It is exhausting this self-publishing lark! I am talking about my endeavours to launch my novel, ‘Pardon my Camino’, what I have now learnt to call my indie book, which will make me an indie author – that is if I can ever wrestle PmC into the big wide e-world. This angst, to put it crudely, is all about and all the fault of computers and all the e-baggage they drag around with them which is now squarely on my poor ancient shoulders!
Let me do a serious, deep-dive soul-cleansing diversion here: I am in my 70s – as in years of age- I belong to a generation where many of us can get cut off at the knees by the cyber world. Computers arrived mid-career, actually, quite gently. My first such device at work was a Radio-Shack word processor that would take a text that was the equivalent of 20 minutes of spoken word (I worked in broadcasting), you then stored that on a cassette, deleted the text from the devise and was good to go for more writing! I loved that little machine, but then the whole computer development sped up and took off leaving many of us only just managing the bits we needed for the job.
Most of my generation can happily email, cruise the internet, subscribe to sites, and manage banking and other accounts. I can find and download podcasts and music. We do social – Facebook, Twitter, some a bit more ambiguous with Instagram.
However, now for indie-book life, I need so much more. I am currently striving to create and place an ad on Facebook. I also need to manage images for said ad and my website. And then there is the formatting of my book! I have moaned to you about before. My pain continues, my lovely formatter (bless her) has sent me an EPub, and now I need to download an ePub reader for my computer. I followed a recommended link and downloaded one from the Microsoft store, paid for it and no sign of it. I thought it might find its way to me overnight, but no such thing. Now I have spent two hours on chat with Microsoft only to discover that it only works for Windows 8 after all, it said it would work on 8 or 10 and I am a 10 kinda gal!
Give me a blinking break here! Sigh sigh, grumble grumble.
I am aiming to launch PmC in February, that is if I can manage the upload to Kindle and Kobo. A couple of things in my favour, as the self-pub gurus keep telling me, I control the product, so if it takes a bit longer so be it and I do know there is help out there I could call on and hire. But I am really trying to learn, I really am!
I watch the tutorials, chatty helpful folks like Mark Dawson and his course on Facebook ads. I watch each episode at least three times. I feel it must and will start rubbing off and rubbing in. If I just keep soaking and dunking myself into the e-cyber-world bathtub and keep hammering away at it, won’t it start to happen? That is if I don’t forget all the bits and bobs by next time.
If you have made it thus far dear reader, many many thanks for allowing me to vent and whine about my frustrations. BooHoo.
p.s. Sorry, but too busy to do a doodly picture, even though that would be therapeutic! Just a stock one from the DepositPhotos, to which I have subscribed, ooh another learning exercise.
