The Deixis Press Weekly - Issue #30
After this week, the children are on holiday and by extension, so am I. And I really am going to take a real-life actual holiday. I will set up some auto-posting social media stuff and I will probably check in on those every day or so, but otherwise, I’ll just be sitting on my posterior eating mice pies.
Yes, mice pies. Just like Snow White used to make.
Monday, 13 December
Yesterday my daughter sang a solo at an evening carol service in East Grinstead (which is nowhere near where we live), so we didn’t get the children in bed until 10pm, and then we realized Four Weddings and a Funeral was on, so obviously we watched it. So I’m not at my zippiest today.
I have a rule that if I am sitting down at my desk, I must be doing something useful, not just endlessly running through my to-do list and trying to “prioritize” stuff instead of actually doing it.
The problem is that nothing is urgent right now, so my brain can’t pick anything to prioritize/nag me about. I have to just decide to do a given thing. It’s that magical combination of anxiety, procrastination, perfectionism, and (almost certainly) ADHD that I’m trying to tackle. Pick one thing. Do it. Seems simple. Ha ha.
Today I’ve managed some low-hanging fruit, like finally (finally!) sending author’s copies out to Siôn and Richard, getting ebook files on Amazon, replying to emails that have been unfairly shoved down the list for several weeks, and so on.
Richard has pointed out that I should look at getting involved with book festivals in 2022. I have two in mind at the moment, one local to me and one virtual, but he’s absolutely right that I need to look into doing more of that. So onto the master list it goes.
Tuesday, 14 December
Today is a post office day: getting Genevieve off to an advance reader who would be an amazing reviewer (if she will do it), and getting Richard off to a particular prize.
There are so many different ways prizes can be handled.
The best experience:
Prize doesn’t charge you anything
Prize lets you send the book as an ebook or directly from Amazon.
The worst:
Prize charges you a three-digit fee for each category you’d like to be considered in.
Prize requires that you send a hardback to each of 10 individual judges in 10 individual locations, each with a handwritten note.
The absolute beyond the pale awful:
Prize does not allow anyone to submit; a panel of judges collectively discusses and decides on a shortlist of books they have heard of that year that were jolly good, completely disregarding the fact that they haven’t heard of and could not have heard of many, many books that come from independent publishers without 6-figure marketing budgets
Prize takes no effort to correct this obvious flaw in their method despite being created (for example) specifically to counteract the problem whereby too many “literary” prizes simply end up celebrating commercialism.
The prize I’m sending Richard to today is somewhere between the best and the worst, in terms of its process (it’s very good in terms of the books it celebrates).
Speaking of Genevieve, today I found out that you can now pre-order the ebook or paperback of Chocolate Cake for Imaginary Lives on Amazon! The hardbacks will be limited editions available only from the press.
Wednesday, 15 December
Edits! Edits for days! Edits and corrections and beautifications of all sorts. When these edits are done, the various book files for all three of my next books will be 100% complete.
hashtag winning
For various reasons these three books kind of had to get done all at once, but by the weekend I’ll have all the finishing touches in place, which frees me up over the Christmas period to start proper editorial work on Marc Joan’s book, Hangdog Souls, which I mentioned last week. (Oh, come on, you didn’t think I would really not do any work for three weeks?!)
Thursday, 16 December
Today I’m setting up a bunch of automatic tweets for Siôn’s #somerisebysilver competition. I’m going to open it up to drawings as well as dress-up, and I’m going to tweet out a bunch of character descriptions. Fingers crossed this new campaign will open up interest to those who haven’t read the book, and those who don’t have Regency outfits to hand (?? weird not to, IMO).
In brilliant news, it looks like Chocolate Cake for Imaginary Lives is shaping up to be a gastronomical hit; thanks to pre-orders, the Kindle book got as high as 5th in the Gastronomy section today and hit 1st in the “hot new releases” for Gastronomy—and 7th for the large category of Food and Drink’s hot new releases!. These lists have a lot of up and down movement and I’m not really sure what the criteria are to end up on them, but I’ll just enjoy this moment.
Friday, 17 December
As of noon, school holidays have descended. Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year. You’ll next hear from me in 2022 (probably on 14 January. Goodness gracious, that sounds like a long time).
Happy Holidays from Deixis Press and whoever made this gif.
Yours,
Angel