This is the Week!!!

I can't believe I'm doing this, but here goes nothing, eh?

Want some of what I've learned? And perhaps more importantly what I've failed to learn but know I need to? I know some of you are eagerly watching, as you have serial plans of your own. I think the serial conversion will be MUCH easier for those of you who've self published before and I will just say, if I were a thinking gal... which I apparently am not... I'd self publish a stand-alone and learn the ropes before committing to this level of chaos.

Then again it is the serials that convinced me I wanted to dive in at all. I will keep publishing mysteries traditionally and haven't decided on my YA stuff. May continue trying that traditionally as well. Or not... See how redundant this is making me? *cough*

Formatting.

Okay, can I just die a little now?

See, uploading to CreateSpace isn't hard, but then figuring out what exactly they've done without pushing publish? Yeah, I don't know how to do that.

So I downloaded Calibre to convert for these early distribution things I've done... and it converts to Kindle pretty easily (once I realized I had to save my Word doc as rtf). But the ePub (for Nook) is a little wonky--page breaks don't read and the acknowledgements did weird things with my apostrophes and quotes... and the PDF is a mess on the iPad, or so I hear. I don't HAVE an iPad.

And if you're a writer, you should probably proof your emails before sending *rolls eyes* luckily the 50 copies I sent all went to people who KNOW me and know how I am.


So what I've done in the last few days:

*  Edited book 2 for my copy editor, Leanne
*  Edited book 3 for 2nd readers.
*  Incorprated changes FROM my copy editor to Book 1

*  Figured out how to upload portions of it, along with cover and description to Goodreads.
(here's a hint--even though I actually have no real intentions of selling paper copies of this, I had to upload and push publish and get my ISB and all to do this... not because it's probably necessary, but because I couldn't figure it out otherwise)

*  Formatted for Kindle and ePub (which covers the rest except iTunes--need a Mac to format for iTunes, it will have to wait) and sent it to about 50 early readers (if you want it, you can have it, too--just shout--I need an email)

* Wrote my acknowledgements and cover copy
*  Wrote the email to go with my sent books (this is the one where about half of you got a few typos)
*  Sent my blogfest info out (it is Thursday by the way, and you still have time to enter. Here are details.).

*  And then last night (which is tonight in my world) I hope I finished the first draft of Book 4

Are you tired yet? I know I am. Thank goodness I have an extra day this weekend!!! I will be around, but maybe not until noon or so...