Formatting An E-Book, NaNoWriMo, Giveaways & Book Bloggers

I’m still spending a couple of hours a day marketing ‘The Mystical Wood’ and three hours a day formatting it to go on sale as an e-book (so I can get the price down to $2.99). So far this has taken four days. I’m having to learn to write in html which is quite a step but once learnt it will speed up the process in future. Luckily I found this great guide: http://guidohenkel.com/2010/12/take-pride-in-your-ebook-formatting/.

So what else am I up to? I joined the NaNoWriMo challenge which means I need to write 1660 words per day, unedited to get a novel written in one month. It started yesterday. I decided though to write a book of short stories so that I could break it down into bits rather than concentrating on a novel. If you are struggling to get pen to paper or digit to key then you should really check this out. Basically you have to forget about what you write and just get on with it. I only managed 900 words yesterday so I have some catching up to do but I did find it very empowering. My problem is that I can’t stop editing as I go which defeats the object. I will try harder tonight!

My giveaway at Goodreads.com ended and so I have sent five lucky winners a free hardcopy of ‘The Mystical Wood’. I have also written to twelve book review sites as part of my marketing and so far three have said they will post reviews for me. God I hope they like it! Two needed hard copies and one accepted a pdf file. So now I’ve sent out more free copies than I’ve sold. Don’t use this as a business model.

So another busy week. I’ll try to get more blogging done from now on. Any other authors out there suffering or not? Please get in touch, I’d love to hear from you.