It's ANZAC day, so Australia is taking the day off. Shops are still open, but many of us are not planning to use them and, in typical Aussie tradition, we will be celebrating at some part of the day by setting something on fire.
Gotta love a nation made out of tinder that celebrates things with outdoor cookery and flame.
For the most part, today will be a day at home with nothing much happening. BUT... I have some good news! Smashwords doesn't give a shit about people co-publishing with them either! Hooray.
Which means that I am now on a mission to publish KFZ on Smash so y'all can get that sweet, sweet, e-book action.
It's looking increasingly like Amazon is the dog in the manger. They even retain copyright on anything published through them! Nasty. Fortunately, they only have their claws in Free Baby and nothing else of my intellectual property. And that's the way I'd like it to stay.
I sent off Adapting to my snailmail A2B, replete with tracking, and international reply coupons, and the obligatory self-addressed envelope. So of course I'm having a panic episode. Add to that the social anxiety caused by talking to Suncorp about setting up Internet Banking (because I either never got a phone passcode or lost it or forgot it) in person, and you have one Nutter who wants to hide under the couch for the rest of the week.
When it gets there, I have 2-3 months before they get back to me.
Before it gets there, I could plausibly send Adapting to one or even two other A2B's. But I'll stick to playing by the rules. Which state, THOU SHALT FOLLOW THY INSTRUCTIONS. If an agent tells you that they're okay with simultaneous submissions, you send them and a bunch of other agents (who are also okay with simultaneous submissions) your shit. If they don't explicitly state it, DON'T FIRKIN DO IT, YOU RUDE BALLOON. And especially don't do it if they outright say that they're not accepting simultaneous submissions.
But what I am going to do is encourage all of my A2B's to share my sample with their co-workers. You know. On the off chance that someone else in the office might like my shit.
I have to focus on selling Amalgam. It's the thing that I will keep on doing for possibly the rest of my life. And if I do sell it, then I can tell them about all the other random shit I do. Who knows? Maybe Beauties and the Beastly will see the bookstore shelves after all. I can hope, after all.
And it looks like the Beta-reads for Beauties might take a while because my attempt at Vic!lit atmosphere is turning at least one of my readers the heck off. I mean, I had fun with it, but I don't think anyone else appreciates that. Sigh. I tried to get more readers than my usual three, but that failed.
This could be the first book of mine that hovers in the Beta process for longer than it takes to write another one. That's... scarier than it taking an entire novel, TBH. I'd pay a beta-reader, but... I still haven't made any kind of ROI from any of my works. Pros charge moneys. I do not have moneys to spare. Le sigh.
Of course I get in a flap about not being able to support my addiction to writing. $400 a cover, $400 for advice that turned out to be worthless, this fee or that fee to do whatever. They even have admission prices for contests now. Admission prices I can't justify because I have never won anything in my life.
I know I'm a good writer. I remember the days of the Nutboard when everyone was encouraging me to write a book. Well... I've written books. Nobody wants them, it seems.
But I pretty much have to write. Trying to make money out of it... may prove futile. But at least I'm trying.
...very trying...