In the office for a bit of self-imposed overtime. I didn't get as much done in my first week back as I would have liked and I want to make up the deficit, so by necessity this post will be brief.
Conservation, my first ebook, as been live on Feedbooks.com for about a week now and it has already gotten more (truly) worldwide attention than it ever got on Smashwords.com. I'm not sure why that is because a lot of people seem to use Smashwords, both for publishing and for buying books through their distribution network. Why Conservation only ever managed to reach 7 downloads is beyond me, but I'll take whatever attention it receives through Feedbooks.com.
Because of that success, I've been looking more closely at a different online retailer--Lulu.com. They operate in the Print On Demand (POD) niche but they also do some brisk business in ebooks. I've checked out their site and it looks good. I've read a few reviews from authors and they seem satisfied. The biggest plus for me is that they have some good and understandable documentation with respect to helping foreign authors get set up with the IRS with various tax numbers for remittance and withholding exemptions. The site even indicated that their support staff will help with questions, something Smashwords refused to do. When I'm ready to retail books again, I will go to Lulu first.
Picked up a new 24" monitor last night for use with my laptop--$129 LCD HD by Acer. On the stand I built last year it sits at the perfect height for me and with all the on-screen real estate Scrivener looks great.
Speaking of Scrivener, I have started creating a project bible for all the stories that will appear in the Epoch Universe. I discovered quite by accident that, unlike Word, when you open a second Scrivener project, it is launched in a second, separate window. I also discovered that I can drag and drop text files between those windows. This means that as I start to develop characters and settings in the active project, I can drag them over to the project bible and keep everything in one place--coordinated nice and neat.
I am more excited now about writing than I have been for a long time. The "success" that Conservation is enjoying, coupled with new tools has in a way rejuvenated me, shown me a light at the end of the tunnel. Expect more output in the weeks and months ahead.
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