Doing Less but Accomplishing More

So the scheme to cut the production schedule by about 50% has finally pretty well kicked in. We’re now posting about four books a month — one a week — which makes me feel like I’m barely moving. Suddenly whole days have reappeared: I no longer wake up at 5 a.m. and go to bed five minutes later, at 11 p.m. 😀

Strangely, though, it feels like I personally am  accomplishing at least as much and probably more. We recently put our latest Racy Book online. Brace yourself:

Another short story, this one involves a science teacher, a studly visitor, and a funny twist at the end that leaves the other characters a little shocked. It’s the second piece in the “Travelers” frame story, and (assuming you enjoy a little clinical description now and again) it’s pretty entertaining.

Tuesday I’ll put the second “boxed set” of Fire-Rider stories online, offering books seven through twelve under one cover.

Meanwhile, I’m working on a new iteration of the ill-fated diet/cookbook, which I hope we’ll have a shot at selling now that we have a new marketing agent.

A boxed set of the “Family at the Holidays” series is almost ready to go online. All that’s needed is to add a special “bonus” story to give readers a little value added and then post the thing at Amazon.

I’ve put an ad up for one of the naughty books at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Set up a Pinterest page for the marketing lady. Tomorrow must chat with her about what and how she’s doing.

Today I finally got around to downloading Scrivener and beginning to learn how to use it. The instructions are packaged in five interminable steps. The first took a little over an hour to plow through, figure, out, and try to understand. Doesn’t look hard…just damn complicated.

Learning yet another large, complex computer program is NOT something I crave to do. However, apparently it can convert directly to ePub format, which is profoundly desired. Right now the bookoids exist only in .mobi format, which is easy to create but which is salable only at Amazon. We need ePub to sell the things at AllRomances and at Barnes & Noble. And you can mount an ePub file at Amazon, too — probably more easily than farting around with using Amazon’s conversion tool to post from Wyrd.

So once I’ve learned how to use the program, it should cut the workload by making it possible to use the same file to post books at three different retailers.

Scrivener is something I’ve been wanting to get to for weeks and weeks, but have had neither the time nor the physical strength to take on.

A-n-n-n-d… Right now it’s after 11 p.m. The dogs are barking. I can’t scribble another word. And so, to bed…