Grindhouse

Well, I paused and leaned into the question, “You have to grind away until you find a way.” That will be my response one of these days when I’m asked how I become a global literary superstar. Until then, I will rerun the pretend interview in my head.

What is not pretend is that everything is work in the end. With my writing practice on intentional hold for now, I’ve found myself noticing how much work you do when you are not writing, especially if you’re intent on selling a few books. They ain’t gonna sell themselves. I need to look no further than my own three title to prove that out.

But back to the grind. I like to sit on my front porch with my laptop and put in my hour of writing adjacent work. But the mosquitoes, heat, and tenuous internet connection have been driving me inside to my cooler, connected, and mosquito-free desk. Here, I have been grinding away at all the stuff that comes with being a authorpreneur. If you are of the same mold, you may recognize some the items on the list any may find some value in my experiences. If you are reading out of pure intellectual curiosity- Do people even do that anymore?- then all the grinding noise may come as a surprise. Hey, its all work in the end.

Put Tripio on IngramSpark: My first novel was a published, warts and all, five years ago. I’ve since had the cover and interior design upgraded. The Trier is already there and after a lot of grinding, and sorting out my old ISBNs with Bowker, Tripio is ready to be ordered by any one of Ingram 39,000 independent bookstore distribution partners. One is better than none.
The covers of my titles now appear with my books in the Indianapolis Library System. Why they weren’t there in the first place will never be fully understood.
Fired up my Square for a local Elevate event. Of course, I had to reset everything. I did dig a little deeper on my account and was able to attach photos of my books to my items, which I thought was nifty.
Ordered books for the local event mentioned above.
Sent photos to Danielle for the Columbus Coffee Festival in October. Sent the old headshot, a promo shot of both coffee novels I’ve used before, and a nice pic of of me at last year’s event. She’s going to use one to promo my spot in this year’s Author Village.
I ordered those books from Bookvault. I had set up a Bookvault account as a counter to being utterly dependent on Amazon. BV is POD company based in England, but just opened a facility near Cleveland so my books arrived quickly
Got a free trial to Adobe to come up with flyers for the Elevate event and Columbus. I had some luck but Acrobat does not come easily to me.
Ran downtown for my monthly talk with my writing colleague. He helped me with Bookvault, but we mostly bitched about not selling books.
Poked abound my Reedsy account for old events. I don’t pay for anything on Reedsy but instead find old, still relevant craft-related talks. I mean characters telling each other things they should already know was as bad two years ago as it is today.
Found reasons to post something on Instagram
Read Jane Friedman’s last newsletter. For my money, ha ha, I don’t pay for this either, Jane is the one newsletter I must have. She is the calm voice of reason out there in a world of folks shrieking to get your attention. Her newsletter is filled with indie author gems and links, some free and some not. You already know where I go.
I am continuing to time-edit The Trier Goes to London, and The Travels of the Trier. Father Time is undefeated so why not have him on your side?