Learning Curve

The process of doing legwork (finger work?) on promoting my own book is certainly teaching me a lot! So far, with the assistance of a friend, I've signed up for some promotion from one book site, but I've also managed to (hopefully) score a future review by another site I found on my own. It's a scary challenge for me, but I'm genuinely committed to Etched in Fire. I put enough of myself in the book that I don't intend to let it sink into obscurity if there's anything I can do about it.

One of my secondary bits of information is that I figured out how to convert my files to .mobi format. This is really useful, since I plan on giving my my a copy to read on her Kindle, and would like to be able to put my own writing on my personal Kindle. That cost me a couple of hours, between playing with .doc, .rtf, and .docx (the last is best) and cleaning up white lines in favor of inserting page breaks. But totally worth it, because now I know how to handle it.

Exciting, right?

So now I'm looking for more sites that take small press. I am very glad that I am at home on the Internet. Somewhere back in the mists of time, I realized that electronics didn't break if I hit the wrong key. Then I discovered that I could fill in holes in my book collection, and I was hooked. I've also done a fair amount of hunting for obscure stuff for other people as well as myself. I guess hunting for sites that will review small press fantasy books counts as obscure stuff. Who knew?

I expect that this process will be good for me, despite the stress level it engenders. Because when it really comes down to things, learning something new stimulates my mind and keeps it active. It doesn't matter if that something is how to format a book, how to search for review sites, or the quantam theory of rogue waves. And keeping my mind active is the best way I have of writing quality work.