A Time For Everything

But her cat keeps snuggling with me in the early mornings. I don't know if Karma snuggles with DD that much, but she does with me. Not any time anyone is around to see, but every weekday morning around 3:30 when she realizes I have woken up, she creeps over and lays down for some lovin'.


Speaking of workouts...I've made a concerted effort to get back to working out--for all that sitting on my recumbent bike and burning 100 calories or so could be called a workout--twice a day. That twice-daily burning of energy has helped me feel a bit more energetic. I have a ways to go, but I'm headed in the right direction at least.

I still have quite a few things on my plate and just got another, but I'm working at getting some things off it too.

About a decade ago, I was juggling two presidencies--band booster and writers group. I made it through the six-month overlap and I can do it again. It was a matter of taking care of the tasks that were next up on the schedule, which ever organization it was. Now band booster was a weekly cycle, luckily writers group was only monthly.

Anyway, I just need to keep my lists handy and updated. I need to plan ahead and stay on task. two things I'm pretty good at.

Hope you had a enjoyable and/or productive weekend.

So...writers group was this past Saturday and it was fun as it always is. I caught up with three out of five posse members.

In light of needing to get all my ducks in a row for the conference in October--mainly getting physical books printed, I asked my friends what the first thing I needed to do is.

The answer: format the manuscript for print.

Okey dokey--Google is my friend. Found several tutorials and I was on my way. Once I got the gist of what was required, it was a snap. All things I'd done before for another project.

One of my friends also had a coupon code (allowing me to do them for free) for one of the print-on-demand (POD) vendors, good through June. So I have two weeks to get at least two books formatted and uploaded along with a full cover (front, back, and spine) images... Yikes. I'm hoping to get four done.

Along with the proofing job and the series guide I'm working on and all the other things going on at the end of the week, it looks like I'll be busy busy busy... Yikes again.

Hope you had a lovely weekend.

The process of publishing six (and more) books gets exponentially more task-riddled as the days go by. I now have a  FIVE-PAGE TO-DO list, because for most of what I have to do, I have to do for six books.

When I became an independently published author back in November of 2017, I did so by publishing directly with major retailers where I could and using two aggregators (virtual distributors for all intents and purposes) for the the ones I couldn't, as well as for the dozen or so smaller retailers.

I had one file for everybody--meaning that purchasing the next book was a two- or three-click process rather than a one-click endeavor. At the time, I just needed to get the books out into the world, and I did that. The rest had to wait for the new year.

Well, it's the new year and it's time to do the nitty gritty grunt work of creating unique files for each book for each retailer so that if you bought your book for the Kindle, the link at the end of the excerpt of the next book is going to take you directly to that book's purchase page in Amazon. Same for iBooks, Kobo, Nook... Well, you get the picture. Six books, six retailers, plus a generic link for miscellaneous use... You can see that it's quite a project.

Back in November, I used an aggregator to get my books into Barnes & Noble because the aggregator offers pre-sales and Barnes & Noble doesn't when publishing directly through them. Fast forward to January, and I want to publish the live books directly so that as much of the royalties go into my pocket as possible. Well, shoot-- I didn't even think that doing so was going to render the original purchase pages/links (through the aggregator) unavailable because Barnes & Noble was going to generate a its own new purchase pages/links. Add a new task to the list: updating all Barnes & Noble links.

I'll have to update links again when I'm able to upload to the Apple Store directly... *sigh*

Of course, once I get all of this figured out and done, it'll be one book at a time and much less daunting.

As I mentioned a post or two ago, I may be called upon to talk about aggregators vs. distributors to my writing group... I think I'll call it "To Aggregate or Not To Aggregate, That Is The Question..." Anyway, I think the specific issue of transitioning books and the hassle it causes needs to be a talking point for sure.

Maybe there's an easier way, maybe I'm making things way more complicated than they should be, but...

I didn't pay much attention to this stuff when it may or may not have been discussed in front of me. It's not fair now for me to constantly beleaguer my friends for information. So I'm plodding through the best I know how, learning as I go. But maybe that's better. I'll certainly remember how to get things done!

On a more exciting note, I get to attend my writers group meeting for the first time in four months. I'm so excited to see my chapter mates and especially my writer besties. I published all my books during that absence, so I get to return as a published author. I get these really cool jumbo pencils, one to celebrate each book. I get charms for writing min 25 pages each month, as well as a charm for completing a book. I can't wait. It's going to be so fun.

Hope your weekend will be as fun as mine--!!

See you Monday.