Version Control, Perception Management.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved


Wow. More questions, more answers, and more challenges. I only have about seven or eight projects in my 'New Book Versions' folder. There were 153 items in that folder.

I've been going through it. Deleting stuff. For each book I would need the original cover image and the final cover image. I need one good, clean and up to date master file in something like a .doc, nicely formatted a la trade paperback, and one e-book.

Maybe one pdf of them each. In that folder I might need, cover images, master files, blurbs all written up and a promo pic of yours truly and not much else.

Another author, an fb friend, was perturbed because she had just spent endless hours revising an older version of a project. I've done the same thing. What I have done is to take my latest revision of 'The Paranoid Cat and other tales,' and simply tacked the date jan2311 into the file name. Even so, uploading that version to a number of sites has essentially taken all day.

I don't know if I can delete a book on Google Books while it is still processing. Theoretically I need a html file to upload to Amazon. It's the preferred format.

Stumbling around in the Google site, I see they do indeed have Google e-books up and running. All I have to do is go back and start filling in fields. My work is never done, and one success spawns more challenges, doesn't it?

Life's funny that way.

I don't know where I will be in a year, but that's enough time to learn my way around a little better. That's a fair amount of time to learn marketing, and I don't know...maybe mellow out and try to socialize a bit more.

Compared to where I was a year ago, I'm doing all right. It's important to keep it all in perspective, and manage one's perceptions to a certain extent.

Up until now, my biggest failures have been inattention to detail, impulsiveness, and haste. Also, by focusing on tiny details, my narrowed attention fails to observe the big picture...okay, a little pompous-sounding, but you get the idea.

In terms of perception management, I do get a little uptight at the thought of all that work, but it is my job, and there is no one forcing me to sit here for hours a day--it's my own choice.

I'm lucky to be able to do it. Just to have the opportunity. Thank God I'm not 18 years old. I would pooh-pooh this chance, and let it slip by. I know that for a fact.

So that's my challenge to myself: to become about a million times more professional than I am right now. To learn the business side of it. To look at the big picture once in a while...and to socialize more!

Throw in three more POD's, another title or two, and I don't know what all. Short stories, poems and a lot of talk-talk-talk. Oh, yeah. Polish up the old skill-set.

We've got a fair bit of stuff on our plate.