That Was Fast!

The Therapist’s New Clothes is now an ebook. Smashwords has been much in publishing news lately for its deal with Apple’s new iPad. Despite the rush on Smashwords, the process of putting it up was straightforward, with no delays. When I expressed concern about the formatting, Mark Coker encouraged me to do it myself, saying, “it’s easier than you think”. Hmm...that sounded ominous. I did read through the style guide and took the formatting as far as I could. When I got stuck, I contacted Lucinda from the list of recommended format mavens, and she fixed it up promptly and quite reasonably. I am glad I forged through the style guide as far as I did as it helped me understand the strengths and weaknesses of the various formats, and made what had been a foreign language at least a little less foreign.

I haven’t spread the word and have yet to make a sale, but the sample (about 25 pages—or what would have been pages in the print version) has been downloaded five times. My initial excitement about this (wow—people can see it as an ebook!) quickly swerved into classic writer angst. Someone looked at it and didn’t buy it? Why not? Then I realized a couple of things: first of all, the whole point of the sample is to give someone a chance to read a bit of the book. Which takes time. The other is that it’s like flipping through a book in a bookstore. How often do I glance at a few pages and make a mental note about buying it later? Could you imagine if every book kept track of each time someone touched it and didn’t buy it? This is the game we’ve got now. The challenge is not to let it make you crazy.

In the spirit of serenity, here's Thembi, lord of all she surveys.