0 words. I’m still quality checking all of my books. I finished all my 2014 books. It’s a long and tedious process but the steps I’m following now will ensure that I don’t have to do this again for another 4-5 years, maybe more.
When you have 1 or 2 books, you don’t have to do this.
When you have 10 or so books, you should think about it.
When you have 66, it’s painfully necessary because you’re leaving money on the table if you’ve made any mistakes that have gone unnoticed.
When you have 266 books (or more), you’re in another universe entirely.
Some of the things I’m doing:
- I built a master spreadsheet that contains all of the information about my books. It’s extremely detailed and granular, forcing me to go slow.
- I’m checking things like:
- title and subtitle of my book, pricing schedule in all currencies (so that everything is consistent), the version of the book, the version of the book description to make sure every book published is current and up-to-date
- That I have several backups for all my books in place
- Checking links to all major retailers
- Checking the book page on my website for outdated info
- Documenting any missing license info like fonts and stock photos on my covers
- Double-checking and rereading cover design agreements with my designers, translation contracts, etc.
- rerunning my books through ePUB validation and fixing any validation errors
- Filling in distribution gaps. For example, maybe one book is available on Amazon but Apple rejected it after I made an update and I didn’t realize it until bow.
- organizing my project folders so everything is easy to find and logical
It’s a lot of work. But, I’m documenting all of this now on my master spreadsheet so that in 2025, I only need to double-check what I did today. It’ll be much, much smoother and I’ll have everything organized better than your average author. This will also make it easier for my heirs to navigate my estate whenever I die.
Also, the master publishing file I’m building will be used to populate the book pages my new website…whenever I get around to building that.
Anyhoo, this is the kind of stuff you spend time on when you have as many books as I do. And trust me, I don’t have that many books. Not compared to long time pros. But when I’m a long term pro many decades from now, I’ll thank myself for doing this.
I’m probably going to write a book on this topic.
But tomorrow is back to writing. I’ll pick up with my 2015 books in a few days. I need to give my brain a rest.
Tomorrow is a final business day as I get some taxes and stuff ready but otherwise I’ll be back to regular writing starting tomorrow morning. I think I’ll start with a short story.
Have a good night.
Oh, I also got Spirit Chaser off to my proofreader today. So I’m making some progress.
