We didn’t do a great deal at the weekend.
Because we’d moved the garage fridge into the house and the house fridge into the garage the day before, we were able to see what was in the freezer, and we decided to eat meat that’s been in there since Christmas before buying any more. So one of us didn’t need to go to the butcher on Saturday. We could get what little we did want from the supermarket. It also made the supermarket list a bit shorter too, and while I went and got the weekly shop, the poet walked the puppy.
After we’d put the shopping away, the poet made a rhubarb crumble for our tea for the next 3 days. Finding about 10 boxes of frozen blackberries in the former garage fridge, and moving them into the house along with said fridge, meant I only had to buy a couple of cooking apples to make a blackberry and apple something later in the week. We already had the rhubarb and we didn’t want to waste that, so he made a rhubarb crumble with that.
We may have more than one blackberry and apple something, though, as I could only get a bag of cooking apples. They didn’t have any loose cooking apples. But this week, it’s a rhubarb crumble for 3 days, with fresh cream for 2 days and custard for 1 day. Then it’s a blackberry and apple probably crumble for 1 day with custard and 2 days with home made ice cream.
Sunday was Mother’s Day here in the UK, so we went to see the poet’s mother via the supermarket. We took the dog for a quick walk around a re-claimed pit just down the road. And on the way home we bought a sack of sunflower hearts for the birds.
The dog, by the way, was an absolute dream on his walk on Sunday. We were both so proud of him. He was on his long lead. We’re still working on his recall so can’t let him off the lead yet even if we normally would. But he hardly pulled at all, and every time he got a few feet in front of us, he actually stopped and waited for us to catch him up.
That was so sweet and something Rufus never did. Let Rufus off his lead and he was gone. Hawley is pretty much the same, with neither dog at all worried about losing us. But we were so pleased with Alfie that in places where he can come off the lead, we may be letting him off sooner rather than later.
On Monday we struggled to get up. The poet had some sort of stomach bug on Friday and it lingered over the weekend. By yesterday, I was getting a slight nagging too, but my stomach has always been stronger than his. But we were both quite tired on Monday morning.
When we did get up, he went straight to work, answering emails, working on reports, attending a Teams meeting. I had my dirty cuppa, wrote my morning pages (more than 400 words this time!), and did a tiny bit of reading. Then I folded a load of washing off the 2 clothes horses, took it through to the bedroom, and sorted the first wash load of the week and put that through.
I got dressed and we took the dog for a very quick walk before coming back and feeding the garden birds. I also cleaned out and refilled the giant water bowser as some of the little birds have been trying to drink out of it and it’s been filthy dirty.
The poet answered some more emails and had another Teams meeting while I worked on this week’s diary and then watched a WMG workshop on plotting with depth, week 1. I started today’s blog post off, shared Monday’s book review on Medium (I thought I’d scheduled it, but I hadn’t), and turned back to the client edit.
On Sunday, Book 2 had come in from the proofreading client, so I acknowledged that and gave him an idea of when I might be able to start it which, all being well, will be the first full week of April now.
The client edit took the rest of the day. I also exchanged a couple of emails with the editing client as she’d sent back one of the books I’ve already edited for proofreading, complete with author and proofreader comments already consolidated.
On Tuesday, the poet had an early start but I seem to have had a late start. Such a late start that I didn’t do my morning pages until much later in the day, and at my desk to boot. The dog went on his longest walk, which will now be the default. It’s just under a mile and takes just under 30 minutes. I don’t know how else to add the last bit of both to the circuit without retracing our footsteps.
I don’t know what I did all day Tuesday to be frank. It wasn’t house work, it wasn’t editing, and it wasn’t writing – apart from the 400+ words I did for my morning pages.
Ah, yes…I updated the 40-project spreadsheet and realised that without 12 novellas this year and without 12 short stories, I might not need all 40 columns this time. So that put me in a dilemma about whether to just continue with it this year and leave all the rest blank, or go back to an older version with fewer projects.
While I left that to percolate at the back of my mind, I registered myself with the Human Authored people. I’m entitled to join via the Society of Authors, or we can join in our own right. I think I joined in my own right and then hopped over to the Society of Authors to see if I had an account there. I did.
As I waited for the Human Authored human to come back to me and let me know my registration was successful, I downloaded the Human Authored logo and then played with where to put it on my book covers. The ebooks don’t have a back cover, so it can’t go on that next to the barcode, and to put it on the front somewhere messed up my front cover designs. I decided instead to just include it on the copyright page of each book, and then I had to go and play with sizing to see what would work with the Baggy Bottom Books logo.
They ended up in separate areas, the Human Authored logo right beneath my byline and the Baggy Bottom Books logo just above the other copyright information. That worked quite well on the fiction, but not the non-fiction. So now I have to decide where to position it on the non-fiction.
I found out that if I publish my books direct to Kobo, I get 70% of the book price as opposed to 60% at Draft2Digital. I looked at Apple too, and they also pay 70%. I went and checked KDP and they also pay 70% for books $2.99 or more or 35% for cheaper books. D2D takes 10% off the top of those, which is fine as their tools, in my opinion, are the best. But was it worth me taking all of my books off Kobo, Apple and Kindle on D2D and going direct?
I already publish direct with Google Play Books, and books that D2D have rejected on Amazon’s behalf have been accepted by Amazon themselves. How hard would it be to upload the ebook file to Kobo and Apple, just like I do with Google Play? Of course, I don’t know if Kobo and Apple will accept the very short material without going via D2D, so that might have an impact. But it got me thinking.
I already have to go through all of my books and put the Baggy Bottom Books logo on where the old Baggins Bottom Books logo is. I already have to go through all of my books and put the Human Authored logo on the copyright pages. I have to go through some of my books and put new covers on them, covers I’ve made myself in Affinity. And I have to go through and put consistent prices on some of them too.
Then I have to register each and every one of them with Human Authored, I have to register most of them with Legal Deposit and for PLR, and I have to register some of them with ALCS. Is it worth taking them off Kobo, Apple and Kindle and uploading them direct at the same time?
All of this required a new spreadsheet, or I could just continue the tick boxes along the spreadsheet I use to keep track of when and where everything is published. I decided to extend the existing spreadsheet as everything else is already there, apart from the ISBNs and the ASINs, which of course would all be different for each of the platforms.
Next I checked my reports for the past 12 months at D2D and found that other than Overdrive and the occasional Kindle book, D2D isn’t selling a lot to the other platforms. None to Apple, none to Kobo, one or two to Kindle. Most of my royalties are from print versions or the lending libraries. Would Apple, Kobo and Kindle algorithms push my books to the top of their searches if I published direct with them?
All food for thought.
And that, my friends, is what I spent much of Tuesday thrashing through.
Today’s thrashing will be how many words I can write in a week and how many sessions per week might produce a book and 4 short stories every month (with a week off for good behaviour or an extra week bonus).
This post appears on Words Worth Writing, Medium and Patreon.
It’s a constant data analysis and then switching things up, isn’t it? Be very careful of KDP, especially now that they run things through AI, pretending it’s about readers asking about books, and there’s no opt-out. Read through that, and see if those terms work for what you want.
All the food sounds lovely!
I hope all tummies are feeling much better.