Publishing Challenge! Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Publication Day!
Today sees the publication of another Wordsworth Collection.

Twee Tales More is all three of the original Twee Tales short story collections in one omnibus edition, plus an extra four stories bringing it to 40 short stories altogether. At the moment, this is the last of my Twee Tales collections as I’m taking the short stories in another direction.

You can find all of my books on the BUY MY BOOKS tab on the blog, or you can go to www.books2read.com/DianeWordsworth.

I changed my mind
I brought forward Twee Tales More because I decided that the short story I was going to write and publish was worth a much bigger project. I also thought this replacement would be easy…

I had to go in and remove all of the original title pages, change them for section pages, add a new title page, add a new section page for the extra four stories, check for consistency, and then go through and make sure that the layout was the same throughout.

It wasn’t. The second volume was all tabulated instead of indented and so were two of the stories in the third volume. Smashwords had argued with me about these two volumes, saying they contained tabs that weren’t compatible with their meat-grinder. Smashwords was right.

Once I’d got my raw material ready, I uploaded it Draft2Digital, tweaked a few things, and published the ebook. Then I used the ebook file to create the paperback file and then fiddled around with widows and orphans, giving up in the end and leaving a couple of ‘the end’s on the next page.

The next thing I did was download the Word file, the Epub file and the Mobi file from D2D, and then I uploaded them to Smashwords, adding Twee Tales More to the Wordsworth Collections over there.

Publication schedule
I had a play around with my publication schedule because some stories that I’d pulled that were scheduled to published before are back in the running again. This is because I’ve now pulled them down from Medium so I don’t have to argue the toss with Amazon at a time when I’m already busy with other stuff.

At some point in the long and distant future, when I’ve exhausted all avenues for releasing the short stories (i.e. in collections as well), I’ll start to fire them at Medium again, and probably Vocal – if I’m still with either. I already cancelled my membership with Medium, but if they start to fix the problems there, I might go back.

Because I’d now decided to publish the stories as standalones again, I got a bit carried away and went off to arrange one of them for publication in a couple of months’ time. However, I’d clearly deleted all versions of the cover. So off I went to choose a new illustration, and set it in the cover template.

When I went to proofread the story, I realised why I’d deleted it… it was less than 1,000 words, and therefore a flash fiction story and not a Wordsworth Short. So I had to shelve it again and go in search of another one to replace it. (I found one!)

At the moment, I have seven short stories ready to publish, one short story to write ahead of publication, one writers’ guide to write, and three collections to collate. That takes me to 23 May.

I still have lots of short stories that can be published as Wordsworth Shorts or as part of a flash fiction collection. However, most of them are seasonal, and I’ve almost exhausted all of the ones that are seasonal in the spring and summer.

That means… I have to start to write something new. The options already outlined or even drafted are:

short Tarot tale: The Ace of Swords
short Tarot tale: The Ace of Pentacles
short Tarot tale: The Two of Wands
Tarot novella: The Fool
Tarot novella: The Hanged Man
Marcie Craig novel: The Beast Within
historical novel: Catch the Rainbow
writers’ guide: Project Management for Writers: Gate 3
writers’ guide: Project Management for Writers: Gate 4
writers’ guide: Project Management for Writers: Gate 5
writers’ guide: Project Management for Writers: Omnibus
writers’ guide: Diary of a Pussycat
writers’ guide: Diary of a Cool Cat
writers’ guide: Writers’ Ideas – where to find them and what to do with them
writers’ guide: Project Management for Writers: Writealong

I do think I have plenty to be going on with. The problem is, choosing what to do first. I’m already in the midst of writing or collating the following:

seasonal short story: The Phoenix Lights
short story collection: Flash Fiction 2
writers’ guide: Project Management for Writers: Gate 2
writers’ guide: Diary of a Tiger
writers’ guide: Publishing Challenge
numerous other seasonal short stories
twelve more short story collections

I’m also in the process of finishing one ghostwriting contract, just starting a new ghostwriting contract (for an existing client), and editing a mahoosive non-fiction book. Plus, I have two weeks in March when I’m on jury service.

New stuff I’m also toying with includes:

Regency Shorts: a short series of short connected stories set in the Regency period
Wordsworth Regencies: longer stories, either novels or novellas, set in the Regency period
Tudor Shorts: a short series of short connected stories set in the Tudor period
Wordsworth Tudors: longer stories, either novels or novellas, set in the Tudor period
three more Marcie Craig stories
two more Toni & Bart time travel tales
an entire deck’s worth of short Tarot tales and Tarot novellas
four prequels to the historical novel (which in itself is a semi-prequel to the first Marcie Craig novel)
serials

So I have a lot to think about still, a lot of writing, and some jiggling about to do with the schedule. Asana makes it so easy to move things around, though. I can just pick a project up with my mouse, drop it somewhere, and see how it works with everything else.