In the interest of this time-limited experiment, a lot of things I could have done weren’t done. A lot of times, that’s the only way you finish a project, though. If this was a fast-paced engineering project I was managing, there would be a hard deadline, a soft deadline and a lot of things that got tossed by the wayside when they were determined to not be high enough priority. That’s just how shit gets done. So often, though, when it comes to our own projects, we get too distracted with the building, the dreaming, or the details, that the finished product is never realized. You have to ask yourself — if you never bring the thing into the world, what’s the point in working so hard at making in perfect? The pursuit of perfection can be your enemy.
Now, I’m not a proponent for sloppy or shoddy work, but sometimes there is minimum yield for high-effort activities. Those are the necessary things to cut, even if it’s hard. Here are some of the things I had to sigh and force myself to let go of.
My normal editor-type editor fell ill and so I did not have another human to give punctuation/spelling/sentence structure guidance. So, Grammarly became my editor for those things. Grammarly sent me an email to tell me my writing was 97% better on its own than its other users. To me, this means only 3% of the population that give a shit about grammar will see things that bother them. I like those odds.
My editors for other things weren’t given enough time to finish their critiques before I had to finish my editing phase. They each pointed out some glaringly bad things, which were corrected, though. I’m sure there are a lot more points they could have helped me perfect, but I’m too ill and broke and homeless to carve out that much time.
The ebook cover got to passable status, and then I forced myself to stop working on it. My time spent was 1% thinking up what should go on the cover, 2% looking at other examples of bestseller covers, 2% digging up images to play with and 95% dicking with fonts. I mentioned in an earlier update that Manga Studio should be more than capable of producing the art I need. I was wrong – its lettering options kinda suck. Here’s where I probably would have ultimately stopped if left to my own devices:
Then, out of the blue, my dear friend, Dave Egly offered to check out the art I was dicking with. Then, he ended up creating multiple covers from scratch under a super tight deadline. So Mr. Egly was, in the end, my ebook cover artist! Dave is the best. Here is the wonderfully-lettered alternative he sprinkled his magic on:
By the way, the background photo used was one I took in Rathdrum, in Co. Wicklow, Ireland. That makes it extra special to me and gives me warm fuzzies even if no one else likes it.
In the wee hours this morning, I threw the Word file up on Amazon with the biggest Mothra-type butterflies in my stomach that you can imagine. I was (and still am) uncharacteristically nervous. Being nervous about anything is such a strange and unfamiliar feeling these days. Still haven’t puked, though. Winning!
Lucky for me, I only had to upload it again 2 more times to fix formatting errors. The publishing date was set for February 27th and I enabled pre-orders to begin immediately. Amazon told me it could take up to 72 hours for the pre-order thing to launch. It took more like 2 hours, and it’s available for pre-sale right now!
I set the initial price at $0.99, so if you’re interested, buy it now before I jack that thing up. I intend to price test after it launches. Click the link below to order on Amazon — as with so many things, there is no more perfect time than now!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06X9J85VV?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660
And if you buy and enjoy it, please leave an honest review! It is sooo helpful and sooo important to the potential success of this work!
Next on the list? Smashwords – a service to release to a whole bunch of other distributors. Then, advertising. I have a couple unique advertising ideas . . .