Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Photo Prints

The time has come to print out more pictures. A task that I've been putting off for a while, but I just feel like now is the time. My office walls are bare and cry out for decoration of the inspirational hiking variety. Pictures that I've taken. To remind me that work isn't all that I do during the dreary, cold months of the off season.

And I think putting out the new editions of the Hike with Me books has definitely contributed to this urge to get more pictures. As I've been going over the books to convert a large print version to a standard print version, I have had to move the pictures around so that the text fully surrounds them and doesn't leave areas of white space. In some cases, I even had to completely redo the plates to turn a pair of half pages photos into a single full page photo plate. As I moved them, I couldn't help but remember how many really cool pictures I've managed to take while backpacking.

Not to mention, it's been a really long time since we printed out any photos. I mean, the last ones that we printed out were from the first trip to the coast back in 2015, and here we are planning out third trip for this summer. Plus, I haven't printed out any photos at all from any of my Idaho Centennial Trail trips.

I'm getting closer to finishing the Hike with Me standard print size editions. I'm working on Return to the Wild Coast and after that, there's just one more, very short, one left. That book is the first one where Ambrose requested/recommended having the pictures be outlined so that the captions were more easily distinguishable from the text. Which is nice, because that means I don't have to add that. All I need to do to modify the large print edition for this one is to add the Large Print sticker to the cover.

I didn't get to work on the books as much as I would have preferred last weekend, because my stomach has gone on a painful streak. Monday and Tuesday were mostly liquid diet to try to get my body past this, which usually works. Mostly, in this case, means that I didn't decide to go liquid until after I ate part of my breakfast (turkey sausage and a flour tortilla). I hated to leave the remainder of my breakfast (a hard boiled egg and a banana), but the pain was significant enough that I knew that was the right decision.

Even without getting as much done as I wanted to, I still got some good work in over the weekend. I don't feel like I've lost momentum on the project. And now I can keep an eye out for some pictures to print out as I go.

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

Stories on Submission

Recently, I followed a train of thought until it started to spill out into a little story. And when, after much drama over how to open the link, my husband read it and gave me some feedback, I decided to go ahead and send it out. I haven't done very much story writing in the last year, and it was nice to find that one. Plus, I feel like there are more stories inside that train of thought. 

At the end of last year, I finished one story that had languished without an ending for several months. And even though it also received the spousely stamp of approval, I didn't do anything with it at the time. I wasn't interested in collecting more rejections. But I'm feeling more optimistic now. So I put that one out on submission as well. 

I think working on the standard print versions of my Hike with Me books helps keep me in a writing frame of mind. The conversion from large print to standard is fairly mindless, but when I'm doing it, I'm focused on book production. And maybe that spills over into other times, giving me an excuse to go ahead and think about stories more. 

I've finished the standard print editions on 6 out of 9 of the books. Two of the remaining are pretty short, one very short. The second Wild Coast book is one of the longest, so that will take a while to convert, especially because when I reduce the print size, the space for pictures changes. For a couple of the other conversions, I've had to completely redo my picture plates so that I can fit everything without leaving big tracks of white space in the text (a waste of precious page space!). I've been able to make it work, though there are a lot more pages of consecutive pictures than in the large print versions. 

And I've updated the large print editions to conform to the style guide that I really should have started a few books ago. Mostly, it's adding borders to the photos so it is clear what is a caption and what is text. Though I did have a number of the large print books in 20 point font, and I later changed to 18 point. So, I switched all the 20 point to 18, because that reduces the page count and allows me to also reduce the price (a smidge). 

If writing more stories is happening because I'm working on these books, then I might just have to figure out other publishing tasks that I can work on when these conversions are done. Maybe it's time to publish a collection of short stories that have been rejected. Just because they weren't to any particular editors' taste doesn't mean they aren't good stories. 

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

Books and Bits

All the books have reached their destinations, and I received confirmation from two recipients about their safe arrival. Now is the time to bear down on the standard print editions for the rest of the series. I've gotten a start on the Queens River Loop. The process is just tedious. I created a copy of the large print document and I'm taking it section by section to resize the text. But since all the pictures have been placed in specific positions, I have to go and set them up so they'll flow with the text as I resize it. And once the text has been resized, I have to go and place all the photos in new positions to account for the smaller text taking up less space on the page.

I thought about doing a smaller version of the Hike with Me books, but then I looked up the information and the size of the book doesn't affect the cost - just the number of pages and whether it's in color or black and white. I mean, I guess I could do a small version in black and white, which could then be reasonably priced and put in expanded distribution. And if it were in expanded distribution, then it would be possible for a library to get it. And maybe I could put in a coupon code for a free or reduced price ebook download via Smashwords so that I don't feel so bad about not printing the beautiful photos in color.

But that line of thinking is a distraction. I shouldn't let it derail me from getting the standard print size versions complete. The only thing that I should allow to derail me from that task is if I get a story idea. And I did get one last week for the first time in a while.

It was interesting; I had an idea, started free-writing the possible consequences, and then the voice of the character popped up and I started writing that. It's a bit of a weird story because it's essentially a monologue. But I liked it, and Ambrose (when he figured out how to access it) also enjoyed it. I'll submit to a market just for kicks, because, as I wrote, it's kind of weird. But it's worth a try.

I was up late Monday night with a spot of tummy pain. Sometimes it feels like my bowels are blocked up and it makes me feel like I have to pee every five minutes. I'll go to the bathroom, come back and lie down and just as I'm starting to relax, I get the pee alert again. I'm kind of proud of myself for getting up at 5 am the next morning, because I was super tired but did CrossFit at 5 am anyway. But I also don't want that to be a normal thing. I like sleep.

Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Books in the Mail!

My artisan books, with their full color photos and variety of font sizes, along with unique, one-of-a-kind typo corrections written in by the author, have been shipped across the country to their intended recipients. They probably won't arrive for a while, since I used media mail, which is a cheap shipping option for books through USPS.

So now I have no more excuses. That book is complete - and I uploaded revised interiors to all the places that I originally uploaded. I need to get serious about working on the standard print size for the rest of the books and then I need to consider something.

The whole reason I've resisted putting my books into expanded distribution is that doing that makes them very expensive. Upwards of $50 a book. And I don't believe that books should cost that much, so I don't want to do it. I don't want to ask someone to pay that much.

But.

Expanded distribution could get my books into libraries. And libraries are a great place for books to be discovered. I mean, I've been known to browse the library and find new authors. Although I have a tendency to just reserve whatever book I want and skip the browsing nowadays, I do still sometimes look at the new releases section and browse through science fiction and fantasy, open to new authors that look interesting.

So, I can look at the number of people buying print copies of my books now (mostly, nearly entirely, me), and I can figure that I won't get many more buyers if the price goes up. But if I could get a book into a library, then it would be available to more people for less money. Someone might browse and find my book and who knows what could happen from there?

Something to think about - as long as I think about it while working on my standard print size editions!