So yesterday I started the upload of Slave Labor to Snowflake Press’s print-on-demand service, just to see what would happen. It went pretty well until (I think) until I reached a point where the next step was… ????? Self-evident, this site is not.
Finding no way to proceed past the point of having uploaded the book and entered my company’s information, I saved and sent an email to their support folks. Got a message back instructing on what to do, so today I have to decipher that and move forward. I think the next step elicits page proofs — interestingly, from their online instructions as far as I got, it appeared that you’d better have printed and proofed your PDFs yourself, before uploading, ’cause you weren’t going to get bluelines or page proofs or whatever. If they ship proofs, though, THAT will be grand.
I’m also ready now to upload How I Lost 30 Pounds in Four Months, the diet/cookbook. Realized there was no reason to wait until I’d figured out how to get that on Kindle and Nook before setting up the PoD version. So once I learn EXACTLY how to do this task, 30 Pounds will be next.
Yesterday I developed a spreadsheet (I really do need a database on these computers!) to identify and keep track of stock photography for covers and populated it mightily. Today, having found those images, I need to subscribe to Shutterstock and start downloading and storing images for the future bookoids.
The Über-To-Do list I made a week or ten days ago, the one where I figured if I could get to three items a day, in a week or so I’d be positioned to kick Camptown Races Press into high gear — i.e., to focus most of my energy on writing and pre-marketing racy books and on uploading the books that already exist — is pretty well accomplished. A few things remain to be completed: one can’t register an ISBN, for example, until one has the cover art, and as usual I’m waiting (and waiting…and waiting…) for the artist to get done with the Fire-Rider images.
The websites are moved over to WestHost. The wonderful and clever Jesse is now freed of another distraction from his ambitions, and a new back-end guru is working on organizing the Blog Empire in a more reasonable way. It’s grown up like topsy, of course, and the result resembles…well, a weed patch. With that tidied up, things should run much more efficiently, I hope.
Today I have to move the Writers Plain & Simple domain name from WordPress.com to my possession, meaning what for that website, I do not know. As soon as we have the domain name, then we’ll move the site to WestHost, too. But I hope it won’t cause Writers P&S to go dark in the interiim. Oh well.
Also today I’m going to start building a kind of in-house user manual describing, step-by-step, how to do some of the complicated techno-tasks that have to be done. Some of these exist of a piece here and there — I downloaded William King’s explanation of how to build an e-book cover to a PDF and printed it. I’ve experimented with this once and found it pretty easy. Since I’m good with PP and not good at all with PhotoShop, and since the proposed smυtty books don’t need to have anything very fancy on the front, I’m thinking this will be the path of least resistance when it comes to publishing the frolics.
Other procedures to go into the proposed manual: how to post to Kindle, how to post to Nook, how to upload to Snowflake, maybe (if it proves very complicated) how to get stock art images. Any time I have to deal with something that’s yet another learning experience, I’m going to write down the steps, print them out, and stick them in a three-ring binder. So with any luck, I won’t have to look this stuff up and try to figure it out over and over and over again, which is what happens now.
Once again, though, this morning I simply had to take a break, which is what I’m doing while scribbling these golden words. The house has degenerated into SUCH a mess, I simply couldn’t stand another minute of it. Since I got out of the last visit to the Mayo Hotel and Resort, I’ve been working while flat on my back in bed. Though I’ve been recovering, most of the time I feel a lot better laying down.
Of course, my being out of commission does nothing to stop the constant blizzard of incoming paper. Piles and piles and PILES of it have come to rest on almost every surface in the house.
So I shoveled that off.
Found a box that would fit the index cards for the Boob Book, which have been arrayed in tidy (dust-collecting) stacks atop the family-room desk. Put those away neatly.
Then shoveled out a space in the office to hold the box of cards plus the 787 pages of source material for the book, which have accrued in three large binders. So got that stuff out of sight.
I’m waiting until I get a contract to write that book. I’ll send it to half a dozen agents plus one of my former publishers, Columbia UP. If no one bites, then I may write it and self-publish it, but not until I get the paying business off the tarmac.
Shoveled more paper off the desk in the office. Found stuff that was tossed on the desk because no file folders exist to hold it. So now have to devise some file folders and, far more problematic, find a place that can hold him. All the file space in the house and garage — four file cabinets’ worth — is jammed full of crap I’m supposed to save for three years, five years, seven years, or forever. What is the point?
Soaked the blood from the most recent medical adventure out of the sheets. Was kind of surprised to see it actually wash out. Sheets are expensive and I really, really didn’t want to have to throw that set away.
Well, I’m about as rested up as I’m ever gonna get. And so, to work…