow.) I also found another typo (a comma error!) that was also in the regular edition, so I'm re-submitting that interior with the new cover to CreateSpace--that one should be ready to go when I get the new proof, and hopefully the next proof of the large-print edition will be release-worthy as well.

Whoopsie!

I got hard copies of both editions of The Weirld only to realize that there's been a typo on the cover of the paper copy of The Weirld this entire time: I misspelled "journalist"! Awesome! Anyway, everyone's just been buying the e-book, so you know, thank God for that--it will be fixed soon. (So, buy it now, I guess!)

Anyway, the interior corrections on the regular edition went through fine, and I'm going over the interior of the large-print edition (the cover needed some fixing as well, predictably enough).

Taking a step back, taxes are DONE (DONE!!!!!), so now I'm kind of hmmm-ing at the calendar. I've got stuff at the end of the month, but maybe I can take another stab at Trials in the meantime--I actually had a bunch of good ideas for it before I got swallowed whole by production.