Hi. I’ve missed you.
Maybe you’ve read Trajectory Book 2 and don’t know what to do about that. I know a few of you have read it. Some still are. I can sense these things.
Well if you have read it, please put a review on it. Goodreads is a good place to leave a review. Amazon (click through to your own market) is better.
Thank you.
Now that that’s out of the way, I have some unpleasant bookkeeping to take care of.
Chris Atlee said,
I’m waiting for Book 2 on Kobo!
You’re not the only one, Chris. I’ve been putting off writing about the “epub” situation because it’s a bit embarrassing.
I’ve decided to try everything Amazon has to offer for the first 6 months of Trajectory Book 2‘s life. You can read it for free on Kindle Unlimited or buy it to download. In a month or so, I’m going to try some of Amazon’s marketing machinery to see if I can get a few more copies on people’s Kindles. I intend to put up a preview of the first 10 chapters on Wattpad, at some point when I have the time.
In six months, I’ll take a look at putting up an epub version on Smashwords which gets sent out to all the other epub vendors.
I’m not happy about this situation, but I also want to try to sell some books. You know I’m not a fan of closed systems and formats, and certainly no fan of silos and strong-armed business tactics, but the fact is, more people buy on Amazon than on all the other services combined.
For Trajectory Book 1, sales on epub, which includes Smashwords, iTunes, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and probably others accounted for less than 5% of my total sales. While five percent is better than no percent, it’s still a tiny fraction of the whole and when you look at the amount of extra effort required to publish in a separate format (new ISBN number, separate document versions with different cover sizes, keeping edits in sync, etc.), you have to seriously question whether the effort is worth it.
Well, there’s that.
We had a great weekend and managed to catch a window during the New Brunswick burn ban, allowing us to light a firebowl down by the river. I had my camera with me and ran through a couple of batteries taking long exposures of the incredible sky out here.
We saw a bunch of shooting stars which might have been some early scouts from the Boötids scheduled to peak… last night! (June 27)
Those will probably be the only fireworks we get during the long Canada day weekend unless we get some serious rain.
I’ve managed to get what will become Book 3 (title tbd) imported into Scrivener and have been fiddling with notes and categorizations. I’m a little worried that Scrivener’s going to be distracting with its tagging and structural options, but figure it’s worth a try. I’ve already found some limitations that will require further formatting and processing outside of it, which means it’s adding to the workflow instead of replacing a large chunk of it as I’d hoped.
I think my pen and paper notes and diagrams are cute, but I worry about losing them. It occurred to me at some point last year that my binder of notes was probably my most important possession. Little bits of paper with scribbles on them scattering in the wind is one of the things that keeps me up at night.
Anyhoo, that’s enough of me. Leave a review! Leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you.
I’ve heard some people take photos of their notes and upload them to Endnote or just Dropbox, if that helps! I definitely find when I’m thinking something through that paper and pen is often best, but backups are a problem.
yes, I have taken pictures of them (imagine, me not taking a picture of something! bananas!), but the physical objects are still what I use. I have a stack of them I like to shuffle around and play with. One crumpled timeline is still my best record of all the plot points in time and space.
It’s hard to replicate that with software without resorting to simulations and modelling. The photos are good as a record, but aren’t as useful.