Yesterday, we had to say good-bye to our lovely kitty, Turtle. We adopted him over 11 years ago, and he has had health problems the entire time, so we knew he wouldn’t live to an old age, but he made it to almost 15 years. And we loved every minute with him–he was so lovable. He loved bumping our faces with his, and acted as a true “turtleneck” by wrapping himself around our necks and snuggling up to us on our chests.
We will miss you and never forget you.
Today was a release day. Yay? It should be a celebration, but oh my, what an eye-opening experience it has been. It’s not even the first title I’ve released this fall. It’s the second title, although this one is the first of the reverted titles from Carina Press.
I can’t even begin to list how much has changed in the six years since I walked away from the publishing world. I feel like I’m back to being a babe in the woods, a newbie author all over again, shouting into the wind, hoping someone will hear about my book and be interested in it.
Things that I used to rely on when I had a release day are no longer available. Like my carefully curated mailing list which had taken me almost a decade to build. Gone. Because I’d reached a certain limit, the mailing list provider I’d used was suddenly going to charge me $50 a month. Which I couldn’t afford, especially when I wasn’t publishing anymore. When I tried to transfer the names to a new provider they told me the addresses in my list were too old and wouldn’t accept them, so I’m back to rebuilding it. Except this time I don’t have a publisher helping to promote my books. It’s just little old me. Which is my choice, so I can’t complain too much because hey, I have control of my books again, but still, yikes.
The week before my first title republished last month, I went through several rounds with a major book publisher named after a large river who didn’t believe my books were actually my books and were threatening to pull my account. The back and forth between us went on for nearly a month. It wasn’t enough for me to provide a letter from the original publisher that the rights had indeed reverted. I sent a copy of the duly registered copyright from the Canadian government’s Library and Archives (think the Canadian version of the Library of Congress.) That wasn’t good enough, so I went back to the Library and Archives and got another letter that I had indeed purchased the ISBN for my book, and it was registered under not only my real name, but my pen name AND my imprint name. I also ended up providing another form, this one from the Ontario government, proving that yes, I was indeed the owner of the imprint line I publish under. Ultimately, and this was the one that got my goat, I had to provide a contract between “me as my real name” and “me as my pen name” giving myself permission to publish my own books. That’s how bizarre it got.
In amongst all that stress, I have realized my bullet journals are becoming increasingly important to track all this. I also really need to them so I can keep track of all the tasks I have to do. I have numerous checklists of things that have to be done months in advance of a release, and especially today, release day itself, I need to know all the things that have be done, like making sure the website is updated, that I’ve posted to all the various social media sites, that I’m using the “now available” graphics I’ve created instead of the “Preorder” or “Coming Soon” graphics.
Then there’s writing the endless marketing copy I need to create for each title. (I really despise this side of publishing, and it’s one of the good things — sort of–about having an actual publisher–to be able to rely on someone else to do all this. I know I’m a writer but marketing is a whole different animal.)
So I’m now scouring Etsy and various Facebook journaling groups for suggestions about stickers and printable pages to help me stay organized, and so I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Because I’m definitely not the only one facing these journaling battles.
Oh and if you’re interested, and like to read really steamy romances, today’s book is All I Need for Christmas. About a Canadian Mountie determined to get her man and end her days of solitude in the Great White North. But be warned. It’s really really steamy and not one to read to the kiddies.
Despite the headlines south of the Canadian border this last week, this post is not about what you’re thinking it’s about. I have big news for my writing persona. Quite a few months ago, I wrote to my NY publisher and requested a reversion of rights for all of my books they’d published.
When you sign a contract with a publisher, there are paragraphs listing when you can attempt to reclaim your rights to your stories. Length of time (7 years usually), a set number of sales or $ amount within a quarter, or a year you have to fall below for a set number of quarters or years, etc. And sometimes there are other weird clauses. But even when all the contractual provisions are met for such a request, the publisher can always find ways to hold onto your rights. For instance, they can sell your novel to a different publisher in a different country, or sell it for translation (with this publisher they often sell it at a flat rate, say $50. So you get 17% of that and never see another cent no matter how many books that other publisher sells.) And you still have to wait another seven years for that part of the contract to expire.) Or they can republish the novel (which they had already done with several of my books already) which means the original 7 year contract from original publication date resets to the newest publication date and now you have to wait yet another 7 years. And one of my novellas was part of an anthology which would affect two other authors.
Given all of the above, I wasn’t confident I’d get the rights back for three of the titles, especially the anthology novella, and was only semi-hopeful about the other two. But I thought it was worth a shot. They replied and said it would take about two months. Two months came and went. Three months, came and went. Last week, I posted on my FB timeline that I figured so much time had passed that I doubted I’d get my rights back to any of my books.
So I was thrilled this morning when I opened up my email and discovered the publisher had indeed reverted my rights for all five of my titles.
Getting my rights back means I have all the control back in my hands. I get to publish them myself–either digitally, or, more importantly, as paperbacks, which my digital-only publisher never did for these books. I’d heard from a few of my readers that they only read in print so I’ll finally be able to offer that option. I’ll be able to set my own price, adjusting it for sales as I choose. I can choose my own cover art (of course I have to pay for that cover art). I can choose my own titles. (Yes, even the titles are often dictated by the publisher.) And best of all instead of getting 15-17% royalties, I’ll get about 70%. That difference will help pay for editors and cover artists for future novels, website fees, promotion and advertising, etc. It’s scary having that much control, because I can make totally wrong decisions, but at this stage I really wanted those novels back under my control.
But I’ve been out of the publishing realm for six years, and now I have to delve back into the convoluted publishing world. Re-learn skills I’d lost. Relearn what the market can bear, what the readers are looking for. Where my readers might be. Like everything in life, the publishing world has changed a lot in the last six years so I feel like a total newbie again. And to be honest, as exciting as it is to have that control, I’m already finding myself slightly overwhelmed by everything I have to do:
At least there’s no real deadline on me like there are with publisher contracts. I can set my own deadlines at this stage.
To add more stress to the mix, I also received an email reminding me that my author website’s hosting is up next month. It’s basically tripled in price so I’ll probably end up moving it to a new host to keep the costs down while I’m dealing with all the above pre-publishing work. Annnnd, I just went over there to update a few things and learned they’ve changed the coding and now I’m facing yet another steep learning curve. Oh joy oh bliss.
But first I need to clear out my office–again! We spent last month decluttering the basement–for some reason a lot of detritus ended up stashed in my office and I’m back to where I can barely walk from the door to my desk. (This will be the second declutter I’ve done of my office so far this year.) All that clutter interferes with my creativity so decluttering and cleaning is this week’s goal.
As for this site? It took me some years but I learned that I definitely need to have a hobby to turn to every day instead of spending 20 hours a day (not hyperbole) obsessing about the next book, the next marketing strategy, etc. I finally learned I need to give my brain down-time, time to focus on something other than marketing and writing. So I’ll be keeping this site up.
I’m rarely knitting these days — my hand is still screwed up, but I have picked up cross-stitch and blackwork again. I’m mainly working on little projects like the bookmarks in the photo (hey, I’m an author so bookmarks are always useful!) They still have to be finished–I want to put a grosgrain ribbon on the back and of course they need a good iron. But the sewing part is done. And now we’ve been living with our revamped kitchen for almost a year, I have a few thoughts about what I’ve learned, and what I like about it and things I’m not keen on now I have them, that I want to share.
Because we were having such problems getting the short ends of the vinyl planking to properly lock, no matter how much we used the block or pull bar, we ended up pulling up all the flooring we’d laid and started again from scratch.
Despite the manufacturer saying on their video that their flooring was tolerant of imperfect floors, this particular tile was definitely not tolerant. It needed no more than a 1/8th inch difference anywhere. Now our floors are from 1974, with 24″ between the floor joists. Which means there’s a lot of movement in the floor. Because several runs have HVAC ducting between the joists there was no way we could strengthen/brace the joists from underneath. Which meant lots of movement on the floor. But we did what we could.
After pulling up the tiles (thank heavens they are floating tiles, not ones that had to be glued down so pulling them up was simple), and doing a ton of research/video watching, we ended up pouring more self-leveling compound (which by the way isn’t actually truly self-leveling) and sanding it to perfection. We ordered a much heavier-weight pull-bar from Amazon since there were literally none available at ay of the local Home Depots or Lowes. We found quite a few professionals recommending you lock the short ends of several tiles together before laying the long ends together and snapping them in and we discovered that worked much better. We also laid down a sheet of 1/4″ plywood beneath the fridge, recommended so the weight of the fridge won’t interfere with the floatiness of the tiles. It’s not perfect, but it will do for us.
Frankly, by the time the floor needs to be replaced again in ten years or so, we’ll probably have sold the house and it will be someone else’s problem. I’m not doing it ourselves again because all our backs and knees hurt by the time we finished the second round of laying this floor. And in ten years we’ll both be in our mid 70s and this type of DIY is for younger folk.
But for now, the floor is finished, the toe-kicks are down (which were really easy to do as they are straight cuts and snap onto the Ikea feet) and now we can move on to the last task of adding the trim around the window. Oh and figuring out how to make the tops prettier by adding some crown moulding. But that’s has nothing to do with making the kitchen workable, so whenever that gets done, doesn’t matter much to me. Yet.
Sinfully Knotty 