We had a week off at the end of September but before we broke up, I didn’t have time to write up the wrap-up. In any case, I did plan to do some work while we were off. However, the magazine took a lot of time and effort and turned out to be the only thing I worked on during the week.
In the end I chose not to pursue the pdf yet.
I decided to give Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited/Kindle Select a go for three months. Yes, yes, yes, this goes against every grain in my body. But as almost every writer I know personally (almost every writer I know personally) raves about being exclusive to Amazon, I thought I’d at least give it a go. It’s only for 90 days and I can choose well ahead of then whether or not to renew.
Because I chose to go exclusive, I wasn’t sure if a pdf would count as a digital version of the book, and I also decided that I wanted to give a pdf away to the newsletter subscribers. But because I’m not sure of the exclusivity terminology, I’m going to dig a bit deeper before uploading the pdf and sending the newsletter subscribers the link.
And because I’m holding off on the pdf for now, I chose to just do a straight republication, first of the ebook (to KU only) and of the paperback to release at the same time. It took a great deal of more work and more time to transfer the edited file back to Word, reformat it, check the credits, and get that uploaded too.
I finally did all of that on Friday.
The KU ebook published within hours, when I thought it would take 72 hours. But it published within hours. And then I spotted a mistake in the files.
The pdf contained ads and fillers. The ebook and the paperback do not. Yet instead of the correct two credits for the cover images (although the design is mine), I still had the credit for the ads. So I corrected the file, downloaded a new version, uploaded that to KU again, and went into an ‘up-to-48-hours’ loop this time…
And that, ladies and gents, is basically where my month went. Apart from the odd bit of editing or proofreading here and there.
We did manage a couple of days out, and we did some baking and I did some sewing while the poet did some painting. I also caved in and finally bought the latest Paperwhite. This time they don’t seem to have given me chance to cancel the order. It was dispatched within minutes. It arrived the next day and the next two days were then spent downloading almost 1,500 books. I made the right decision there, though. I’m very happy with it.
The newsletter didn’t go out in September. I wanted to include a link to the pdf for subscribers. If I get chance on Monday, I’ll send one out then. In the meantime, if anyone knows if I can make a pdf freely available to my private subscribers whilst my ebook is exclusive to Amazon, then please do let me know.
September wrap-up
So, despite my entire month being taken up by almost one task, here’s how the rest of September went:
- complete monthly wordcount & progress spreadsheets for August ✔️
- monthly schedule planning for September ✔️
- new month wordcount & progress spreadsheets for September ✔️
- write the next short story for 12 Stories in 12 Months ✖️
- weekly tech scan & backup ✔️
- weekly diary work ✔️
- attend PF Writing Hour on Twitter every Tuesday ✔️
- revise Fireworks at Killiecrankie and send it to market ✖️
- brainstorm, outline and write The Ace of Swords ✖️
- finish the Vietnam book ✖️
- continue watching the motivational Monday workshops ✔️
- collect reading list for study-along workshop on writing romance ghosts (if it’s still going ahead – at this stage, though, I doubt I’ll read any of them) ✖️
- watch online pop-up workshop on how to make red herrings invisible ✖️
- attend study-along workshop on writing romance ghosts (if it goes ahead) ✖️ (It didn’t)
- (if it goes ahead) write 3 assignments for workshop on writing romance ghosts✖️
- collect reading list for classic workshop on writing mysteries ✖️
- Monkey Dust admin every Monday ✔️
- Diane’s gig list admin every Monday and Thursday ✔️
- continue typing Catch the Rainbow ✖️
- continue writing Project Management for Writers: Gate 3 – How? ✖️
- continue planning The (new) Fool ✖️
- continue planning The Beast Within ✖️
- July/August/September newsletter ✖️
- have another week off ✔️
- finances for September ✔️
Extras
- publish Project Management for Writers: Box Set 1✔️
- revise and reissue Words Worth Reading Issue 1 ✔️
- learn how to publish a magazine pdf on Affinity ✔️
Enjoy the rest of the weekend!
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You did a lot!
I felt wrung out and as though I’d only done one thing for the entire month.