And there were are. Friday already. Again. At least it’s still January!
I forgot to mention in yesterday’s blog post, but as I was on my way out to the hospital for my rearranged appointment, an email came in from Medium. That rejigged article I’d done on Patreon and submitted to Medium was accepted.
Things seem to have changed a lot over there. For a start, we’re not able to publish more than 2 articles or stories in any 24-hour period.
When I was being published there before, in someone else’s publication, we struggled to stay at the top of the page, so many people were posting so many articles. Now it looks as though we stay at the top of the page for a lot longer, and on the opening page for even longer still. Much better than disappearing into the ether.
We also seem to be earning a lot faster. Not a great deal of money, but certainly it appears a lot quicker than it does.
They’ve obviously been doing some work over there, or a lot of the contributors jumped ship when it was clear they wouldn’t see a penny (or a cent or a sou) despite thousands and thousands of reads. I’ve had a handful of reads and I’ve earned a handful of pennies – 6 cents at the time of writing…that’s more than I sometimes earned in a year over there before.
The poet was up with the larks yesterday morning as he had an 8:30am meeting on site he had to attend. The rain was throwing itself down in sheets, so he had to go even earlier so he could take more care on the roads. The dogs got up with him then came back to bed. But 10 minutes after he’d gone they wanted feeding, so I caved and got up too.
The morning was filled with lots of personal legal stuff I had to get started, and I kicked off over my dirty cuppa (during my quiet hour!) with some emails. Correspondence was pretty steady then right up until my midday brunch. I didn’t do any work, but I got a lot done.
First job of the day was yesterday’s blog post, which I did and posted to WordPress and to Patreon. But when I tried to post it to Medium I got that warning message that I’d already hit my maximum of 2 stories in a 24-hour period. Eh? thought I. Earlier in the week I was able to post all of January blog posts to date without a hitch. And then I realised why.
I’d imported those stories from the WordPress site, I hadn’t published them directly to Medium. There’s a difference, apparently. Hey, ho. I toddled off to the WordPress post, copied the URL, went back and imported it to Medium, and Voila! No warning message. Aha!
So, in future, I compose the blog post in Scrivener, copy & paste it into both WordPress and Patreon, then import it to Medium from WordPress. Job’s a fish, as they say in Yorkshire, for some very strange reason I’m too afraid to ask about.
I collected another review book to ‘hoard’. Gosh, that describes me so perfectly! I really ought to start shifting them all. I just don’t know whether to work backwards with the most reason or carry on trying to read them in series order…
Next, while I cogitated over that, it was yesterday’s advanced depth workshop revision, Week 5. And when that finished, it was time for my afternoon meal.
I should have done the client edit after eating, but I was still cogitating over the review books. While I mulled, I updated my book reviews board on Trello. This time, instead of then going in and collecting them all from my Kindle, converting them to epub, then sideloading them to the Kobo and uploading them to Google Play Books, I just marked them all as ‘sent to Kindle’. For now.
In future, I’ll only go through all the conversions if I end up starting to read the actual book and want it everywhere so I can access it everywhere, including on Apple Books on my Mac. It’s useful having the book on Kindle, Kobo, Apple and Google Play in case one or the other falls over.
For example, when we were driving around Scotland in the campervan we were often without a signal. But if I had the book downloaded to the Kobo ink-reader (much easier to see in bright light), it wasn’t a problem.
I do like reading Google Play Books. It’s not yet as slick as Kindle, but it’s a much nicer feeling knowing it’s not that particular giant, just another…but we download those too. Just like on Kindle, and just like on Kobo. But those are on the phone or the tablet, and less easy to see in sunlight.
I went over to NetGalley then to make sure I’d actually collected all the books on my shelf, as some books seem to have vanished off my Kindle for some reason. (That remote control again, perchance?)
I decided to read the last book I collected first and work backwards, only going to the start of a series if the previous book is, say, Book 4 and I haven’t already read the others. But some of the later books are only on the Kindle and I hadn’t converted them yet. So I did that first then made sure I had one standalone and 2 series on my Kobo and on my Kindle (so I can read either wherever I am). (The Kobo at home, the Kindle app on my phone while I’m out and about.) (The Kobo app is the least slick of the lot, or out of the ones I use it is.)
One series I liked but started at Book 4 (of 5 now) had 2 books missing. I must have missed them completely when they were available on NetGalley. So I went and bought those. Then got frustrated because I couldn’t convert either of them. Sometimes it just doesn’t work. Ah, well. I could read them on my Paperwhite if I’m at home, but I decided to return them for a refund. If I buy a book, I really do think I should be able to read it on my preferred device and not the retailer’s.
In the end, I also bounced the 2 outstanding books in the series back to the publisher on NetGalley, explaining why I wouldn’t be reading or reviewing them. I wanted to read the 2 missing books as characters were frequently mentioned in Book 4 who I hadn’t previously read about, so I didn’t know who they were, which spoiled it a bit for me.
So that’s 2 books returned for refund and 2 books not reviewed, thanks to not being able to read them on my Kobo.
And that was that. Thursday was over and done with. And this morning, I was back at the hospital…
Have a great weekend! I think we may get very wet if we venture out.
This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.
