Monday, September 2, 2013

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...


9 comments:

Old Kitty said...

By golly you have been most NAKEDly busy!!! Yay for you!!!

I don't have an iPad too but so want one! For x-mas. Ahem!

Take care
x

Natalie Aguirre said...

Wow! You've accomplished a lot.

Madeline Mora-Summonte said...

Whew! I'm dipping my toe in by publishing an ebook of my stories. Thanks for sharing all of this! :)

Tonja said...

That is a lot of very detailed work. I'm sure it turned out great!

H. R. Sinclair said...

Good golly but you've been busy!

I understand the formatting headaches. Every reader reads just a tiny bit differently - yipes!

I recommend Sigil (https://code.google.com/p/sigil/) it is the best for final look and it searches for errors.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Sorry about all the formatting issues. This is your week though so hope it all falls into place.

Maurice Mitchell said...

Formatting is always tricky, but you're on your way Hart.

Bleue said...

Wow!
I love how you are sharing step-by-step and huge kudos for formatting on your own! I fully intend on hiring someone to format my books.
Really looking forward to participating in your Blogfest on Thursday!

CA Heaven said...

It's gonna be interesting to see what people come up with on "How the World Ends". I'm probably to much influenced by my astrophysics courses to come up with anything interesting. Our sun is just an average star, and will become a red giant when it's approaching it's end of life. At that stage it will expand and swallow the innermost planets, including the Earth. That's our destiny. So, if you see the sky turning permanently red, it's reasons to worry >:)

Cold As Heaven