2020

If anyone tells you right now their 2020 was totally normal and barely worth mentioning, you might want to make sure they're in touch with reality. This hasn't been a good year for so many reasons. But I can't say mine, in terms of production or creativity, was necessarily bad.

Above is another new cover. I was contemplating going back to Fiverr but I found Canvas, where you can do a little bit more for free. I didn't end up doing much outside of what I could do myself. I have a new desktop computer but I'm not utilising it as much as I'd like on my picture book, or getting back into Adobe or other editing software. I have such thin patience for that level even though I know if you can pull it off, the effects are much more interesting. But I found a new image I was happy with and a decent font. This one was my least favourite, I'm still pretty happy with the others, I feel like I did okay despite having no professional design skills to speak of, apart from the one I did do through Fiverr. 

 

 

(I had to make some edits of my own but it cost me so much more to buy the assets of the designer. Fiverr is a misnomer, if you really want a package deal expect to pay a lot more.)

I don't know when the picture book will be ready at this rate, again this year hasn't been kind to a lot of people so I've given this an indefinite release date. Occasionally I've considered abandoning the project altogether but there's no reason to do this as yet. I think if it became completely unrealistic I might have to either mothball it or consider another avenue. Pitching isn't on my mind anymore, despite Into the Other still sitting with one company without a decision, which I haven't even attempted to check up on. An indie surviving this pandemic would be impressive right now.

In other news, my previous publisher seems to have fallen off the web yet again, and they may have decided to go back to Amazon after all, it's very hard to tell. I think I'll try and make an effort of not looking into them going forward. My second contract was due to expire Jan 21st, and I can now comfortably say that terminating it was the best decision for it. Whether another company is willing to pick it up remains to be seen, the biggest issue is if I'm pitching, I won't sell or list my self-published books until a decision's been made. If it's knocked back, I'm hoping to get the cover art updated to include some spine material, which will depend on whether I can get the original artist to fix it for me. Asking now would be pointless, if another company decides to go ahead, they would probably want to do their own design (and at this point if they wanted to edit the book I can understand why but I'm not really prepared to do this - they have a right to but that makes opening their door to self-published books more of a headache for both parties, so this would ostensibly be a brand new edition). It's incredibly hard to say what response I'll get. My last pitch actually came back with comments, not just a form response, and this pitch fit perfectly into what they recommended. My cynical side says they'll find some other fault this time. And naturally, they'll need to see the rest. It's very much right in the back of my mind right now.

I have absolutely no plans to start or continue or re-write anything for publication outside of the picture book. 2021 will be much more aimless. Having to plan a wedding turned out to take so much of my energy had I been working towards any major publication, it would've been too draining. 2017 was a massive year of convergence that genuinely led to my last relapse, so I think one major project at a time is all I can and should do.

Interest in the free books has dropped off somewhat, but it's not been a bad run. I've gone to Amazon Advertising where my impressions are reasonably high but one more, as with Goodreads, it's not translating to clicks. Or sales. At least this system can give you those metrics. I haven't blown my 1 dollar bid yet. Other than occasionally updating material, I'm not out there really promoting anything. The election got me sucked back into Twitter so I could check in with people online, and while I don't have my reach or any followers, I've posted my website to my profile anyway (and if for any reason a tweet of mine "blows up" at least I can share something). The reason I left has now been voted out. So instead of Jan 21st being the day I'd have gotten the rights to my book back, I get to wake up to a world where the Bad Orange Man is no longer president.

2020 may be forgiven for this, but it'll never be forgotten.