Ready to edit today

screenshot of sunlit paper Today I’ll be editing. I have fresh coffee, my document on my Kindle Fire (the oldest one I have), and some fresh sunlit paper and a pencil for notes. I have tablets and journals and pencils and pens everywhere, to be honest. :)

It’s time to edit this book and I want to do it while the story is fresh in my mind. I know that’s opposite of what a lot of authors recommend to other authors, but I have my own way of doing things, for reasons that make sense to me.

Of course, I dated the page yesterday, so that’ll have to be updated, but other than that, I’m ready to go.

With as much sun as is shining onto my face, I’ll have to watch out, but I want the warmth of the sun right now. I find it motivating when it comes time to focus on reading. :)

So here is the plan.

Every chapter will be timed. (I do this to stay focused.) If I need to stop for a break, it’ll come at the end of a chapter. This is helpful so I can get a feel of the momentum in a chapter and pay attention to pacing. If I’m stopping three times in a chapter, I just get to the end and have no idea how fast or slow it felt.

After 3 to 4 chapters, I’ll catch up typo edits and the like, and save all other notes (highlights really) until the end.

This is so I don’t run into an issue with the Kindle losing my highlights. It hasn’t ever happened, but if it does, I don’t want this to be the day. Until I started doing it this way, I regularly ended up with 30+ pages of highlights to deal with all at the end. The horror of losing all that and having to start over is what led me to change my ways.

I’ll be using the notes page to make notes of continuity stuff and things I want to check at the end. I’ll be jotting down eye/hair/clothes/names and a small chapter summary of one or two sentences, too. But I might save that for the end of the chapter so it doesn’t bog me down as I read. This is something new I’m adding to my process so I’m going to have to work out the details as I go.

Anyway, I think I’m ready. I will definitely post a screenshot from my spreadsheet later. :) It’ll be interesting to see it all laid out. The spreadsheet tracks the reading sessions, and using it and the timer has worked really well to keep me completely focused on reading.

It’s also cut the time it takes me to do the read through by a significant degree. It used to take a week at least. Now it takes a day (or two).

This is the kind of thing I’m hoping to find with my writing someday. A process that just works.

I haven’t given up looking. But for now, it’s time to focus on edits. :)

 

I wrote -96 words yesterday

How is it even possible to write negative words? In case you’re new here, let me explain my tracking sheet.

I put in my current doc’s word count, and it tells me how many words I’ve written today. As you can see, today’s total is zero at the moment. (The 3,333 below today’s count is the goal and it is a formula that will tell me how many words I have to go to get to that goal.)

Starting at row 10 is the list of all my works in progress and below that all my completed works, with word counts noted. That’s where I update my word counts to get an updated cumulative word count. The previous total number is manually adjusted each day so that the spreadsheet will calculate an accurate number of words for today. This lets me work on as many stories as I want in one day and still have a central place to track that word count.

I’m sure some people would like to have individual spreadsheets for each book or story, but I really don’t want or need that much granular detail. I tried adding another step into my tracking process for a while, but keeping up with one more sheet was just too much of a time waster for me.

Anyway, my point is that I have negative words because I obviously deleted more than I added, so at the end of the day my word count in the doc for my current book was lower than it was at the beginning of the day. For my sheet to be accurate, I have to record my doc’s actual word count. I like it that way even if it does leave me in the hole some days.

Sadly, -96 words is nowhere near the 1,500 word goal I set myself last night. I fell down hard on that. My only excuse is, well, an excuse. I’ll take a pass on making it.

How to not write a lot of words

I feel asleep at the computer last night. Well, mostly I feel asleep if you count head bobbing and momentary lapses in consciousness.

So no, I didn’t make it through my book so that today’s writing could go more smoothly. In fact, I kept tinkering with that particular scene I mentioned yesterday until the head bobbing and lapses in consciousness caused me to read the same two lines in the story about twenty times.

Today, however, I finally figured out why I kept tinkering with that scene, fixed the thing I needed to fix, and am so glad it’s done. The scene is also much more in line with what I wanted. I’m pretty happy with it right now.

I adjusted some chapter breaks (about 4 or 5 of them) and now I need to finish the read through edit I’m doing for about 14 more chapters. To be honest, I’m not really editing. I’m just fixing stuff so the damn story can start moving again. :D

As for the chapters, I like to have chapters of about 2,000 to 2,500 words, and definitely not more than 3,000 to 3,300. I usually have several good breaking off points in a chapter, so it wasn’t hard to find new cliffhanger style endings for the new chapter breaks. :D

Only one chapter defeated me and I had to leave it at 3,140 words. There just wasn’t a good place to split it and I liked the ending it currently had too much to bury it in the middle of the next chapter.

I’ve managed to gain 169 words today so far doing this and I’m hoping not to spend too much more time on that and get on with the real writing soon.

Since I’m not anywhere near where I’d need to be right now to have a 5,000 word day, I’m going to quit hoping for that and just write as much as I can.

So no more breaks for me until I’m ready to call it a day on the writing. WIFI is going off the minute I post this, and I’m going to hide my damn tablets and phone. (Okay, I just turned them off, but that should serve the same purpose!)

Random thoughts: File naming conventions

First, a new column for the blog, if you can call anything here columns: Random thoughts.

Second, I had one. :D

It led me to researching the accepted wisdom for naming files. I have a very confused set of file name conventions I just haven’t been happy with for a while.

Almost everything I’ve read over the years says to avoid spaces in file names, so a while back I started naming folders and files like this:

c:\Writing\MySeries\MyBookTitle\MyBookTitle.docx

I did that not just because of having read a lot of advice saying to avoid spaces. I also had an instance where a file on my computer wouldn’t delete. I had to use the command prompt to get rid of it, and oh boy, was that a headache. So I don’t use spaces in file names in most instances anymore.

Some folders are like this though:

c:\Writing\MySeries\MyBookTitle\cover

In fact, all the subfolders inside my book folders are lowercase and use _ for spaces like_this, but all the folders outside those book folders are LikeThis or Like This.

I hate it.

It’s not very readable, and it’s definitely not consistent, although it is more readable than my first iteration:

c:\writing\myseries\mybooktitle\mybooktitle.docx

It was a nightmare with filenames like:

myseriesbookcovertemplate5x8.xcf

So I continually find myself looking for a better way, and yet internet searches never turn up anything I find particularly useful.

At some point, I read something that said to avoid hyphens because of cross OS compatibility. Underscores were the winner, but I can’t remember why, and so I started using _ whenever I needed a space.

I still don’t like spaces in file names because of the internet issue. And they’re ugly. Seeing %20 mixed into a long file name makes that filename look ridiculous and difficult to read.

So mostly I tried to stick with PascalCase.

PascalCase was a new term to me when I came across it. I thought I was using camel case, but apparently thisIsCamelCase, because it uses a lowercase first character.

Today I came across loads of people recommending ‐ instead of _ as a space replacement. So I’m back to wondering why hyphens aren’t a good idea in file names, because I still don’t remember why underscores were the winner, only I didn’t run across anyone talking about that issue this time around so I still don’t know!

And really, I think they’re mostly talking about filenames and folder names for the web, and that doesn’t matter much to me except in a very few specific instances (like book cover file names).

One reason I don’t like the dash as much as the underscore is because the dash isn’t as easy for me parse out as a space in a column of file names. But an underscore, if used in a hyperlink with an underline, is unreadable. You won’t even know it’s there sometimes.

:o

Really, this whole this is just one big annoying mess.

However, I have finally settled on a file naming convention this time, one that I’m pretty happy with, despite everything (and after two days of letting this obsession occupy brain space). Although to be honest it doesn’t solve the readability problem of PascalCase.

Maybe you don’t have trouble reading it, but I sure do!

Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

Stop using [ ] and other special characters in file names

Use hyphen instead of space when needed

MyFile-2016-01-09.txt

Dates like 20160109 are impossible for me to read, so I don’t use them.

Stick to title case for most things with no spaces

MyBookTitleNotes.docx
MySeries
MyBookTitlePbCover.xcf

When using 1–9, use 01–09

01-MyBookTitle

MyBookTitle root directory

MyBookTitle.docx
MyBookTitleMeta.docx
MyBookTitleNotes.txt

Folders (when needed)

backups
cover
ebooks
paperback
research

Folders are lowercase because they’re less distracting that way.

I know this is inconsistent with my other folders, but I actually do find them less distracting when they’re lowercase and they’re all one word names, and these particular folders are inside folders where I have to differentiate between a lot of similarly named files. I just won’t use two word file names here. If it ever does become necessary, I’ll just use a hyphen.

Files inside these folders

\cover\

MyBookTitleCover.xcf
MyBookTitlePbCover.xcf
my-book-title-1000.jpg

For jpg, png, gif, tif, use all lowercase, no space, no underscore, since these files are more likely to be used online.

\ebooks\

MyBookTitle.jutoh
MyBookTitle.epub

\paperback\

MyBookTitlePb.docx
MyBookTitlePb.pdf
MyBookTitlePbCover.pdf

Add a version number to the old file when replacing it so that it doesn’t overwrite old file in \backups\ folder if it is moved there later

MyBookTitlePb.docx (current)
MyBookTitlePb1.docx (oldest)
MyBookTitlePb2.docx (second oldest)

And that’s it. I did some cleanup to rename the files and my directories now look a lot better and everything is much more consistent. Now I’m satisfied, at least for a while. :D

Oh, and if you’re wondering how I changed all these names quickly and easily, I used a bulk renaming utility for the majority of the work. They’re very handy to have around!

Let me say that although I feel very satisfied with the changes I’ve made, I’m completely aware of the fact that spending two days on this was two days too many.

It’s procrastination, plain and simple, most likely to deal with the writer’s block I’ve got going on, and the only way to solve that is to get this obsession out of my system. Honestly, I almost believe these episodes are a way for my subconscious to keep my conscious thoughts occupied so it can work out whatever issues are going on with my writing. :)

Here’s hoping I’m correct about that and that when I finally put this obsession to bed, I’ll be ready to get past the current part in my book that has me completely stumped.

I miss Evernote, but I miss it less after installing Pocket

I’m pretty happy with my switch from Evernote to OneNote in most respects, except one. I used Evernote as my to-read list and regularly clipped articles I wanted to read later to a “To Read” notebook. If I liked the article I moved it to my Clipped notebook, where I kept random articles and clippings from the web to revisit later if I wanted.

I don’t organize these articles, because it’s not some massive amorphous list of things I’d like to read someday/maybe. These are articles I absolutely want to read as soon as I have time and I get through them quickly. No one article usually sticks around longer than a week, and if I keep passing it over, I usually just delete it.

I still have those notebooks in OneNote, but OneNote doesn’t quite work like Evernote did and I find it more difficult to read articles I’ve saved.

Pocket has become the solution to that problem—an excellent solution, in fact, because it’s compatible with every device I own and I can read on any of them, much the way I was able to read my Evernote notes on any device, even my 5 year old Droid X.

Although OneNote is compatible with almost all my devices, it won’t run on the old Droid (which I still use as a reading device) or my second generation Kindle Fire. Believe it or not, these are my two favorite reading devices and I choose them over my newer options almost every time, unless I need OneNote. Now I can read on my preferred devices, despite their age.

If I want to save an article, I can visit the original article from Pocket and clip it to OneNote. (I tried it and it works just that easy.) This seems like it’d be extra trouble compared to just moving a clipped article from one notebook to another, but this really isn’t a big deal for me, because I don’t save that many articles. Mostly I read and delete.

And if in the future Pocket goes the way of Evernote and starts limiting device usage, I’ll just go back to reading on OneNote.

Some days, I still miss Evernote. I used it for years and was quite happy with it, so it’s only natural. But now I don’t miss it quite so much. :)

Evernote is changing, but so am I: switching from Evernote to OneNote

Evernote has been my go-to software app for notes for many years. I’ve loved it for a long time, but the time has come to make the switch to OneNote. The thing is, I have an Office 365 subscription that I’m very happy with, despite the fact that I don’t actually use the new versions of Excel and Word.* I tried OneNote soon after installing Office 365, and although I didn’t hate it, I didn’t see a big need to switch.

One reason was because my phone is getting old, I mean really old (it’s an original Droid X), and it’s starting to have trouble running newer applications. My little Droid X is still on Android 2.3.4. But goodness, I love that phone, and it still does what I need it to do: check my email, send texts and messages, play music, make calls, take photos, and run my 6 e-reading apps.

On the other hand, Aldiko has recently started crashing on me, and the Kindle app has started to load really slowly, so it’s definitely going downhill. And my phone won’t run OneNote, while it still runs Evernote without a hitch. So I decided at the time not to make the switch.

But last night I got the following email.

Evernote Basic is changing

At Evernote, we are committed not only to making you as productive as you can be, but also to running our business in as transparent a way as possible. We’re making a change to our Basic service, and it’s important that you know about it.

In the coming weeks, Evernote Basic accounts will be limited to two devices, such as a computer and phone, two computers, or a phone and a tablet. You are currently over this limit, but will have at least 30 days to adjust. Plus and Premium accounts will continue to support access from an unlimited number of devices.

Look for additional communication from us explaining how your account is changing and outlining your options. For more information about why we are making this change, see our blog post.

The problem with this is that I use Evernote everywhere: phone, Kindle fire, Fire tablet, laptop, desktop… You get the picture. But out of the 60 MB of data transfer Evernote allows a free account, I use less than one MB most months. Right now, I’m at 259 KB for the month. There’s just no reason for me to pay for a subscription for this service. And now I won’t be able to access Evernote on all my devices.

To put it bluntly, Evernote has suddenly become much less useful to me.

So, last night, I used the OneNote importer to copy my Evernote notes to OneNote. And I quite like it. It’s going to take a little getting used to, but I think I’ll manage.

I have to say, I’m sorry for Evernote, but I think their recent changes are going to be the end of them. Not because I think it matters that I switched, because I was probably never going to be a paid user anyway. I don’t worship the ideal of a paperless life, by far, and I don’t like digital clutter either. But instead of making changes that will make Evernote indispensable to users, they’re limiting it in a way that makes it less likely the software can ever become indispensable to those who might go on to become paid users.

*I still use my Office 2007 versions, although there are features in the 2016 editions that I like, such as how Word remembers where you last were in the document when you reopen it. The switch to OneNote made me feel like I should try again, because I really like the OneNote interface. I just… really hate that green all over Excel. The blue from 2007 was so much more soothing a color. I loved those colors. It’s made it really hard to get over my other issues with 2016 and commit to the newer versions.

Editing and proofreading finished!

Finally, I finished reading the last section of the book this morning, and the edits for that bit were super quick. I actually like the book much more than I remember thinking back when I finished it! :D

But it’s been more than a month since I finished the book, so I guess that makes a difference. :)

So, now I’m onto formatting and publishing. I need to finish all that today. :o

Also, I’m still trying to decide if I want to go back into KDP with this pen name or not. I pulled the book out when the last renewal came up, in anticipation of making sure both books were either in or out, on the same time line.

This is the second pen name book, and I’m not expecting great things from it, not after a wait of nearly a year since the last book came out. :o

So: do I want to put the book into KDP?

  • In favor of KDP
    • Time saved by publishing only at Amazon (about a day)
    • First book was in KDP, so I might see better results for second book if it goes in for at least a little while
  • In disfavor of KDP
    • The first book will be a new book on all vendors other than Amazon, so I’ll have two new books on those sites
    • I like my books being available in lots of places
    • I don’t like being paid by page reads. Reminds me too much of the rip-off that is Google Adsense, etc: big companies taking advantage of small publishers to make big money and share only a pittance with the person responsible for the actual content. Amazon’s page read program isn’t that bad, but it feels bad.

Hmm. I’ll have to decide, but I can finish the formatting first!

Finally, do I want to continue with a pricing experiment (which is one reason I created the pen name) or do I just want to price at $6.99?

Both questions I need answers too by the end of the day today.

Now here’s some accountability for today’s activities. (I’ve decided I really like using lists for this stuff, no idea why.)

  • 11:29 am
    • Time to format my Word docx, will try to finish before I stop for lunch today.
      • Stopping at 12:30 pm with only the table of contents to finish. The other formatting only took so long because I was puttering with my styles and updating the formatting of the first book in the series.
  • 4:10 pm
    • Starting on the table of contents
    • Finished shortly thereafter
  • Worked and reworked the blurbs (descriptions) for the current book and the one before too many times to count before I came up with something I really liked. Two hours at least, although I didn’t really keep up.

Uh, I gave up. It’s just been ridiculously hot in here this afternoon/evening, with 90° Fahrenheit and sun outside, making it hard to cool down at the computer. I’ll get back at it in the morning when it might be at least a little cooler. (Did I say they’re finally coming on Tuesday to fix the A/C? Yay!)

Also, I got distracted by a movie I didn’t intend to watch to the end while I ate supper. But it was lovely and wonderful and I couldn’t turn it off. Consider this a rec for The Age of Adalind. I loved it!

Supper was frozen blueberries, fresh cherries, and plain Yogurt and just enough honey to make it sweet (makes a really cold desert), a peach, an orange, and some strawberries. Too much fruit, I know. But I’m not cooking in this heat. Forget that.

Anyway, I’ll move on to generating my EPUB tomorrow and publish sometime after that.

The truth is, I haven’t decided on the KDP or pricing issue anyway, so I’ll make a commitment on those tonight. Then I’ll get up and get this stuff done, so I can get back to writing, ASAP.

Now, off to bed so I can be up early enough to get some windows open and get this house cooled off before facing another 90° day.

How I back up my writing files

I keep multiple backups of my writing files.

I have saved jobs set up that use yCopy2 from Spacejock software. I’ve been using the program for so many years I can’t even say for sure how long that’s been. It’s a great little program and I love it. If it ever stops working, I’m going to be sad beyond measure.

I use Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, an SD card, an expansion drive, a second computer on my network, a backup directory on my laptop hard drive, and email.

It sounds a little crazy as I write it out, but I like it. Yes, I use a lot of hard drive space to store multiple copies of my important files, but no, I don’t ever get them confused because I have a system that works.

I have a main writing directory for all my writing related files (outside of the Windows My Documents directory). I run my yCopy jobs 2–3 times a day, when I’m ready to break from my work usually, but anytime, really, especially if I’ve accomplished something I want to be sure I don’t lose if a catastrophe were to strike within the next few hours. :D

Yes, I’m also a bit paranoid.

Those yCopy jobs copy my entire writing directory into my Dropbox folder, my Google Drive folder, my OneDrive folder, onto my SD card, onto the expansion drive over the network, and onto the second computer’s hard drive to a folder that mirrors my laptop folder. I manually email myself copies of my Word documents every so often, just as a last ditch safety measure, and once a month, I copy and archive my writing directory to a backup folder on my laptop’s hard drive. I do that one manually, so if there’s ever a problem with yCopy, I will at least have this. I recently cleaned those out to limit how many copies I had, because I was approaching one for every month since July 2012 and that’s a lot of duplicates (especially considering how I back up my word docs as I’m working on a book), and my main writing directory has been growing quite a lot since I became more focused on learning cover design so they were taking up ever more space on my laptop. It’s also the directory where I keep my stock art downloads and that’s been growing too. So… it was time to eliminate some excess. That said, I still have about 4 copies of my writing directory as it existed at the time I made the copies for each of 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and monthly for 2016 to date.

Yes, I am terrified of losing work.

Yes, I have pulled files out of some of those folders after I regretted deleting a file from my main writing directory.

Yes, I check the files and associated directories regularly to make sure yCopy is doing the job I need it to do.

Yes, it’s totally worth it. I have peace of mind. If my house burns down, I have the cloud files. If the cloud becomes inaccessible, I have my hard drives. If my computer is stolen, and I get locked out of my cloud drives AND my email, I have my second computer, my expansion drive, and my Kindle. Did I fail to mention that I also use “Send to Kindle” to send my in-progress Word docs to myself each night? Yeah, I do that too.

I know there are probably many more ways to make myself even safer, but this is the level I’m comfortable with. To be honest, I know it’s much more than most people will ever even consider doing, but these files are important to me, and I do my best to treat them that way.

As for my other files, I finally started backing them up too, but I’ll be honest, I just don’t worry about them that much. It’s the thought of losing my books that terrifies me. :D

Ever listen to a song so often on repeat you hear it in your head ALL THE TIME?

Yeah. I’m there. I’ve had a song on repeat ever since I started to think I was getting close to the end of this book three or four days ago. I’m starting to go a little crazy but every time I put on a different song, it just feels wrong. :o

The song doesn’t even make sense for the book. I just like the energy. :D

Today I abandoned the 40 minute sessions for 60 minute sessions. The 40 minute ones are just too trying. 6 in a day for the same 4 hours the 60 minute sessions will get me in 4. And I’m pretty used to the 60 minute length. The only time it’s a problem for me is if I’d had too much to drink—and now that I’m off coffee and tea, I’m hoping I won’t have to pause for that quite as often anymore!

Sometimes I do find the 60 minutes to be a bit hard when it comes to focus, and I do usually write faster in shorter periods of time, but there’s just too much overhead in those shorter sessions. I can get a day’s worth of work done so much quicker when I do the longer sessions. My breaks are prime opportunities for me to become distracted, so fewer breaks usually means fewer distractions (assuming I’m not jumping up and down for bathroom breaks).

So that’s where I am. Song is on repeat again, and I’m about to start hour 2 of my day’s writing.

I planned 5 total, so 4 to go including this one. I’m disappointed I’ve put it off until so late, but I don’t have any obligations tonight so I can still get them all done if I dig in and show a little grit. (Just wish I’d had more than 6 hours of sleep last night—but long story and no time left to chat.) (I am going to make a new post though with details of my progress today, because … compulsion.)

How I’m building my new pen name: Four months in

You might want to read the first post about the pen name book before you read this one because I’m not going to rehash what I’ve already said, just talk about what’s happened since the two week mark.

I haven’t gotten the next book out yet. Fact is, if you read this blog you’ll already know my production is not where I want it. I’m hopeful I’ll get the next book out in December, but it means I need to be successful in getting my word count up!

If I don’t improve my speed to publication for this series, this experiment isn’t going to teach me anything I haven’t already learned from my main pen name books. That’s because I’ve ended up not experimenting with price like I had originally intended.

I did a Kindle Countdown deal with the pen name book in mid-September and that led to a few more sales, but at reduced prices. I had it priced $ .99 for one day only and set to go up in $1 increments until it was full price again.

I’ve had some additional sales at full price too (full price being $6.99). I was getting a few reads here and there but it had really tapered off, and then for some reason on the 15th of this month, the book started to get very regular reads.

What I’m hoping this means is that this series could do well if I got more books out. I don’t know though. My experience to date with my main pen name has been that if a book doesn’t sell well right off, it won’t take off just because I’m releasing more books. They sell more, don’t get me wrong, but none of the series that didn’t start off strong suddenly sell great just because I’ve published more books in those series.

I’d love to have this series with the new pen name behave differently. :D The other view is a bit disheartening when it comes to series I love but feel I shouldn’t spend much time on because it won’t pay off in the long run.

  US UK AU IN  
Earnings
2015 07 68.71 14.79 6.96
2015 08 30.50 3.28  277.61
2015 09 61.71 1.29
Total Earnings 160.92  19.37 6.96  277.61
Sales
2015 07 11 2 1 14
2015 08 1 1 2
2015 09 28 28
Total Sales 40 2 1 1 44
KENP Reads
2015 07 4,681 2,301 6,982
2015 08 4,988 984 5,972
2015 09 6,733 386 7,119
Total Reads 16,402 3,671     20,073

So far in October, I’ve had 2 full price sales and about 7,000 pages read. There’s been absolutely nothing except for that unadvertised Kindle Countdown deal to keep the momentum for this book going, so I guess I’ve been very lucky that it hasn’t dropped to 0 all around. :D

I’ll save the next update for after I get the second book in the series out. Currently the plan is still to go three books at least before I make any judgments about this series.

How I’m building my new pen name: Two weeks in

Here I’m going to lay out my plan for building my second pen name without doing any kind of active promotion. Active promotion generally means most of the kinds of promotional activities you’ve heard of.

This post is the first I’m going to do for the new pen name. It’s part of my plan to build an empire, so that’s where these posts will go. (Yay! I’ve finally figured out something to put in that category.)

The truth is, I feel like a beginner still, but I’ve been publishing my books since July 2012, three years now. I’ve been a writer since I was a young teenager—a very young teenager. Maybe it’s impostor syndrome or just that I know there’s so much I don’t know (that I might never know) about this business, but it’s hard for me to talk to other writers without feeling like the one standing on the outside of success and looking in.

This post is an exercise in getting past all that.

I’ve learned a few things in the last three years and accomplished a lot, and I think I can make a success out of this new pen name even though it’s getting off to a slow start.

So here goes. I’m not planning to give away my new pen name for this experiment. Seriously. If you figure it out, please do not tell me you’ve figured it out. If I didn’t want to be anonymous, I would have chosen to reveal my pen name(s) right from the get go. I would never out you and I would appreciate it if you didn’t out me. ;)

Thank you in advance for being understanding about that! :D

I first published the new book a few days into July. I published at $3.99 because I had heard from a lot of other authors that that was the best price at the moment, and because experimenting with different prices was the entire reason I wanted to do a new pen name. I looked into the market and saw that this was a popular price point in the genre the new book fits into. I’m not used to pricing this low. It felt really weird.

I sold 8 copies at 3.99 in 3 days, then 0 copies for 2 days. I posted the book on my author site, but since there’s never been any activity there because, hey, no books, I don’t consider my pen name to have any kind of a platform. No twitter, no facebook, no G+ profile. I plan to keep it that way for as long as possible. I have a website for the pen name and a mailing list that readers can sign up to. That’s it.

After the 2 days of no sales, I raised the price up to 6.99. I mean, if I’m not going to get lucky with an unexpected hit right off and sales are going to be slow until the second book is done, then I might as well, right? When I use the countdown deal before my 90 days in KDP Select is over, at least the discount will look better.

I sold 3 books at 6.99 in the next 3 days and then back to 0.

At about the one week mark, I put the book into KDP Select and moved on.

It’s a 328 page book as far as KENPC goes, and there’ve been 3006 pages read as of today.

So somebody’s reading it.

Now the wait is on until I get a second book written and published.

I’ll post first month results when they’re available, but the fact is, I don’t expect much. New pen name, no promo, high price, etc. There’s just no real chance that anything of note will happen until the next book comes out.

My goal is to put out the next book in the series for the new pen name within 90 days. I’d go for 60, but a lot of stuff is going to have to fall into place to make that happen, including me cracking through to a higher level of daily word count. I’m working on it, but I’m certainly not ready to count on it. :)

Optimistic about tomorrow’s writing

I’m hoping I’ll make progress on the ending of my novel tomorrow. It’d be great if I could actually finish it. That’s actually a possibility now that I think about it. I’m sitting at just over 48,000 words. My original aim for the book was half that. Then I jacked it up to 30,000, at which point I realized the book was most likely going to make novel length and so I quit aiming for any particular word count.

When I went looking through the “deleted” editions to find some bit of info I was sure I’d already written about, I discovered that several of my previous versions were actually remarkably good and probably even better than what I ended up writing this time.

In all likelihood, they shouldn’t have been deleted in the first place. If I hadn’t been so stuck on the idea of reaching the end of the book by 25,000 words, any of these versions could have led to a perfectly good story.

Ah well. Live and learn.

I’m okay with the book as is, even if part of me might always wonder what might have been if I’d kept going with one of the other plots.

But I can’t go through another redraft of any of it or I’m just going to abandon it. That’s all I can really say about that. There’s no more going back with this book. Moreover, I don’t believe the book will ever earn enough to make all the work I’ve put into it worth it, but I wanted to write this book and I did.

I wish I cared more about the market, because if I did, I’d probably be many thousands of dollars ahead of where I am, but I don’t and I can’t make myself so I just do the best I can doing what I can tolerate when it comes to the business end of publishing and writing only what I want to write. I’m sure the big sellers don’t begrudge me my modest success doing things my way—more sales for them! ;)

My writing and publishing (non)strategy

I price high(ish) for the genre I’m in. Mostly so that I won’t have to go in and change prices anytime soon. Nothing lower than $2.99, and novels for $6.99. Collections at $8.99, but I don’t bundle novels. Too much work, tbh. Someday I might though and sell them only on non-Amazon stores where I can make a decent royalty for stuff over $9.99, because I’d likely want to charge $16.99 for a 3 novel bundle.

I don’t run sales on my books. Mostly because that would mean I had to go to some dashboard somewhere and change prices. So let me add a caveat. I’ve given away a code on my author website for my main pen name that allowed my site visitors to get a book of mine for free for a limited time, and I’ve done this twice in the last two years. It was a gift to anyone who came by my site.

I don’t study the market. In fact, I don’t read that many books in my pen names’ genres. I used to read a lot of fan fiction in related genres and I’ve been a voracious reader my whole life, but I don’t enjoy a lot of the books in the genres I write in currently. That’s why I write my own books, because I’m an unsatisfied reader.

I have a mailing list. The only time I ever send a notice is when I publish something new. I didn’t even bother to notify my list that I’d published a collection of my short stories. I might throw it at the end of my next announcement for a new book. I might not.

I publish paperbacks of all my work, but I’m behind because I do all the formatting myself. In Word. And I hate widows and orphans and runts and ugly hyphenation, so I’m a bit of a perfectionist about it. ROI means nothing to me when it comes to my paperbacks even though I keep telling myself it should. ;)

I like to write and that’s what I want to do. But I want to write what I want and publish what I want and although I do hope to make readers happy, my first goal is to make myself happy. :) Of course, I don’t talk about that on my author site. That’d be a bit rude.

I … can’t really think of anything else I do or don’t do right now but if I remember anything, I’ll update. :D

I Back Up My Work a Bit Like a Crazy Person

I would never depend on one backup. I back up my works at least once daily, often twice, to Google Drive, Dropbox, an SD card, a networked computer’s hard-drive (which I back up to an external hard-drive), and then I throw in the occasional email of my WIPs to a secondary and tertiary email account and a DVD backup.

I also copy my main works directory monthly to create a monthly snapshot of it on my main writing computer’s hard-drive.

This all works like a charm and doesn’t take me but seconds to do. I use Spacejock Software’s yCopy2 and saved jobs to make doing these backups simple and quick. It’s as easy as clicking a shortcut link for each backup I want to run.

After every day’s work, I copy my WIP files to a backup directory so that I have a complete daily record of what I’ve written (or deleted). If I work on a WIP for 80 days, then I end up with at least 80 copies in the backup directory. I say “at least” because if I take a break, sometimes I back up then too, and if I know I’m about to do any kind of editing or redrafting, I back up then.

I regularly check that my copies of these files are present where they’re supposed to be and that they open without any problems.

That’s how I back up my writing.

As far as backing up other files: pictures, letters, emails, program settings, even my Calibre library of nearly 800 ebooks? I don’t even bother. It’s kind of funny. I really need to get on that…