Do not ever, ever, ever throw away your old files - mine were on funny old low-density discs and in long-obsolete programmes like Word Perfect, so I chucked them all away. But now, in order to get them up on the Internet as e-books, I'm having to retype them. I would have happily paid an expert to have them reformatted to save me the chore. But there's no choice now.
It's a long, long job! I used to be a fairly quick typist, say 60 wpm, but it's gone down to 30 now, well, you can do the math easily enough! And there's another four or five titles to go.
What is good is reading my own old stuff - it wasn't bad! What it lacked in technical expertise, it made up for in fun and good will - and the valuable lesson I've learnt from the exercise it not to worry too much. I made errors that I wouldn't make now, but is it worth fussing about tiny technical details if the books used to sell anyway?
In some ways I don't expect my old books to sell that many copies, because people like new ones, but everything I read about marketing an e-book says that each title acts as a platform to support the others - so up they must all go.
What's depressing is that I read a blog where the writer said that she can write a My Weekly novella in two weeks. WRITE one!! It's taking me longer to just type up my old titles - with planning, drafting, composing and polishing, mine used to take about 6 weeks, but I'd often have a folder full of ideas and notes that would build up steadily for about a year before I even began writing.
I'm feeling very slow and unproductive, but will keep plodding on.
I haven't done any more to my new Regency. The excuse is that I want to get all the old titles out first and kind of clear the decks, but I think it's my old enemy writer's block. As soon as I get back in the real world, I lose confidence again.
No comments:
Post a Comment