Publishing Challenge! Chapter 9

Image by Gino Crescoli from Pixabay

See Chapter 8 here

Chapter 9

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

Ten Short Stories: Wordsworth Shorts 1 – 10 is the first of the new look anthologies of short stories. I had to rush this one through as I thought I was going to be doing jury service on publication day. It took longer than I thought it would to collate and format ten short stories, but at least I had the cover ready.

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.

Two other books I rushed through because of jury service were both Wordsworth Shorts: Going, Going, Gone and The Phoenix Lights. However, The Phoenix Lights was a brand-new story not yet written. So I also had to schedule in the brainstorming, outlining, writing and proofreading before I could publish. At least the cover was ready for that one as well.

These two stories are coming out in the next two weeks. Then I’m back on schedule.

Smashwords sale
Yesterday, the Smashwords read-an-ebook week-long sale started. I have six books in this sale for half-price and the first three of the Wordsworth Shorts for free.

I’m not adding links to these blog posts that are going to be turned into books, because it’s a nightmare taking them all out again when I come to collate them all. Not only do links break or become obsolete, but they also add extra characters to the text, such as a tiny little ‘o’ instead of a space, and that knocks the formatting out.

Therefore, please copy and paste the following in your browser if you’d like to have a look at all of my books, including those in the sale:

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DianeWordsworth

This link works all the time, so feel free to save it. There are two good reasons for publishing my books on Smashwords as well as with Draft2Digital (aside from the fact that both companies have merged now and each has a different reach):

  1. Smashwords has its own storefront
  2. Kindle users can download .mobi files without having to go via Amazon

Yes, you do need an account, but you need that with Amazon anyway. The only other downside is that the books are in US dollars rather than your own country’s currency. Conversion charges can be avoided using Paypal and similar, or by those who have bank accounts or credit cards that don’t charge an international transaction fee.

I’m gradually adding all of my books to the Smashwords store.

Rejigging the schedule
On Friday morning last week I had a good long look at the schedule for the coming months, not just for the publishing challenge, but for several aspects of my work. For this challenge, though, on Friday, I booked in two more short stories and a new series episode. The stories are written and ready, the episode will be a new job.

Once I’d decided on the schedule, I made book covers for the two stories and added them to both the sidebar on the blog and the gallery in the draft post I’m planning for the end of the challenge. The episode cover is already done.

Another cover I changed last week was the one for Alexandra’s Ragtag Band. I really liked the original cover, but was worried that the model on the cover might be associated with the drugs content of the story (only cannabis, but you never know). I didn’t like the replacement cover, though. so I changed the picture credit text instead in the original to include a disclaimer. I hope that is sufficient, because I do really like the original cover.

Back to writing again
Today I start writing again. (Yay!) People are buying Project Management for Writers: Gate 1 – What? Therefore, I thought I really ought to get going on the second book in the series. I already have the introduction done as well as the section on the ‘Gates’. Today I’ll run through and check everything ahead of writing Chapter 1 tomorrow.

Next week I start writing brand-new short stories again too. Being able to start writing today is down to my jury service being cancelled. I did have the fortnight blocked out for all except just one client, whose work I could have taken with me on the laptop.

However, because of the jury service and publishing those books mentioned above early, I don’t have any publishing prep work booked in again until the end of next week, and that was originally pushed back to the following week.

Over to you…

Do you have any questions? How is your publishing challenge going?

Publishing Challenge: out in 2023