The Journal, Friday, 12/16

Hey Folks,

Today, as it turned out, is another nonwriting day. But read on. There are good things in this edition of the Journal.

Windy here. Big wind. Strong stinkin’ wind. Even the cats don’t want to go out. Windy in New Mexico too. Two large trees hit my son and daughter’s house in Roswell. Damaged the roof and cut the electricity. Sigh.

While visiting Amazon yesterday to place my short story and novella in their store, I found they have a completely new publishing interface. It’s much cleaner and it seems a little faster.

They did make it a bit more clunky with regard to adding search tags. Before, you could copy/paste up to seven search tags and insert them in one fell swoop. Now you have to insert each tag individually, ala Smashwords. Annoying. But overall I like Amazon’s improvements.

Okay, so I decided to do a topic on distributors today. Here’s the way I see it:

Topic: Distributors

Draft2Digital remains my favorite distributor. They pay royalties monthly, and they send you a monthly statement from each venue that includes the amount (in dollars) of your royalties from that venue. Very up front and easy.

The conversion engine at D2D turns out higher-quality .mobi (Kindle) and .epub (Nook/Apple) files than the one at Smashwords turns out. D2D also provides a universal link where a prospective reader can click one time to find your book at the the reader’s favorite venue (B&N, Apple, Amazon, etc. even Smashwords).

They also have a slick, clean interface. The only downside to D2D is that they distribute only to Apple, B&N, and Kobo, as well as the smaller Scribd, Inkterra (formerly PageFoundry), Tolino and 24Symbols. Still, at least they hit the big ones, less Amazon.

Amazon is just Amazon, but it’s a major sales venue and they sell in around 60 countries. (Most of the other larger sales venues do too.) And they don’t accept distribution from anyone else (yet) so I continue to distribute to them individually.

Even with improvements on their interface, for speed and efficiency, they’re still somewhere between the very quick, slick interface at D2D and the dragging-boots-through-mud interface at Smashwords.

Amazon pays royalties monthly, but they remain two to three months behind, and they make it difficult to find how much you’ve been paid and by whom. (You have to log into Amazon, go to your account, wade through reports, etc.)

Smashwords is the grandpappy. They distribute to the same ones D2D distributes to (except 24Symbols) plus eleven others, including the massive Gardners in the UK.
They also maintain their own store, with really good royalties if the customer buys directly from them.

I still distribute to Smashwords primarily because of their in-house store and their coupons. And since I’m there anyway, I allow them to distribute to all those others that D2D doesn’t reach.

However, I don’t think I’ve made enough money from those other venues (the extra ones D2D doesn’t handle) to buy a burger and fries yet. I’ve done pretty well selling through their store.

To reward D2D for the benefit of working with them, I distribute through them to every venue they support.

Then I go back to Smashwords’ “(Distribution) Channel Manager” and click “Opt Out” for Apple, B&N, Kobo, et al that D2D is handling for me. That, too, is a very clunky, flint-chisel-on-a-stone-tablet kind of process, and it serves to remind me why I prefer D2D.

So whatever else you do, get a D2D account. If I was going to distribute through only two distributors, I would pick D2D and Amazon. That covers all the biggies in one bag.

Pronoun—I mentioned this new distributor awhile back, so I suppose I should mention them again now. Okay, I still don’t use them. Their interface was designed by someone for whom condescension apparently is a lifestyle. They DO distribute to Amazon, so that’s one thing in their favor. But frankly, I’d rather put up with Amazon’s interface than Pronoun’s silliness.

* * *

Well, my friend and I were going to talk marketing today over a pizza and a couple good cigars. Neither of us know anything about marketing, so it would have been the blind leading the blind, but we both like pizza and cigars. So. However, he was unable to make it due to illness. Any marketing geniuses out there? Wanna do a guest post? Please?

* * *

Did some more editing. I’m jonesing to write fiction, but nothing again today. However, today I decided to reprise (revive?) my Adobe Hovel office and my old computer. I think I need to do what I did before, namely, dedicate a space to writing fiction, especially while I’m stuck in this dual role. More on that tomorrow probably. For now, another nonwriting day today and back to the edit for awhile longer.

Of Interest

Over at Dean’s site 12/15/16 Daily (http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/121516-daily/). He posted very late today (after noon) so if you check on your own, there y’go.

By the way, visit Kris Rusch’s site (http://kriswrites.com) and sign up for her newsletter. She’s giving away the first novel in her Diving series. Trust me, this is a great deal.

Today’s Writing

Yeah, no.

Back tomorrow.

Fiction Words: XXXX
Nonfiction Words: 820 (Journal)
So total words for the day: 820

Writing of “”

Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXX

Total fiction words for the month……… 18975
Total fiction words for the year………… 698669
Total nonfiction words for the month… 9300
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 267200

Total words for the year (fiction and nonfiction)…… 965869

Edit Totals

Day 1…… 51 pages. Total to date…… 51 (+16 in the bank)
Day 2…… 26 pages. Total to date…… 77 (+7)
Day 3…… 41 pages. Total to date…… 118(+13)
Day 4…… 38 pages. Total to date…… 156 (+16)

And this is on a memoir. I copyedit much faster on fiction.