Shady Lady Julie

Well they say every day is a learning day.

I have now downloaded Calibre and wrestled with it for a while, not sure I am winning but I certainly know a little more.

This means that my readers should get an enhanced experience as they will get the pretty book cover that appears on the site on their e-reader. Also it gets my name right.

Does that matter?...who knows but it's fun learning.

Now onto the TOC otherwise known as the Table of Contents. The instructions to try to add this to an existing book are written in a language that means nothing to me...pure Geek-en-ese

However if you write in Word (which I do) and you highlight a phrase making it Heading 1 then, like magic when Calibre converts the doc to ePub the TOC is magically there.

I am so proud of myself for learning geek though I do have the desire to lie in a dark room with a damp towel on my head.

When I started on my publishing career (still very grateful and humble to those of you who have bought) I decided to throw in a few free books. These would be tasters as they tend to be very short, almost like a chapter for the more experienced writer/publishers, but would give a reader an idea of the sort of thing I write.

The only thing I asked for is perhaps a short review and/or maybe a few stars (hopefully 5 but not holding my breath) yet to date I think only one person has done that even though there has been at 140 downloads.

I suppose the question in my head is whether I should stop posting free books here or just carry on as at least people haven't left 1 star reviews.

When you publish a book you have to give a sample, a taster if you like. But there hangs a question, how mush is just right. Not enough and the reader never engages, not enough and the reader has half finished the book before they decide whether or not to pay for it.

I did try uploading a custom sample as I thought perhaps later in a book might be more 'exciting'. What a disaster that was so will using the percentage of the book as a guide.

So I have been playing around to see what sort of length feels right (hmmmm that could have been phrased more modestly, no matter).

So I have started. Not writing as that is something I have been doing for years, but actually publishing so it makes me feel like a proper writer.

I don't normally do blogs but felt I wanted to record a huge thank you to the three people who parted with their cash and bought copies of my first published book.

I am terrible at keeping blogs going so the chances are I will just do this at random and probably use it as a place to rant.

Rant number 1...why oh why? when you copy and paste does the formatting decide to go in a way that then takes forever of mind numbingly boring line by line editing. It is either a conspiracy of the world plotting against me or my own technical incompetence. I suspect the latter is more likely.