Opening a can of e-Worms

I am a rugby widow.  Even though England have now been knocked out of the World Cup, my husband is  continuing to watch so that he can decide “who else to support” – and apparently Namibia/Georgia was the best match he has ever seen.  Luckily it has all coincided with my preference to spend time with the other man in my life, Sam Plank, and so this weekend is dedicated to the e-versions of “Worm in the Blossom”.

As I have explained before (I’m a bit obsessed with this), the key to successful self-publishing (which is not the same as profitable self-publishing – it’s just managing to get the book out there) is working backwards.  Decide on your publication date – for “Worm”, it’s next Friday, 16 October – and then work backwards from there.  And this means uploading your files several days before you want to be certain that they are available for sale.  When I was new to it all first uploaded “Fatal Forgery”, I clicked refresh on Amazon every three seconds for about four days, until I realised that these listing sites work to their own rhythm and timetable, and my fretting was having no impact on anything except my own blood pressure and sleep pattern.  So with “Canary” I just planned a bit further ahead, uploaded the files well in advance, and then went all Zen.  And I have done exactly the same with “Worm”: this afternoon I uploaded to CreateSpace everything they need for the paperback edition – cover, interior, price, distribution channels, search terms, the whole lot.  I have no idea when it will actually appear in Amazon’s catalogue, but I do know that, with six days’ lead time, it will definitely be there on the launch day.

And tomorrow is to be devoted to e-Worms.  As well as the paperback editions of the Sam Plank novels, I also offer them in Kindle, Kobo, Smashwords, iBooks and Gumroad (PDF) versions.  This is of course the same basic text, but formatted – or rather, stripped of most formatting – in slightly different ways for each one.  It’s a bit tedious, but fun when it comes to the uploading.  Again, the actual appearance date on each website is in the lap of the self-publishing gods, but come Friday, they’ll all be there.  And boy oh boy am I looking forward to Friday!