I know I keep changing my mind about the cover, but I think this one might be it. It certainly works well as a thumbnail. At 5 1/2 by 8 inches, the portal is blurry--but I think that actually works with the book, especially since Saturn and Titan are pixelated. It's a bit like someone was trying to take a picture of this thing, but it can't quite be captured by a camera.....
Uncategorized
Hm
I haven't heard back yet from that artist (I swear, he'll get back to me in, like October 2012 and will be really snippy that I didn't wait), and I've been having thoughts about doing the cover myself again, since I don't have to draw people. Basically I had the idea of modifying the current placeholder art so that the portal is more dominant and mysterious, and then carrying that over to the other titles so that the portals are always there, lurking. (Yes, in the story the portals are completely invisible, but I figure if you can't take artistic license with your own work, when can you?)
I dunno, I like that artist's work, but there's a real question about how long you wait for someone. If it was just the e-books, I could redo the covers every day from now until doomsday, and it wouldn't make any difference. But for the paperbacks, there's a cost--you have to order new proofs, and there's an extra fee for changing the cover for a book that out on Expanded Distribution.
I also downloaded a couple of title fonts, only to come here and realize that the current lettering works really well in a thumbnail. So maybe I should leave that be.
Oh, and if you're feeling like I need to get a grip about that review, I was just looking at blogs (didn't find anything mind-blowing this time), and this one woman actually solicited so-so reviews about her book! She literally wrote, If you read Book A or Book B, and they just weren't your cup of tea, could you please go over to Amazon and leave a review about how they left you cold! Apparently the feeling is that if all your reviews are fantastic, it's just your buddies helping you out. And obviously getting that review made me rethink how I positioned the book (and alerted me to some formatting issues), so I should be thankful for it. I still don't see asking people to please come trash my book, however--I'm not made of stone.
Arghghgh....
Yeah, I'm editing--actually, I think I'm edited out for the day. You know, considering that not much happens in Trang (I know, I should let that go), you would think that I wouldn't have such a buttload of exposition to try to cram into Trust. Striking the right balance is a bitch--I feel like the story's constantly being interrupted to deliver background on this person or that event.
I'm trimming and consolidating what I can, but I'm concerned because I'm obviously very close to the material, and my beta readers (who haven't gotten Trust yet) have also read Trang, so all of our judgment is somewhat suspect. I'm going to drop in on a writing group in the area later this month--if I think they'll be helpful, I'll give them the first two chapters and see if they have the slightest notion what's going on.
Redirecting...redirecting...redirecting
In addition to rethinking my approach to Trang's cover art, I realized that I should change the book description as well. When I first revised the book description, I not only made it longer (including the jacket copy, an author bio, and a word count for the e-versions), I made it wacky--I was trying to push those comedy! and! adventure! buttons.
This was the wacky version:
Trang is an exciting science fiction tale of aliens, prophecies and inexplicable "scientific" phenomena! Follow the adventures of Philippe Trang, the first human diplomat to travel to an alien station! Watch him try valiantly to keep everyone from killing each other (not to mention him), with mixed success! A delightful blend of comedy, action and really, really bad language, Trang is sure to appeal to to fans of Lois McMasters Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga and Charles Stross’ Laundry Files novels--at least those fans who can tolerate really, really bad language.
This is the current version:
Diplomat Philippe Trang has problems--lots of problems. Haunted by a recent mission on Earth that went very wrong, Trang is the first human diplomat assigned to a mysterious alien station. He quickly realizes that not everyone on Earth would like to see his mission succeed—and the several alien species on the station have some odd and nefarious agendas of their own. As he tries desperately to keep everyone from killing each other (not to mention him), strange forces threaten to destroy his very mind.... This intensely character-driven novel features a blend of drama, tragedy, comedy, and action reminiscent of the works of Joss Whedon or Charles Stross’ Laundry Files novels--plus some really, really bad language.
So, I'm hoping that helps the book find the right audience--people who find character-driven science-fiction stories interesting. I mention Whedon not just because I prostrate myself at his feet, but because he gets the "not much happens" complaint too (that is an issue many people seem to have with the original Firefly pilot). That baffles me, but there it is.
Certain genres are almost always character-driven--romance, for example. We all know what's going to happen in a romance, the interesting bit is how it affects the characters as it unfolds. But sci-fi these days is plot driven--that's why you have "rules" like kill someone in the first 10 pages.
Honestly, this is what dismays me about contemporary mainstream publishing in general and science fiction in particular--the narrowing effect it is having on literature. Ray Bradbury, who was justly celebrated in his day for being an incredible writer, did not produce plot-driven science fiction. His science fiction was literary--it was just so beautifully written that it really didn't matter what it was about. And there was room in the market for someone like that. Now there isn't. Think about that: If Ray Bradbury sent The Martian Chronicles to an agent nowadays as an unknown writer, he probably would get the same "Loved it! Can't touch it!" response I got.
How sad is that?
Hopefully now self-publishing will re-expand the possibilities. As an author, I still face the challenge of finding readers who will accept character-driven science fiction. But I'll say that I'm more hopeful of doing that than I am of finding a commercial publishing house that will!
Feast or famine
I started poking around self-publishing blogs again tonight, and apparently the Internet read my earlier post and got embarrassed, because I've hit three good ones.
They are:
Write to Publish, which is written by a woman whose husband is a novelist. He self-publishes, they run a small press, and they have experience with big publishing houses as well, so she's got a very good sense of the industry, how it works, and how it's changing. (But if you read her post on Barnes & Noble's on-line operations and go, "Oh my stars!!!" please read the comments--new business lines always lose money initially.)
Publetariat is an aggregate blog that takes posts from a lot of other blogs. It's nice because a lot of blogs by people selling services to self-publishing writers are 10% good info and 90% "Buy my crap!" and it looks like Publetariat does a pretty good job of screening out that less-useful 90%.
Adventures in ePublishing is written by a newbie self-published sci-fi writer who LOVES data. He loves to collect it, he loves to analyze it, and he loves to share it so much he has a running tally of his expenses as a sidebar on his blog. (Yes, I do realize that I may have to marry him. Assuming that's legal, because it's possible that we were separated at birth.)
And I'm going to add a blog that I've known about for a while: The Shatzkin Files. Shatzkin is a consultant, so it should not shock you that his blog is geared to the people who might actually hire him, i.e. high-ranking publishing executives. As a result, the blog can be too insider-y, which is why I haven't recommended him before now, but he does have some very interesting things to say. (Barnes & Noble should totally hire him.)
Rah-rah Amanda Hocking!
So, Amanda Hocking proved prophetic and landed her own $2 million advance with a major publishing house.
The funny bit? Everyone is asking her, "Why?" Her publishing house is hoping this proves traditional publishing is not dead. I think those two things demonstrate the tenuous position traditional publishing finds itself in nowadays.
Of course, with a $2 million advance in pocket, Amanda Hocking is not Joe Blow Random Author. She is a star. Between the money and the PR, you can bet your ass her publishing house will bust their ass for her. And if they don't, or things somehow don't work out? Uh, gee, I think she'll be fine--she can go back to making $1 million a year self-publishing, or at this point, she could invest her $3 million, retire, and live off the income (as long as she doesn't invest it in Barnes & Noble).
So, Amanda Hocking is doing great, which is wonderful--she seems like a very pleasant and grounded young lady, and I confess to being tickled pink by her success. Self-publishing now has its own Tinkerbell, assuming you don't think making $1 million a year writing books is amazing enough (which certain people clearly don't).
But I'll say it again: This isn't what's important about contemporary self-publishing. I am more excited about it's potential effect on the mass of writers--not the occasional best-seller, but the many more people who chug away in relative obscurity. Those people can pay their bills on time now. That's really exciting.
Feeling barfy
Bleargh.... I had shrimp in the freezer and then we had a power outage and then I started to defrost it and changed my mind and then I defrosted it again and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days and then I cooked it.
And then--surprise!--I was rather ill the night before last.
And then, because my stupidity knows no bounds, I decided last night to have a couple of vodka lemon drops. That was Not A Good Idea. I'm lucky my GI tract hasn't decamped completely.
All of which is to say that, while I have gotten more editing done on Trust, it's not going to happen today. (And then I have real life interfering for a bit--gah.) In hopes of accomplishing something constructive despite having gotten no sleep, I've been reading through some self-publishing blogs. While that's given me some more places I could promote Trang, I can't say that any of them have been exciting enough that I want to link to them and tell you to go read them. Part of it is that contemporary self-publishing is, you know, really, really contemporary--two years ago, it was not nearly so viable. So for most people, they don't have that much to say: Price the book cheap, fret about the cover, market. Lather, rinse, repeat. Not a lot that's startling and original or even particularly in-depth this time.
Although it does sound like I should start hanging around KindleBoards.
That's interesting!
I'm reading through M. Louisa Locke's blog, and she points out something that not only had I given literally no thought to, but that it hadn't even occurred to me to give any thought to: Increasing your book's exposure on Amazon by getting into a less-populated category.
I list Trang as "adventure science fiction," and of the nearly 14,000 Kindle science-fiction books listed on Amazon, almost 7,000 are adventure science fiction. Oh. The only other genre sub-category is "high tech science fiction." I may be doubting that Trang is really adventure science fiction, but I know for damned sure it isn't high tech. (And yes, it is absurd to have only two sub-categories--by these standards, the works of Philip K. Dick are adventure sci-fi.)
The other two science fiction sub-categories are more about how the books are packaged: "anthologies" and "series." Series! Trang is part of a series, and there are only 150 books in that sub-category. So, I think once Trust is in the bag, I will get both books on that list, too.
ETA: She also has a great series of posts on how to edit your own work that begins here.
Getting faster
So, you see that I've changed the cover for Trang again--this is basically placeholder art until I find an artist (I'd really like to use the same artist for the entire series to give it a unified look). As a result, I didn't change the cover of the hard copy, just the e-book for now. At this point, it takes surprisingly little time to toss something together--that was true of the layout, too. It's easy to get discouraged the first time you do something and it takes forEVER, but if you keep at it, you do get better.
Gah
So, I was like, Why don't I fix that pesky table of contents issue? That shouldn't take too long....
TWELVE HOURS LATER
OK, so it didn't take twelve hours, but it took a lot longer than it should have. What really took the time was just figuring out how the hell to do it--really and truly, and I say this as somebody who wasted a great deal of time trying to do it some other way, the only way is to download an HTML editor and take it from there. You need what are called anchor tags. If you download NVU like I did, it's super-easy, and the anchor tags are represented by cute little cartoon anchors. If you try doing it some other way (and really, the coding is no harder than what I use in this blog, so you should be able to), Kindle won't convert the code into an actual link. Instead, it will just leave the code there, because I'm sure readers are dying to learn about The Amazing Adventures of Href.
To complicate matters and increase author stress, neither Kindle nor Nook will show a working link in the preview. With Nook, you can download the final ePub version and check that, but with Kindle I have no freaking idea if the links in the table of contents work or not. They work in HTML. That much I know.
I just skipped Smashwords this time around because they want you to upload Word documents, and I have NO idea what would come out the other end if I did that. (ETA: Score one for Smashwords! They automatically create a linkable table of contents if your chapter heads begin with the word "chapter," as mine do. Definitely a good idea!)
In terms of things that took about as long as I thought they would, I downloaded some stock photos I can use to cobble together a new cover. I did hear back from that artist--he's going to think it over and get back to me reasonably soon. The thing is, one of the blogs agreed to review the book, and Norwescon is coming up, which hopefully will drive some traffic to Trang, so I think it's worth it to throw something together just for the e-books in case getting real cover art takes longer.
And although I didn't get any actual editing done on Trust, I woke up this morning with a great idea for the opening paragraphs just complete in my head. I love when that happens.
Nothing like 14 hours of sleep to improve productivity
Yesterday was a family day, and since my particular family includes young children, I didn't really catch up on sleep. But today with the ringer off things were greatly improved. I tend to need more sleep than the average person, but even for me, when I'm topping 12 hours in stretch, it means I haven't been getting enough.
Not shockingly, I got quite a bit done. I edited the first chapter, although I'm going to go back and take another crack at the very first few paragraphs--I want to up the tension there. I also turned the first chapter into the first two chapters--the problem with writing Book 2 is that you want to include enough background that people who haven't read Book 1 aren't completely lost, but you don't want to bore the crap out of those who have read Book 1. Initially I just crammed a hell of a lot of exposition into Chapter 1 (especially into that first scene that I axed), but now I'm dividing and conquering--Philippe and Shanti are Chapter 1, the general situation among the aliens is Chapter 2.
Since I did nothing productive today
Oh, and I do mean NOTHING productive. I didn't even do any of my bullshit chores. I went shopping. For stuff I didn't really need. It was that sort of day.
(I blame it on sleep deprivation. Between the cats and some extra caffeine I probably should have skipped and some asshole stalker-esque telemarketers who don't understand what the federal Do Not Call list is all about, I've been short on sleep all week. It tells you something about the toll inadequate sleep takes on mental functioning that it took until today for me to realize that I should turn off the ringer on my phone.)
So instead, I'm going to disclose a writer's secret. I learned this from the master, William Shakespeare himself, when I ghosted a Cliff Notes ripoff of Romeo and Juliet. The secret is: If you want to make something look better, surround it with total crap.
Look at Romeo and Juliet from an adult perspective. They're FOURTEEN YEARS OLD. They've known each other for all of SIXTY SECONDS. Is this love going to last? A-HA-HA-HA-HA no.
How do you get the audience to ignore what they KNOW about fourteen-year-old "love" and become emotionally invested in this relationship that would be over by next Tuesday in the real world?
The answer: Surround it by really shitty forms of "love." Dear God, look at Juliet's family. They are horrible. She DIES (or so they think), and they can't dig up any semblance of sincerity. Romeo and Juliet is a fairly terrifying play if you look at the other kinds of "love" on display--superficial, phony, self-serving...it's a nightmare. Compared to the emotional cripples that surround them, Romeo and Juliet are perfection--they're at least striving for something noble. It's touching. (And it's VERY Will Shakespeare, since the plays he took Romeo and Juliet from are mainly about dumb kids dumbly thinking that they are in love and dumbly disobeying their parents and dumbly dying, just like you will if you are dumb enough to disobey your parents. Stupid kids. Get off my lawn!)
Does this strategy always work? Um, is everybody William Shakespeare? No, they are not. There's any number of extremely tiresome stories centered around horrible people where the author strives in vain to make the main character engaging by surrounding them by people who are more horrible and more horrible still to the point of being simple cartoons of vice. Natural Born Killers springs to mind. Sudden Impact tried to use this tactic to sell a serial killer who blows men's genitals off with a gun not just as a sympathetic character but also as a love interest. This technique was the creative drain Deadwood was circling around before it was canceled: Al was bad, but we were supposed to like Al, so Tolliver was worse, and Wolcott was a compulsive murderer, and George Heart was even worse than that, and had the show gone on for another season I can only assume Beelzebub himself would have made an appearance, eating babies' brains right out of their skulls.
So, clearly, to use this strategy successfully, you gotta recognize its limitations: Shakespeare wasn't trying to sell us on a serial killer (as, I repeat, a love interest), he was just trying to sell us on a teen romance. And you know, don't do it over and over and over again--I don't care how good your actors and dialog and production values are, people will notice.
Gee, mister, are you gonna make me a star?
There is someone on a certain Web site who I am not going to respond to there because I think they are probably a troll. If not a troll, then they are either naive about traditional publishing to the point of delusion or are someone who works in it and is cynical and manipulative to the extreme. They are making the "Don't you wish you were Tinkerbell?" argument, and they keep adding names: There's Fawn and Iridessa and Rosetta and Silvermist--don't you wish you were them?
Let's put aside the fact that there is probably NO best-selling author who was earning as much money as Amanda Hocking is at this point in her career--a career that, for the record, is all of 11 months old. (ETA: OK, I looked it up: Apparently one woman got a $2 million advance for a first novel--that was a record. Hocking is estimated to have earned at least $1 million by this point. So, yes, one made more. Were there two?) (EATA: And now Amanda Hocking has a $2 million advance and is ahead again.) There are are probably in this country more people who have made a million dollars by buying lottery tickets than there are people who have made a million dollars by writing fiction.
Don't you wish you were them?
Obviously what you should do is to stop working at your stupid job and plow every last dollar into lottery tickets. It's really that simple.
I did some editing!
Ha! Not a total loser! I didn't do much, but then again, I always start slow. It's the actual getting started that is the important thing.
Just some background on Trust: Right now, I'm working on the opening chapter, which is like what in journalism is called the lede, which is the first sentence of your story. (Publishing and journalism people always deliberately misspell the terms of the trade: graf, lede, etc. I think it's because it makes the words stand out more to the copy editors and proofreaders if, say, the instructions "cut graf" are accidentally left in the final copy.) The lede is the! most! important! line of your story, because in most cases, that's all the reader reads. If you're writing a feature--or by extension, a novel--the lede should have a hook, a not-misspelled piece of jargon that means "something that will make that lazy reader want to read the whole damn thing you just worked so hard on." Features/novels need hooks because there's no pressing reason for the reader to read them--they are something the reader chooses to spend time on, so you need to show the reader that it's worth doing.
So opening chapters are supposed to bring the drama, which makes them hard to write. I used to just leave ledes until the end, but that's less doable when you're writing a novel, so I wrote the first chapter and now I'm beating the hell out of it.
I previously beat the hell out of this entire book, cutting probably about 30,000 words and adding 40,000 more. Why? Well, let me tell you: When I wrote the book, I was like, THIS needs to be INTERESTING! It needs to have ADVENTURE! And DRAMA! So I tried really hard to put all this adventure and drama into it, and the result was a really dull book.
Really!
I know that sounds counterintuitive, but it was true. And the reason was all that adventure and drama wasn't connected to the main plot. I had extraneous characters! I had events that were very dramatic and then never impacted anything later in the book! I had it all! And I didn't need nearly so much!
(You see this in bad action movies all the time. Got nothing to do and nowhere to go, plot-wise? Blow something up, and then have a female character take her top off and show us her titties for 20 minutes or so, and then show Steven Seagal gouging out Tommy Lee Jones' eye in slow motion, over and over again. And I just sit there, thinking, Why? Why was I born? It certainly wasn't to watch this.)
What I needed to do in Trust was to get to the main plot faster. And then, once I was there, I needed to focus on it. This was another problem with the scattershot-action approach: I was neglecting the things that mattered. Things that actually were important to the plot and the book were not being fully developed, because I was too distracted by the nonsense.
Once I focused the book, I went back to my first chapter, and chopped out the first scene completely. Why? Well, I know now what I need to do in that first chapter to set up the rest of the book. The current first scene isn't necessarily more "dramatic" than the old first scene, but it's going to pay off. Trust is no longer an amalgam of unrelated, purposeless action: It's a novel. I'm sure the "not much happens" crowd will like it less, but I like it much better now.
Covers and positioning
I contacted one of those Etsy artists about using some of his paintings as book covers. He may say yes, he may say no, he may do that typical visual artist thing where he doesn't get back to me for a year and then is really upset that I hired someone else. But his paintings are pretty, so go look at them.
You'll notice that they aren't wacky people and wacky aliens, despite my repeated assertions that I must have both on my covers. That's because I've recently started rethinking the wisdom of positioning Trang as a straight-up adventure/comedy book. I filled out a little interview form about the book for a review blog that asked a lot of questions about what inspired the book, and what inspired a lot of it was the aftermath of the September 11th attacks (I was living in NYC at the time)--the xenophobia, the anti-French bullshit, dealing with the stress and guilt, all that. So, you know, while I think of it as light and funny, there are things like repeated brutal scenes of Inquisition-style torture, so perhaps it's not as fluffy as all that.
The other thing that got me thinking is that I got a review on Amazon by someone who did not like the book AT ALL, and the main complaint was that "not much happens." This is a really common complaint made by readers of plot-driven commercial fiction when they read something that is more character-driven or more literary. Much like "Where's the Cher?" it's a complaint that's easy to make fun of*, but actually should be paid attention to, at least from the standpoint of positioning your book. The fact of the matter is that, at least in Trang, I care a lot more about the main character's post-traumatic stress disorder than I do about the wacky aliens.
So I think maybe I should go with a more "serious" cover. I mean, Trang's a mutt, but I like mutts--I like Buffy and Muriel's Wedding and The Atrocity Archives and other works that swing crazily from funny to tragic to terrifying to absurd. So a funny description and a serious cover may be the way to convey that.
*We can make some fun though, right? In Publish This Book Markley quotes from reader reviews of a couple of literary classics. They include a review of Native Son that reads in part, "This book was one of the most boring book that I have ever read. There are one or two scenes in the book that are interesting, but overall the book is boring. BORING. BORING. BORING." and one of To Kill a Mockingbird that reads in part, "This book is so boring! Nothing is going on.... [Y]ou have to go through pages and pages about Atticus's childrens' lives.... Does anyone have any idea why this book even won a Pulitzer?!?!"
Did I read that right?
As I was looking through review blogs, I saw a--I'm not sure what to call it. An unreview? An anti-review? A statement noting that the blog author would never review books from James Frey's Full Fathom Five publishing house because Frey treats the writers so poorly.
And I was like, huh? People are willing to work for James Frey?
Let's review what we know about Frey: He lies. A lot. He lied to make money. He also has a history of substance abuse.
*Deep sigh.*
Dear young writers,
Did you know that not everyone can write? It's true--I worked for an educational publisher, and we hired respected academics to write our books, and most of them, despite their brilliance in their subject matter, could not put two words together to save their lives!
Not everyone can write. Being able to write is a skill that is worth something.
You need to recognize the value of your skill, and not work for any old compulsive liar who comes along. Do you know that I've been freelancing, off and on, for over a decade? Guess how many times I've had to threaten to sue people to get paid, or go to court to collect a paycheck, or just been stiffed?
Zero times. Zero. The most I ever had to do was a quick e-mail to an editor saying, "Have you seen my check? It hasn't arrived yet."
This is not the norm in the industry!
How did I accomplish it? I was careful who I worked for. The minute complaints started wafting through the air that so-and-so was stiffing writers (and nowadays, they'd waft through the Internet, making them easy to find no matter where you are), I put them on my own personal Do Not Call list. If I was thinking of working for someplace, I'd ask around--have you worked for these guys? what are they like? If the answer was anything but "Great!"--Do Not Call. I did not work for dodgy start-ups. I did not work for people who promised glory but no cash.
And I was able to make a living at it. When I say "make a living," I mean a decent apartment, decent food, decent clothes, no calls from bill collectors, stellar credit. I was not a bohemian. I did not squat and go without heat like the characters in Rent.
I have worked for a cokehead--a regular 9-to-5 job that ended when he destroyed his own company. Never again. I never ever worked for anyone who I knew for sure, because it's a matter of public record, was a dishonest person. Because I am not stupid, and you should not be either: The man willing to lie repeatedly on Oprah will not think twice about misleading and deceiving you.
Best of luck!
--Mary
Or, maybe it belonged to chaos
Insomnia, rain gutters, and a power outage that lasted most of the afternoon (!) flat out derailed Trust. Better luck next time, I guess.
Oh, I found some more good Web sites for...this is the hip term...indie authors. Yes, that is what we are calling ourselves nowadays--look at me all down with the lingo. Now get off my lawn, you damned kids! (No, seriously--get off it. I only got a lawn a few years ago, and you would be amazed at the crap (sometimes literal) people leave there--one guy used to park his truck on it until I left him a note, and then he parked it on the neighbors' lawns instead.)
Anyway--I mentioned I didn't get much sleep last night?--back on topic! The Web sites are this guide to e-book review blogs and this blog that alerts subscribers to e-book sales. I'm going to contact them about the Norwescon sale.
Today belonged to Trang, but tomorrow belongs to Trust!
Yeah, I kind of punked out after the formatting drama and spent the rest of the day soliciting reviews. And I am going to have to clean out the gutters first thing tomorrow because I noticed a damp spot on the ceiling. Fab.
Another reason not to procrastinate
You know what happens once you announce your intentions to get right to work? Something comes out of left field and EATS YOUR TIME AND ENERGY.
Today somebody reviewed Trang on Amazon and mentioned that there were formatting problems. Ugh. Some things I don't get, like why this person wants a table of contents. There's no table of contents in the hard copy, because hello, it's a novel--novels written for adults usually don't have tables of contents. I'm wondering if it's a Kindle thing. If it is, I may have to figure out how to format one, but I hear it's a huge pain in the ass. (ETA: OK, I just talked to a friend of mine who owns a Kindle, and she was as baffled by the request for a table of contents as I was.) (EATA: I talked to a couple of more e-reader owners, and apparently not everyone has the hang of the bookmark feature, and they do find it easier to have a TOC because flipping lots of pages can be a hassle. So I'll look into doing that.)
The person also wanted to be able to download the front jacket. Seriously? Obviously s/he hasn't taken too close a look at it, which is fine by me. Maybe once the cover is fixed I'll figure that one out. (ETA: My friend the Kindle Oracle doesn't get this one, either--still, if there's a way, once I get a decent cover, I'll try to do it.)
But the complaint I was willing and able to fix was the lack of paragraph indents, because (I've heard this elsewhere) double-hard-returns in Word turn into triple- or quadruple-hard-returns on an e-book reader. It became obvious when I tried to fix this that having Amazon convert a Word file into a Kindle file just causes all sorts of weird and VERY unpredictable formatting errors, so what I did was have Amazon convert the file into HTML, download the HTML, edit it in Word (which you can do, apparently--I had no idea), and then upload the edited HTML. That seemed to work OK.
After that I tried loading the same file to Barnes & Noble, only to discover once again that the Nook has its own quirks. I quirkified the HTML file for Nook and uploaded it, but then when I tried to do the same for Smashwords, it turns out that they want a Word file. So I'm hoping the conversion from HTML to Word went smoothly--I especially wanted to update the Smashwords file because I know the version there has some typos.
The overpowering urge to procrastinate
The thing about being a writer is, you have to write. And it's always VERY tempting to do something else. For example, I had an idea last night (after a day spent SHAMELESSLY procrastinating) that might let me work up an acceptable cover for Trang myself, despite my utter lack of drawing talent. Also, there are all those new potential sources for reviews. And you know something? I haven't cleaned the rain gutters in months and months, and I should get some cooking done, and I need to plant those herb starts, and the moss needs to be cleaned off the roof of the shed, and I need to finish painting the guest bathroom, and, and, and, and, and, AND, AND, AND, AND, AND, AND, AND!!!
Yeah, the list is potentially endless. It's especially tempting when it's stuff you "need" to do. (Steam the rug! That's really urgent!) Typically, too, the more I procrastinate the more anxious I feel, and then that makes me feel like the unimportant chores I should get done one of these days are REALLY SUPER IMPORTANT AND URGENT--but the funny thing is, if I were to dedicate the next week or so to doing them all, my anxiety would never lessen, because of course I'm ignoring the One Big Thing I'm supposed to be doing.
There's a number of metaphors about this in literature, not surprisingly. The Terrible Trivum from The Phantom Tollbooth was an early favorite of mine--I remember reading "we have pencils to sharpen, holes to dig, nails to straighten, stamps to lick, and ever so much more" when I was about 10 and just being thunderstruck at how true those words were. More recently, I took a part-time job in what turned out to be a fantastically dysfunctional workplace that sucked up a tremendous amount of my energy and time until I resigned (in protest, because they thought sexual harassment was totally OK--I should mention that this was a workplace that served children). My sister asked me how things were going at one point, and I was like, You know, it's such a meaningless soap opera for me, and even when things are going well, it's just lotus-eating.
So while I know people blame this phenomenon on the Internet or on self-publishing (because traditionally-published writers never have to spend time on ancillary tasks), the truth of the matter is that someone who wants to procrastinate will always find a way. (And the cat stomping all over my computer right this moment doesn't help.) You just have to be strict with yourself.
In other words, Get back to work!