So yesterday was as much a whirlwind of a day as expected. I did get everything done, though, which was very good.
That meeting of selfpublishers was pretty interesting, and I managed to avoid the Oktoberfest crowds when heading back home by going after midnight which was not the smartest move on my part. This weekend will be sluggish and unproductive as a result.
At that meeting there were only five of us, each one doing pretty different kinds of books. I was the only one who hadn’t anything published yet (also my business card was the most unprofessional by far). Still I found that the others’ goals were slightly different from mine. It seems that for most German authors the big goal is to get their books into physical book shops. And two of the non-fiction authors in the group are indeed selling stacks of books to distributors out of their basements.
Of course they were all talking about services and distributors that I had never heard of because I’m thinking about the English-speaking market and online sales, and when I mentioned smashwords, createspace and draft2digital they looked at me funny in turn.
They also told me to translate my books into German, and I am thinking about it but I’ll see how they are doing in English first, before putting more time into them. They also suggested crowdfunding to raise the funds I need for proper covers and editing. Unfortunately I don’t think that will work.
But then what do I know.
We talked for ages, and there is a lot I will have to think about. As usual when I’m meeting people.
I was really hoping to make a lot of progress on the novel today but with the lack of sleep I don’t know if that will happen. It is also the annual hedge-cutting time, always a slight crisis, and something that needs the whole family to pull together.
I want to go for a run, and then I’ll guess I’ll spend most of the day slothing in front of the computer.
I never know if the benefits of going out and meeting people really outweigh the lost day or two afterwards. I guess I’ll have to decided that on a case to case basis.
It always feels a little cold and calculating, this „Do I get enough out of this to make it worth my time?“ kind of thinking but then time is the one thing you can’t really get more of. Not that I am striving for a life where not a single moment is wasted but spending a whole evening in town is a rather big investment of time, especially when you count the impact that has on the hours before where I need to get everything done before heading out which includes things I’d usually do at night, and a day or two afterwards where I will be pretty unproductive with less-than-usual impulse control.
Still, that meeting was interesting enough to be worth it this time.
And after two weeks full with beginning of the school year panic, traveling over the weekend, re-scheduling lots of students, and then going out meeting new people in a place I’ve never been I am really looking forward to a slow and semi-lazy weekend.
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