Category Archives: Publishing

The Day After That, the Queen's Child Comes In

by Liana Posted on February 19, 2014
This entry is part 64 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

So that's a fancy way of saying I'm really happy with the things I got done/discovered even if it didn't result in a lot of new words yet.

Most importantly, I got my website issues resolved yesterday. I still don't know what went wrong and the solution was anything but simple and easy, but there's this handy Webspace Recovery option on 1and1, and I was able to recover my missing files.

Last night, I discovered how to do hardcover editions without going through Lightning Source and when to do casewrap vs. dust jacket. It got most of the mass market reformatted yesterday. There were some serious margin issues, which is a pity because now I have to do the justification all over again and hope the page count stays the same or close to it and possibly retrim the cover.

I did a huge amount of percolation/brainstorming with my collaborator and prepped Seven Days to finally to get written properly.

I wrote poetry of all things, one poem of which I've been trying to write for over a year. It just started playing in my ear this morning and I stopped, dropped, and wrote. I knew I wanted to write something about the fact that my great-grandmother dressed my grandmother as an Indian princess because of her actual lineage and that my mother learned English off the television and that I'm not the sum of my parts and am the product of legal immigration on both sides—from Mexico. So yeah. I wrote something. It means something to me.

Updated and resubmitted the mass market interior. That did affect the spine width and I'll have to update the cover. Again. :le sigh:

Compiled my data on an invisible fandom. I'm working out what the canon is in my head so I can write what my recipient wants.

Today is really a gathering things up in prep day. I was hoping for more of a throwing words down day, but oh, well. Both steps are more than necessary.

And there went the mass market submitted for review. The cover is tweaked and hopefully correct at last.

Lumping in yesterday's blog counts.

Word Counts:

  • Fiction: 0 words
  • Poetry: 57 lines | 392 words
  • Blog: 679 words

February Totals

  • Fiction: 5630 words
  • Poetry: 73 lines | 451 words
  • Blog: 3245 words

Pieces Started Not Finished

  • Fiction: Hear the Stars, novella.
  • Nonfiction/Blog: Indie Author Guide to Genre, book/blog series.
  • Fanfic: Invisible Ficathon Treat.

Completed Pieces

  • Fanfic: “Wholeness of Self,” 783 words.
  • Poem: "Tell Me," 8 lines | 37 words.
  • Poem: "Mother," 8 lines | 22 words.
  • Fanfic: Invisible Ficathon Treat, 269 words.
  • Poem: "Native," 31 lines| 232 words.
  • Poem: "Moderation," 6 lines| 20 words.
  • Poem: "I Should Think," 20 lines| 140 words.
Posted in Publishing, Website, Writing | Tagged , | Comments Off on The Day After That, the Queen's Child Comes In

Yesterday was Good and Bad

by Liana Posted on February 17, 2014
This entry is part 62 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

I have a knack for being inspired on the days my sister decides to be clingy, which puts a real crimp in the getting things done, because I don't share any of my Liana work with her, so no writing while she's hovering. Hmph.

I did get a snippet written and shipped on the collaboration and ordered my updated proof of the trade edition of Dowse and Bleed. The mass market awaits more precise details on what I did wrong on the cover with the live elements. As there's no template, I followed their rules and apparently was still off somehow. When I'm done getting it right, I'm going to make my own template and make it available for anyone else who likes the size and wants to do one.

Going to count a blog post I drafted the day before as well.

Today, I'll try and be a good girl and get the stuff written that I percolated on yesterday. Wish me luck!

Word Counts:

  • Fiction: 176 words
  • Poetry: 0 lines | 0 words
  • Blog: 733 words

February Totals

  • Fiction: 4448 words
  • Poetry: 16 lines | 59 words
  • Blog: 2251 words

Pieces Started

  • Fanfic: "Wholeness of Self," one-shot.
  • Fiction: Hear the Stars, novella.
  • Nonfiction/Blog: Indie Author Guide to Genre, book/blog series.
  • Poem: "Tell Me."
  • Poem: "Mother."

Completed Pieces

  • Fanfic: “Wholeness of Self,” 783 words.
  • Poem: "Tell Me," 8 lines | 37 words.
  • Poem: "Mother," 8 lines | 22 words.
Posted in Publishing, Writing | Tagged , | Comments Off on Yesterday was Good and Bad

Author Outliers

by Liana Posted on February 12, 2014

When Amazon reports that self-published books make up 25% of the top 100 list, the reaction from many is that these are merely the outliers. We hear that authors stand no chance if they self-publish and that most won’t sell more than a dozen copies in their lifetime if they do. (The same people rarely point out that all bestsellers are outliers and that the vast majority of those who go the traditional route are never published at all.)

— The Report on Author Earnings

Posted in Publishing | Comments Off on Author Outliers

Today's Trenches

by Liana Posted on January 30, 2014
This entry is part 55 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

Publishing

So I’ve been collaborating and publishing these last few days, and my fingers are itching to get back to my cover art to get it corrected for Createspace. I’m ready to order my proofs and get it off to bed, seriously.

Blogging

In the meantime, I discovered again a deplorable lack of information out there about genre. Most of the intensive information is workshops and classes. I want a reference book. So I’ll be adding into my already over-scattered writing schedule to put together a reference work called The Indie Author Guide to Genre, where I get to cover BISAC, Amazon, cross-genre, subgenres, and examples of how broad the scope of these genres can really be.

Then I’m also going to start putting together some tutorials on the Pods CMS plugin for my own benefit due to the fact that it is deplorably underdocumented and I use it extensively here and exclusively for my new series bible setup. I don’t know PHP. I don’t know SQL. I want an awesome site. Surely that's not too much to ask. :grins:

I’ll put both of these series under cuts so you can skip them if you want.

Writing

Didn’t do so good today, but it was a busy workday and I had to run to break on lunch. I got a chapter tweaked though and it’s off to the collaborator for editing and/or general assessment.

I look at how fast other writers produce and how they do it and I find myself wondering what in the world besides overthinking is holding me back, but then I remember it’s not always overthinking but sometimes sheer ignorance that must be rectified before my thinking actually produces anything of value again. Why do I insist on writing things that require me not to be ignorant?

Scribbling snippets here and there and not big ones, but they're coming.

Series Bible

As mentioned above, I think I’ve got a decent series bible setup now. It’s sparse because I’m focusing on canonical data and current WIP and building the site before focusing on filling everything out, but it exists. This is good.

Fandom

Sign-ups for the Invisible Ficathon start tomorrow. Yay!

Word Counts

Continue reading →

Posted in Publishing, Website, Writing | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Today's Trenches

So I Did Write Yesterday After All

by Liana Posted on January 23, 2014
This entry is part 51 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

I did figure out my edits for the Dowse and Bleed cover, but otherwise thought the day would be a wash.

Well... Not so much.

For the last two hours of the day. Literally. I just decided to force the issue though I was tired and staying up until midnight was a lousy idea, but I did it. Yay me. I think anyway.

No reading yesterday at all, except the on-the-job SEO book. I had noticed Jason Gurley just wrote and published four short stories and I realized I hadn't put any time in my 2014 for can-finish-it-in-a-day shorts, so decided to write one. I got 820 words in though I'm not impressed, and then realized that this was not a pre-existing priority fic, so I wrote 391- and 460- word additions to the collaboration.

At 12:09 a.m. of today, I went blissfully to bed.

Something accomplished, something done
Has earned a night's repose

— "The Village Blacksmith" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Continue reading →

Posted in Publishing, Writing | Tagged , , | Comments Off on So I Did Write Yesterday After All

Up and Down

by Liana Posted on January 20, 2014
This entry is part 49 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

So over the course of the last few days, I have fixed my computer three times and it has unfixed itself. Virus scan tomorrow.

Reading

I am reading The Flood while reading other books because frankly, I'm not ready for the Fire and Water series to be over. The other books were the Queen's Thief books by Megan Whalen Turner. A very long time ago when I was fourteen years old, my writing instructor recommended The Thief. I fell promptly and wholly in love. I never picked up the other books. This year, I rectified that and wow, these are so incredibly good. I want more too. Much more. I feel new fandom coming on.

Publishing

I got through page 20 of justifying/hyphenating the updated trade paperback interior of Dowse and Bleed. This proof already comes to hand too easily. I'm so ready to publish more and update Gone Hunting and write more. Alas! Only so much time and energy.

Writing

Started at 1696 words on Tracing Trouble, wrote 211, dumped those words, then went to the end and kept writing. I wanted to get 1000 on both this story and the collaboration today, but my computer was still crazy and my aunt visited today. I expect my evenings for the rest of the week to be similarly shortchanged.

Word Counts

  • Fiction: 526 words
  • Poetry: 0 words, 0 lines
  • Blog: 215 words

Splintered Gates

  • Today: 0 words
  • Total: 2493 words

Collaboration

  • Today: 0 words
  • Total: 3409 words*

*written by me in 2014

Tracing Trouble

  • Today: 526 words
  • Total: 2011 words

January Totals

  • Fiction: 8967 words
  • Poetry: 212 words | 45 lines
  • Blog: 6924 words

Completed Pieces

  • Poem: "Before My Eyes," 220 words | 47 lines.
  • Fanfic: "Mistakes," 1397 words.
Posted in Journal, Publishing, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Up and Down

Today in Non-Scribbles

by Liana Posted on January 17, 2014
This entry is part 48 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

I didn’t intend to write 63 insignificant blog post words first, but I felt I owed it to you all to say why I didn’t do a daily scribble report or, for that matter, daily scribbles at all.

May I simply advise you that if your operating system ever has issues, flatten the whole thing and start from scratch. While my computer has had a productive life since that whole issue a few years back, it has also been fritzy and, at times, dangerously unstable.

Publication

So I started out tweaking the typesetting for Dowse and Bleed. In mass market size, the spacing suddenly becomes a lot more important than in trade, so I needed a little more than hyphenation to please me. I discovered that you can reduce the font size of the spaces in a line, which modifies justification without messing with line height or font spacing between letters, just words. Needless to say, this is a wonderful tool, though it also has limits, e.g. no more than a four point reduction and preferably only one or two.

Got back a testimonial to Jason Anderson, my formatter for the ebook versions who did a fabulous job. Growled umentionables at my test series bible site which won’t let me log in to add the style guide and series bible information from Dowse and Bleed.

Reading

My brain wouldn’t settle down for reading yet, any reading, so I’ll save that for the evening or tomorrow if I’m too exhausted tonight to do more than fall into bed.

Publication

Hold the presses! The proof arrived! Wow. I like it, though the cover is quite a bit darker than I expected, and I'm seeing a couple of tweaks. Oh, so exciting. I'll have to update the files. I wasn't going to finalize the mass market 'til I saw how my file did for the trade.

Wow.

Ahem. So not counting blog words for the no-scribble days simply because I can get away with it.

To all a good evening!

Posted in Publishing | Tagged | Comments Off on Today in Non-Scribbles

Where HAVE I Been?

by Liana Posted on January 17, 2014
This entry is part 47 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

Well, to be honest, reading The Drought, Honor of the Queen by David Weber, and getting ready to dive into The Flood while also working on getting all formats of Dowse and Bleed ready for publication while trying to resurrect my dead-in-the-water home computer (registry error).

I'll get back to updating after I start scribbling again instead of just percolating and tech supporting. Did I mention tech is not my color?

Posted in Journal, Publishing, Website, Writing | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Where HAVE I Been?

Publishing with a Side Dish of Reading

by Liana Posted on January 13, 2014
This entry is part 45 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

Publishing

I spent most of the morning turning out a mass market edition. My initial resizing had led me to believe my book would be 128 pages. It turned out to be 102. Needless to say, I might have to correct the spine width, but I’m hoping the difference is minute enough that I won’t: 0.05855 in.

Then, I contacted Createspace and asked them to add my second BISAC category to both editions and whether I’d plunked the Mass Market info in the correct field. We’ll see how it goes.

Got the first draft of the formatted ebook back and am very excited. Sent back four small corrections which were mostly my fault. Back and forth, then perfection! So happy.

Reading

Skipped writing for the time to read because noting what I’m reading on the tablet is a royal nightmare.

Writing

Too tired though I shouldn't be, so it's off to bed.

Posted in Publishing | Comments Off on Publishing with a Side Dish of Reading

Scribbling at Leisure

by Liana Posted on January 12, 2014
This entry is part 44 of 103 in the series Daily Scribble Reports

I didn't rush into anything and I took my time and here I am.

Today, I skipped reading The Drought like I was supposed to and read Mind of My Mind by Octavia Butler and the collaboration fic so I could write in it.

Writing went well and is continuing. I also created the mass-market book cover for Dowse and Bleed. I like it better than the trade. I'll do the interior tomorrow.

So tonight, I added 19 sentences to Splintered Gates, which came out to 150 words. Now, I can go to bed.

Word Count

  • Fiction: 1263 words
  • Poetry: 0 words, 0 lines
  • Blog: 324 words

Splintered Gates

  • Today: 150 words
  • Total: 2325 words

Collaboration

  • Today: 1113 words
  • Total: 2724 words*

*written by me in 2014

January Totals

  • Fiction: 6585 words
  • Poetry: 212 words | 45 lines
  • Blog: 6347 words

Completed Pieces

  • Poem: "Before My Eyes," 220 words | 47 lines.
  • Fanfic: "Mistakes," 1397 words.
Posted in Journal, Publishing, Writing | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Scribbling at Leisure