Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Moving One Step Closer



Last week I told you all about my impatience problem. Having worked so hard on my young adult novel, Like You Mean It, I was anxiously awaiting its release as an e-book. As you learned I wasn’t doing a very good job of playing the waiting game.

This week, I’m feeling a bit better. Just one day after my last blog post, Like You Mean It was finally made available in the Nook bookstore. Since I own a Nook, I was quite literally jumping up and down when I did my daily search of the bookstore and saw it there. There’s something about seeing your book in that bookstore that makes you feel like a writer.

Of course, I went straight to my social media sites to let all of my friends, family and fans know that it was available. While everyone was excited for me, one question prevailed: when will it be available on Kindle?

When will Like You Mean It be available on the Kindle? That’s a good question, and one I’m afraid I can’t answer. Truth be told, I was a bit surprised that the book made it to the Nook faster than the Kindle considering that Kindle is the most popular e-reading device and Nook is supposedly on the way out. I can say the e-book was shipped to Amazon last week.

In checking with the publisher, it seems that Amazon and Apple iBooks don’t always respond to e-book shipments right away.  With e-books now the norm, there is sometimes a backlog of books that have already been received and are waiting to be pushed to the Kindle and iBooks stores. For Like You Mean It fans that own Kindles or use iBooks that means you have to wait longer than Nook owners before you’ll have the book in your library.

So, the bottom line here is that we’re not quite there yet. Like You Mean It hasn’t been made available to all readers, but at least we’re moving one step closer. It’s not the best of outcomes, but it’s far from the worst. And yes, I’ll keep you posted on its availability.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The Waiting Game



I may have mentioned this once or twice, but I hate waiting.  Whether it’s waiting in a long line at the grocery store or waiting for my Amazon order to arrive in the mail, my reaction is the same.  I get impatient, and I’ll admit that it’s sometimes irrationally so.  That said I do my best to keep that reaction in check in public. You’re not going to see me cussing out the cashier or yelling at the clerks in the post office, but even those who don’t know me can probably tell at a glance that I’m not a fan of the waiting game. 

That same impatience extends to my writing. I’m so anxious to finish a novel that I’ve often spent several hours a night working on my latest creation. Once it’s finished, I’m no better. I dive right in to the editing process.  I always tell myself I’m going to give it a few days and take a breather, but I’m usually lying to myself.  This is something that can be both helpful and harmful to my writing. It helps in that it gives me drive and ambition. It hurts when that drive and ambition rushes me and makes the finished product sloppy.   I once had a fellow writer, a rather accomplished one at that, tell me that he really liked my work but he was disappointed with the ending. The way he put it, he could tell I just wanted to get the story over with.

Once again, I find myself playing the waiting game for my writing. This time, I’m waiting for my newly published e-book, Like You Mean It, to be available in e-book stores.  To be fair, it’s only been a week since it was published and accepted for premium catalog placement, and granted the publisher ships weekly to most major e-book retailers. Let’s not forget that if the retailer has a backlog of orders that will cause a delay.  I know all of this, yet I still find myself obsessively checking both my Apple iBooks store and my Nook to see if the book is available. And when I say obsessively, I mean multiple times a day as if it might be there at noon despite not being there at ten.

I like to think I’m not the only one who’s anxious for Like You Mean It to be available at major e-tailers. I imagine that my readers are ready for it to be there too; especially when I told them this would be the month they could have that long awaited book. While I’m sure that’s still the case, the book will still be available this month, I’d much rather that happen sooner than later. For those of you who know me, I’m sure you know the fact that I can’t do anything to speed up the availability offends the control freak in me!

So, like it or not, there’s nothing I can but continue to play the waiting game in the hopes that soon it will come to end. Oh, and I can continue a vigilant review of the bookstores in my e-reading devices. 

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Time to Let Go



For the last few months, I’ve been working hard to get my new novel ready for release as an e-book. Okay, it’s not really a new novel.  It’s a novel I’ve shared with the world before. I’d originally pulled it from being a free download on Wattpad because I’d signed a contract to have it published which meant it was no longer mine.

When the publishing contract fell through, I was faced with a choice. I could either try to find a new home for it or make one myself. Being that I’m no stranger to being an independent author, I decided to look into the possibility of releasing it on my own as an e-book.  After doing some research into Smashwords, I was sold. I was going to release this novel on my own. Since I’d offered it free once before, it didn’t seem right to start charging for it so I decided I’d leave it as a free download. This isn’t about making money. It’s about two things really. First, this novel has meant a lot of things to a lot of people, and I want them to have that back. Second, I’d like to build my audience and test the waters of the e-book market.

In the last few months, I’ve read and reread. I’ve edited and edited and edited some more. Some days, I’d think it was great only to find that I used the word was when it should have been what. I told myself that I wasn’t going to let this novel go until it was what I thought was one hundred percent perfect. I was going to keep reading and editing until I wasn’t able to find anything else I could change. Well, you know what I’ve discovered in this process?

I’ve found that I’m never going to be satisfied. Even when all of the mechanics are correct, I’ll still think I should revise a scene or at the very least change a few words. This has opened my eyes to something. If I don’t let go, the readers are never going to have this novel they’ve waited so patiently for. That doesn’t mean I’m throwing in the towel and letting it out riddled with mistakes. That’s not it at all.

I’m here today to say I think it’s ready. After months of work, this novel, whose first draft was written back in 2005, is finally ready to be published. It’s time to let go and hope for the best.