The business of writing

The compulsion and craft of writing has taken backstage to the logistics and business of writing lately. I recently completed a book giveaway of my novel 1% Free through Goodreads under their new giveaway policy to encourage average readers to review it on social media. Reader reviews on social media is what drives successful self-publishing these days. Plus, whenever I advertise a giveaway I sell more books. Creating and distributing my digital and pdf ebooks for my story “The Death of David Pickett” is next on my “to do” list. That means, first, getting the right tools and learning how to use them. I use a word processing program designed for writers called Scrivener, which has a built-in compiler that allows users to create ebooks, pdf’s, and other digital media. I purchased a Scrivener for Dummies book and managed to create a few preliminary digital documents that will need to be refined before I publish and distribute them online for free. I also plan to publish TDODP for free on Smashwords. In order to accomplish that I first piggybacked onto the owner/subscriber of an MS Word license so I could use that software. Smashwords offers a style guide and a word template to publish ebooks and pdf’s on their site, which I’ve downloaded. I just finished putting together the MS Word document to submit to Smashwords once I’m ready to make the story available in digital form. I’m scheduling the release of TDODP for the end of September/beginning of October. Digital construction is hard work.