Editing Sucks & Phase II Update

I'm halfway, yes only halfway, through my first edit of my first kindle ebook, and it sucks! Editing is definitely my weakness in this process. You would think that it would actually go faster than writing, but so far it's taking me longer. I'm pretty sure I've already put in close to the same amount of time editing as I did to writing the initial first draft.

This is one task that I will immediately hire out when I start making money and can afford it! It has, however, been great for pushing me towards getting over my procrastination problem. I've always been bad about putting off the tasks that I don't like or want to do until "tomorrow", or, you know, next year. Sometimes, never! This time I've managed to keep myself on task pretty well, and I'm quite proud of this fact.

A couple things I've been doing is when I have something I want to do, like read, and something I need to do (but don't want) like editing; I make myself do the editing first. So if I mess around and waste a lot of time doing the unpleasant task, then I don't leave any time for the thing I want to do. I've also quit labeling myself as a procrastinator. As in saying, "I'm a procrastinator." While it is important to acknowledge your weaknesses so that you can begin to work on them, it can easily become a crutch as well. A cop out if you will.

By labeling myself as one thing it's like saying that it is an unchangeable part of my identity. Like saying, I'm a woman. If I say that I have a procrastination problem though, then it's suddenly not so set in stone. A problem has a solution, and a problem can be fixed. This all ties into my last post where I talked about changing my state of mind, and taking the time to improve myself as a person and not just focusing on the business aspect of things. Still, editing sucks!

Of course part of the reason that editing has been taking so long is that I've been making myself take it slow. Reading each line slowly once, out loud, making any edits, then reading it again. Yes, this is tedious, and boring, and takes a long time. However, I'm doing it this way to fight my urge rush through this unpleasant task and in the process do a substandard job. I want to deliver quality content to my future readers, and they deserve a well written and edited book. In return they'll hopefully pay me (of course!) and recommend my books to others, because the ultimate compliment would be to know that I helped them enough they were willing to endorse my products to the people that trust them. Editing was only part of Phase II two though, the other was formatting and email blogging.

I'm happy to say that with the little ebooklet KDP supplied for free I powered through formatting in around 1 hour. Since I had read the beginning of the book to start with some things I had already done as I was writing and this saved me a bunch of time. If you plan on self publishing through KDP I highly suggest you do the same thing. As far as my email blogging plan to pre-write around 10 emails, I haven't gotten very far.

I took the time to read book called the Email Marketing Blueprint, by Steve Scott and it really helped me focus on what I'd be doing in my email blogging campaign. From there I've decided that I actually need around 15 emails to start with, and so far I've written one. I outlines, roughly, what kinds of emails I would send, when I would send them, and how many would be monetized and HOW they would be monetized. I need to clean up my rough outline though and go into more detail in it. Once this is done it should be easier for me to knock out the emails I want to get written to start.

Usually when I sit down to start pre writing the emails my brain goes blank. Then I flounder around in my notes and research until I stop and start on editing instead. We all know already how I feel about editing, so this shows how much I'm struggling with this. A better outline should help me focus on the core things I want to write about, and how I want to write about them. The pre written emails for the email blogging is probably going to spill over into Phase III.

Phase III is a bit murkier for me, as it will include the finally product and getting that product published. Here's a general idea of what it will entail though:

1. A final edit - yes I'm going to edit again!
2. Finishing the initial wave of pre-written emails
3. Setting up my email service and getting the email blogging campaign set up.
4. Transferring my word document into the KDP publishing
5. Checking for bugs in my formatting, especially paying close attention to my links. 
6. Making any formatting changes that are needed so that everything is clean and works.
7. Finishing up the final product, including the cover.
8. Publishing
9. Launching a free release and trying to market my free ebook
10. Watch the results closely, and take notes.
11. Switch to a paid product @ a $2.99 price point and again take notes.

I suppose that launching the book, and tracking the results of my downloads is really a kind of Phase IV now that I think about it. Likely I'll break that down into it's own separate Phase once I get to that point. I also know what book I'm going to write next as a kind of companion to this book, and I've already started a very rough outline. Likely during one of the last two phases I will finish my outline, and hopefully begin writing again. 

The good news is by the time I start writing the next book it should be close to my breaks between semesters in school. This should allow me around two months to focus on getting the second book written, finished and published. The second one will be probably be smaller than this first one, so I'm thinking the price on it will be more like $1.99. As you can see I'm already thinking a few steps ahead on everything.

So there's the update on my progress. If you have any specific questions about anything just leave a comment and I'm happy to try and answer it for you!