Day: June 28, 2015

If you can’t tell from the title of this post, I just rewatched one of my favorite inspirational YouTube videos.

It’s made me realized I’m not getting anywhere by waiting on myself to feel like finishing the copy edit on that book. Not just the copy edit either. I keep waiting on myself to feel like formatting it, writing the description, and getting it published. I feel no particular urgency to get those things done. I’m still riding the coattails of my last release and that makes it easy to just wait until I feel like getting it done.

Big mistake in the long run, and I do recognize that. If I wait until I need it published then the book’s success or failure becomes so much more important than it is right now. It’s a new pen name after all and I have no idea how it will do. Having one in the wings is great, but having two or three is better. :)

So, tonight I finish reading the book. With only 25% of the book to go, my Kindle believes it will take me 1 hour 5 minutes to finish. If I double that because I read super slowly when I’m doing this kind of read through, that’s still just two hours.

I need about an hour to revisit my description and ten minutes or so to pick keywords. As for formatting, I can have my Word file ready in a half hour of solid work, and an EPUB less than five minutes later. If the EPUB validates, I’ll generate a MOBI, which will only take a few seconds in Jutoh.

I’ll be saving that work for tomorrow after my writing time ends at 1 pm.

Since I’ve decided to try out KDP Select with this book, that’s the sum total of the work I’ll need to do at the moment.

So, this means I should expect myself to have this book published by tomorrow night.

Later, I’ll do a paperback (probably the middle of July) if the book is selling a reasonable number of copies. If it’s selling poorly, I’ll make a new cover for the book and replace the professionally designed cover I purchased. The reason I’ll change the cover is so that I can do a paperback edition at no added expense. If the book is selling well, I’ll hire the original cover designer to make a paperback cover for me.

I’ve been studying some stuff lately to help me make better covers and I’m tempted to try it out on this book either way, because if it does sell well, I’ll be turning this puppy into a series ASAP. :)

It never hurts to be optimistic—at least not until your dreams are crushed. Then it kinda hurts. ;)

If nothing else, my copy edit time today reminded me that the book doesn’t suck. I wish I’d had the guts to write another 30,000 words on it, instead of ending it so soon, but I really need to write my other books. Anything I want to expand on for these characters can be worked into the follow up books as side story. I love revisiting characters through the eyes of other characters. :D

 

This morning I was supposed to write from 9–1. At 9 am sharp, I opened my computer, looked at the files I had open (I usually hibernate with everything as is) and decided to copy edit the book I finished two weeks ago instead of work on my new story.

This is funny because I only started the new book a couple of days ago to avoid having to do the copy edit, and here I am copy editing that book to avoid writing the new one.

All in all, I’m having a hard time seeing this as a failure to write. ;)

And surprisingly, I reached the end of my note taking and decided to put off reading the rest in favor of some writing after all. I’m down to about 25% of the book left to read through on my Kindle.

So I did a little of both today. I’m thinking I’m going to do more of one or the other after a short break. Maybe I’ll even get the book finished and formatted this evening. That would be a nice accomplishment. :)