Last night, I loaded up a formatted file of SLEEPER onto my Kindle Author Bookshelf and promptly fell asleep to dream about...hard returns, tabs, and backspace, backspace, backspace. Ugh. Formatting kills creativity :P. And then I woke up and found that it's December already! WTH?!
I'm nowhere near done with the writing goals I told you about a month or two ago. I have this month to finish writing DANGEROUSLY HOT, edit and format PROTECTOR and edit and format Grace's story, which I've re-titled Danger spells T.R.O.U.B.L.E (still might change that). So far, I've accomplished only three of my writing projects--the short story in SEAL of my Dreams, editing Hunter and Sleeper and getting the latter ready for different e-formats. Actually, I'm not even completed the Sleeper formatting yet because there are still Nook, Smashwords and Print formats waiting. Oh yeah, every one of these have different stuff needed done to the manuscript and it all takes time. Which I don't have. Gah.
I'm doing Kindle first because it beats my Nook sales 4-1. Smashwords represents a miniscule of my sales, so that's last. Anyway, did that last night, and I'm going to take a break and go back to writing because it's eating up my whole month. The other formats will have to wait a bit. It's all a learning process for me because I'm computer challenged. At first I had someone doing that for me but she's very busy with her clients and so I thought I'd learn as I go, hoping not to make too many mistakes.
It's a good thing to learn these days because formatting service packages cost about $500 or more, depending on how much work they have to do. My friend charges me a lot less but even that, with the cost of covers, can be expensive for a project. Getting a book ready for different e-formats (different format, cover art, edits) could cost $800. And that's why I can't sell it for 99cts like some people ask me to. It'll take me forever to make back the money I sank into the production, even though I paid less. When the production costs have been taken care of, I'll lower the price, like I did with Big Bad Wolf ebook and print.
So anyway, I was complaining about time. I might not get Grace's book done by the end of the year. It's written but needs a bit of revision and of course, the above formatting pain. I've also been entertaining the thought of creating my own cover, like I did with Big Bad Wolf, to save money. AHAHAHAHA. Maybe not. Looking at thousands of stock photos is fun but damn time-consuming. So's playing with Photoshop!
Dangerously Hot is coming along slowly but I need to speed up. 30 days or less, man! Sylvia Day is a fantastically fast writer and I don't want to disappoint her. We wanted this project done and out around Christmas/New Year to get the new Kindle owners' attention :). At least, for that one, the cover is ready. Did you guys see it?
And here's my new cover for Sleeper:
For those who asked: "why is the book renamed Sleeper? Why didn't I use the original Sleeping With The Agent?" Well, Sleeper was the original title, to go with the one-word "hunter" and "protector" theme, but the Avon marketing department wanted to change the style to use the now prevalent "active title theme." You can see it on the covers of a slew of romantic suspense the last few years (Take Me Tonight, Standing In The Shadows, Show No Mercy, etc.) but back then, it was just* starting to get hot. So I gave the marketing people at least fifty titles like that and they rejected every. single. one. and came up with...Sleeping With The Agent. My readers and friends, at the time, were astounded at how horrifying it was, LOL. I hated it when someone casually asks me about my writing and to give her the title of my newest book. Umm...Sleeping...withtheagent (yes, I said it just like that, heh).
So, now that I'm back in control of my SEAL series, I get to decide whether to abandon the original titles or not. I chose to drop the article in the title, thus "PROTECTOR," "HUNTER," and "SLEEPER." This is so that I can use "WARRIOR" for Cucumber's book (ahhhh...perked your attention, eh?).
Enough about boring production stuff. I'm sure you're all snoring away. I'll post the winner of the Thanksgiving giveaway soon (have to collect all the names from here and Facebook). And will give you another sneak peek excerpt from Dangerously Hot.
Plans, I got plans. Just slow down a bit, December!
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