December 27th 2021 The Dreaded Question
I have seen several posts on Twitter about writing goals for 2022. My stock reply is "it depends"! This is not borne from inherent laziness or bad planning, it stems from the sheer nature of life itself.
2021 was not a great writing year for me, I confess! A complicated house move and more than one illness in the family took my attention away from writing. I also had a day job, for which I start 2022 without one. More time to write in the short-term, probably, although much of the time I am not working I will be looking for work. My wife and I still have many things in boxes, including my telescopes, since the house move in September. Apart from m y annual summary, "2020 An Astronomer's Year", I did not produce any new books or even booklets in the "Phil's Scribblings" series. I produced a lot of updates and found a better way to present graphics and captions, even though it is more work.
One thing I have learned in life is that goals need to be achievable and flexible. Another thing I know, as a writer, is that we all think our next book is going to be an international bestseller. No it won't! At the risk of trumpet-blowing, I have managed to be Number One in my genre twice. However, writing astronomy is not like being Stephen King, hence, the need for a day job to supplement my pension. Looking at the job ads, it is probable that I will need to work full-time because most jobs are full-time and I have no experience in the sectors that employ most part-time workers. That will restrict my writing time, somewhat.
My plans, for what they are, will be to finish off "2021 an Astronomer's Year". This is urgent because my annual summaries hardly sell once we get to February! Anyone interested in buying "2018 an Astronomer's Year"? Thought not! Then, of course, I will hopefully continue to make observations and take photographs and start writing "2022 an Astronomer's Year" as I go.
It is from here that my plans become somewhat nebulous. I am strongly considering writing a new edition of "Astrophotography with a DSLR". Even though it is an update, I will include a section on digital photo processing, which may also double the size of the book. I will also be reformatting it for better graphics presentation and paperback format. No mean task and I might not finish it in the year!
In 2020, I finished my debut novel "The Quantum God". Sales-wise, it was a flop! It has somewhat put me off writing more fiction but I wonder if it flopped because of poor marketing, rather than it being a bad book. If it was a bad book, then I would have had a few bad reviews but then I haven't had any at all.
Finally, any booklets in the "Phil's Scribblings" series. are fair game for new editions, especially if I develop any new techniques that are relevant to the subject.
I wish you all an enjoyable and lucrative writing 2022 but remember that a single word read by a million people is better than a million words read by one person.
December 26th 2021 an Astronomer's Year
I added some recent images and narrative, as I had a bit of clear sky. This includes Venus as a thin crescent, a short meteor trail and a UFO.
December 16th 2021 an Astronomer's Year
I have started writing the December entry as I go, so have included some images of the conjunctions of the Moon, Jupiter and Venus.
December 2nd 2021 an Astronomer's Year
I finished my November writeup. I just have to get a few pictures during December and possibly adjust the annual summary. Here are some images from November.
November 26th 2021 an Astronomer's Year
As I was waiting for my car to be serviced, I updated the book with my latest photos. I also checked the text and pictures of the book and made some modifications.
November 20th Webcamming
We are a fickle lot, us writers. "Webcamming" is not finished! Many writers never admit that their book is complete but this is especially true of those of us who write non-fiction. Yes, the next edition that I was about to release is better-presented than the previous edition but it does not contain all of the detail that I (later) decided it needed. So to continue or not? Who knows? I brought "2021 an Astronomer's Year" up to date. Surely, that is my next release, so I should check what I have so far.
November 19th 2021 an Astronomer's Year
It is probably a bit daft to write my annual #astronomy summary before the year is out and do a write up about November barely halfway through the month BUT...
my annual summaries do not have a shelf life past the end of January, so it is important for me to get them out as soon as I can. As a lot of work if captioning and editing graphics, it is best to do this as I go or the book won't be out until March.
As the 2020 summary, I am including updates to "Being an Astronomer" and other books in the Phil's Scribblings series.
Naturally, I will start writing the sequel next year but I'm wondering quite what else to write. I might do the sequel to "The Quantum God", even though it wasn't a commercial success.
November 18th Webcamming
I have finished "Webcamming" but need to find out how to disable 2-step verification, as it goes to my old house 'phone. In the meantime, I have been working on "2021 an Astronomer's Year" which I hope to release early in the new year.
November 6th How to see the Sun/Webcamming
"How to see the Sun" is not available for purchase on Kindle:
I have completed the October entry of "2021 an Astronomer's Year" which will be out in January.
I have started working on the new release of "Webcamming", with updated information on how to use webcams and webcam-style devices fort astrophotography.
November 3rd 2021 How to see the Sun
I did a few rounds of edits and have submitted it (3rd edition) for release on Kindle as an e-Book. I tried to prepare it for release as paperback but it was too short, as paperbacks need to be at least 72 pages. I had thought of releasing a paperback of more than one book of the Phil's Scribblings series.
Like many (most?) writers, I had to have one last round of edits before release.
I also found out (recently) that if one selects the 35% royalty option on Amazon, that one may select a lower purchase price and retain the right to publish elsewhere. Something to ponder for the future.
I had written one complete new section called "Quick Sessions with a DSLR", which I have copied to "2021 An Astronomer's Year" which will contain all relevant updates to Phil's Scribblings.
November 1st 2021 How to see the Sun
As life was still quite busy, I did not start or restart any big writing projects but had spent the end of October updating "How to see the Sun". Much of the work was reformatting graphics but I wrote a new section about using my DSLR to photograph sunspots without using a telescope.
October 12th 2021 An Astronomer's Year
I updated the September entry for this book at last! I needed a new laptop and had a hiatus from writing because of a house move. September was not a great month for astronomy and my best photo was a reprocess of the star cluster M35 from April 2020.
September 1st 2021 An Astronomer's Year
I updated the August entry for this book and submitted it to Kindle to verify its contents as a paperback. It was an interesting month, with lots of meteors, planets and even a UFO!
August 29th 2021 An Astronomer's Year
Yes. It worked.
August 28th 2021 An Astronomer's Year
Work outside writing was busy, so it took a long time for me to sort out the graphics and resubmit. I awaited the result from Amazon.
August 12th 2021 An Astronomer's Year
I redid the graphics and also did them for the July entry. Short of disaster, the book will come out in January 2022 in Kindle e-Book and paperback format. Honestly, I do not think there is a big market for the book in paperback but you never know! In any case, it was a pilot project for a paperback release of "Being An Astronomer", which I think does have a market for a paperback release.
I have submitted an interim paperback release to Kindle. Going through the learning process will help me get through further paperback releases. I HOPE!!
August 10th Graphics Resizing for smaller page size
I was able to release "The Quantum God" in a smaller paperback size but this was easy, as I did not have any graphics.
For the harder part, I am resizing graphics for "2021 An Astronomer's Year". I will "release" a paperback to Kindle when I have finished, to test it but DO NOT BUY IT. I will do a proper release, once the year is over.
As life outside writing is too busy at the moment, I am not getting much quality uninterrupted time to create new content, so I am concentrating on formatting and typesetting, which are just as important as the purely creative part but can be dropped and picked up more easily.
Once I have verified the graphics for "2021 An Astronomer's Year", I will retackle "Being An Astronomer". I believe that there is a market for a paperback version, even though it will be much more expensive than the Kindle e-Book version.
Naturally, I am daydreaming about a sequel to "The Quantum God". It may not happen at all. How much effort should we put into a project that has not sold well? On the other hand, I think the main difference between a good book and a bad book is marketing. Of course, we authors think that a good book will naturally outsell a poorly written work with flaky, one-dimensional characters and a boring storyline but evidence seems to suggest otherwise.
August 7th The Quantum God
For full release announcement, see
As with all writers, we all like our books to sell but the
main reason for this book release had little or nothing to do with “c”.
Recently, I had blogged about the difficulties of releasing
“Being An Astronomer” in paperback on Kindle. I decided to abandon this attempt
for a future edition and convert my books to a more “coffee table” size. “The
Quantum God” worked quite easily, so I started to do this with my 2021
astronomy summary.
“The Quantum God” was an easy project. I needed only to change
the size to 5.5” x 8.5” and delete and re-generate the table of contents. If
you simply update the table of contents, it will not work, as it will
regenerate to the old paper size.
I guess printing costs are what they are but I would have
liked to re-release the paperback copy for about 5 US dollars. Many people
still like to read a physical book, rather than a reading device, such as a PC.
In many ways, I do but I also remember having to carry paperbacks in my hand
luggage in the days I did a lot of business travel.
It’s not all that important, really: a cautionary note
Recently, I postponed a paperback release indefinitely. It hurt. Then I thought that it should not hurt at all. In fact, blindly going through all the steps to release the paperback would have had an awful effect on my writing. I have come to the conclusion that an ill-considered book release would damage my reputation as a writer and harm future sales, even though I might have picked up a few more coins in the meantime.
But how important is it? Even writers who are primarily non-fiction, hope that one day they will be the next Shakespeare. For a minute, consider musicians. We have pubs, clubs and open mike nights. Most of the performers (at least those under 50) hope that they will get a recording contract one day but the start reality is that few of them will. Just see the wanabee “last chancers” on the X Factor who are told (rightly) by their mentors to give up the dream.
In the UK, professional soccer clubs start scouting for recruits when the boys (and, now, girls) when they are at primary school and sign them on schoolboy terms. Yet most of them get released years before they reach the age to play professionally. They end up playing at a lower level, if they continue playing at all.
Now this does not apply if you make a sizeable contribution to your income from writing. If you have a publishing contract, you must deliver on-time or you won’t get the next one. Maybe you are young, without a partner or children and plenty of spare time. Otherwise, putting ourselves under pressure to finish a book by an artificial date or write a certain number of words every day (as is often advised) will just add unnecessary stress. Daily word counts are appropriate if you have a publishing contract and you need to meet a deadline. They are good discipline early in your writing life. These days, I say “thank God I have a life outside of writing”, much as it gets in the way at times!
Now the other thing to consider is that (as an example), I started writing by submitting magazine articles. About a quarter of them got published, so a lot of words went unread. Experienced writers quite often discard projects quite a way through a first draft or shelve them for other projects. Some even discard projects at the last minute and it takes real guts to do that.
Fortunately, it wasn’t a complete waste of time for me. The Kindle edition is noticeably better than my previous Kindle version and when the paperback version finally gets to the bookshelves, it will, again, be far better than the one I abandoned last week.
The Roadmap August 2nd
Those of you who follow this blog will know of my recent (futile) attempts to self-publish a book on Kindle. I decided not to throw good effort after bad, as the result would have been a non-standard size. In any case, I don’t think many people want paperbacks that are A4, US Letter size or bigger.
So the answer is to re-do paperback editions as “coffee table” size. Unfortunately, the amount of work needed to do this for “Being An Astronomer” is vast and there is a lot going on in life outside writing that I’ve neither the time not energy to deal with it right now.
So, my plan is as follows:
- Re-do my novel “The
Quantum God” as a coffee-table book. All this needs is to reset the paper
size, delete and re-insert the table of contents. If there is more than I
need to do, then I have learned something that I can carry forward
- Depending on how #1
goes, I will re-design the graphics for “2021 An Astronomer’s Year”, which
is in progress. To cut a long story short, this MUST come out in January.
The fallback (worst-case) is that it will be too much work and “2021 An
Astronomer’s Year” will be yet another Kindle-only release
- I will either start
tackling “Being An Astronomer” or an easier project
August 1st Being an Astronomer (4th Edition)
It is with deep regret that I have abandoned the paperback edition of this book. I tried re-sizing everything to shoehorn it from A4 to US Letter but it not work, even though I had shrunk some of the graphics. Amazon were telling me to extend the paper size, which meant re-updating all of my cross-references and going through a few more rounds of submissions, rejections and ending up with something of a non-standard size.
The BIG mistake I made was treating the paperback version of the book as a technical manual, rather than a "coffee table" read. I was heading for a 9"x12" version and I suddenly thought that it just wouldn't work! It would discredit me as an author.
So, yes, there will be a 5th edition at some indeterminate time in the future. At least I know that my reworked graphics has made great improvements to the Kindle version:
Well, I now need to resize my graphics to fit a smaller book. I will work on some other books first.
July 30th Being an Astronomer (4th Edition)
I submitted the book for publication on Kindle as an e-book and paperback. The e-book came back quickly and is now ready for purchase:
I'm biting my nails on the paperback!
In the meantime, I started work on another 4th edition: "Astrophotography with a DSLR". It definitely needed a revamp of the formatting, new photos and a technical update. With mooted new content, it could almost be another book!
July 29th Being an Astronomer (4th Edition) Preparing for Paperback Launch
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing and re-repaginating, I have FINALLY discovered that setting the paper and trim size both to US Letter, uploading PDF (NOT Word) and setting Bleed works.
Now I realise that my cover is truly awful and that preparing one for paperback is quite a task. Look out for another round of frustration.
July 25th Being an Astronomer (4th Edition) Preparing for Paperback Launch
This is one of those jobs that seems simple but has been very fiddly in the past. I have decided to resize the book to US Letter size (8.5"x11"). I have just regenerated the table of contents and now I need to check all cross references are on the right page.
July 17th Being an Astronomer (4th Edition)
Life outside writing was very busy and is a fact of life for those of us with day jobs and no servants. So it was a case of the final draft. I had checked the margin and related settings of "The Quantum God" that I had already released in paperback format, so it was just the final page references to do before tackling the release on Kindle.
July 4th 2021 An Astronomer's Year
I wrote the June entry.
June 14th Being an Astronomer (4th Edition)
Having simclified the headings, many old sub-headings are no longer there, so I am deleting or modifying my cross-references. I am also updating my content as I go, so I had added the recent partial solar eclipse on June 10th.
June 14th Being an Astronomer (4th Edition)
I have been writing long enough not to use words such as "imminent" or "soon". I don't like to quote dates, a sure-fire guarantee to cause a family emergency or something to delay a book release.
I finished reworking the graphics and re-doing the headings. Now that's a milestone!
June 11th No Writing, but...
So, I hadn't actually written anything since June 5th. Apart from work, I produced two more images and have put them in the relevant books.
The first was a reprocess of an older shot, showing the lunar crater Tycho.
The second was a photo taken on June 8th that shows the globular cluster M4, a difficult object to photograph from England.
June 5th "2021 An Astronomer's Year"
I was a bit late finishing the monthly summary, as I was processing images taken on May 30th. It was a tough month but caught a few interesting things:
May 29th "Being an Astronomer"
I will start with a reminder for those who have bought previous editions of this book. The fourth edition, that I am working on, is mostly about improved graphics presentation for Kindle and a first printed edition. There is some upgraded and additional content. As for all of my astronomy books, all additional content to existing books is shared in my annual summary, so there is no need to feel "cheated" into buying new editions to get the latest content.
I have written some simple information about the orbital mechanics of the Moon and inner (inferior) planets. I will add some more about the orbits of superior planets.
As usual, I do not have any target dates for the release of the 4th edition. I have a lot going on at the moment.
May 16th The Sequel
I have discussed the possibility of "The Quantum God" before. I had abandoned any thought of a sequel, not least because it had not sell well. Strange that, when I put it on free promotion, I had loads of orders. Maybe there's enough free fiction on the net that people just don't want to pay for it. Did they like it enough to want a sequel? Maybe. Would they pay for a sequel? Well, maybe not! The point is that I am not in a good place life-wise to write fiction or, indeed, any project that I cannot easily pick up and put down, maybe for weeks. The trouble is that I have been having ideas for a sequel but it can't just fly, at least when life is more settled. So, for now, I will just carry on re-formatting graphics and, even then, not daily.
May 16th "Being an Astronomer"
During the bad weather, I managed to re-do many of the graphics. One of them was this photo of the Sun in hydrogen alpha light.
May 1st "2021 An Astronomer's Year"
I completed the April entry for this book.
April 29th "Being an Astronomer"
Life outside writing had slowed down and there were a few delays. With a minor bug and some cloudy weather, I re-did some more graphics. One was Alpha Centauri, a double star that is not visible from England. I was in New Zealand on business in 2007.
April 18th "Being an Astronomer"
I had a few days without writing, for several reasons, but one of the main ones is that I was out observing and photographing. However, I finally finished the planetary section.
April 6th "Being an Astronomer"
I completed the Jupiter and Saturn sections and re-did the Venus graphics into three groups of photos.
April 3rd "2021 an Astronomer's Year"
I finished the March entry, which had lots of Moon photos, some deep sky shots, including this one of the Orion Great Nebula.
I also caught Mars near the Seven Sisters star cluster.
April 1st "2021 an Astronomer's Year" and "Being an Astronomer"
Ideally I would have been out observing and/or taking photos of the night sky but only the brightest stars were visible and no bright planets. I started writing my March summary for "2021 An Astronomer's Year". Some of my March moon photos were very good and I also used them to improve "Being an Astronomer". I also changed some of the words to use them. Here are the three I used for both works in progress.
March 30th "Being an Astronomer"
Strictly speaking, progress was negative! If we see the release of the 4th edition as the goal, it became further away. I was busy with work and busy outside work but, unlike earlier in the month, I was able to do some astronomy. At least one of my photos found its way into the draft. I was able to capture Betelguese (a variable star) and two stars that I use to estimate its brightness in one picture.
In addition to improving the book's presentation (on Kindle, in particular) by including the caption in the graphic, I have also been replacing older photos with some newer, better ones and including new photos after the release of the 3rd edition.
At this stage, I can make no promises nor guarantees about when the book will be available on Kindle, nor when it will finally be available in paperback. What I can promise is that it will be better than the third and previous editions.
March 14th "Being an Astronomer"
Progress on the 4th edition has been steady. In addition to improving the graphics presentation of existing graphics, I had also been including new photographs that I took after finishing the third edition. Notably, I have included some photos of Comet NEOWISE F3, the stand-out comet of the 21st century so far.
Unlike most writers, I am not making any potentially empty promises about when it will be ready. Re-doing the graphics is not a trivial undertaking and I am anticipating a time when it will be hard to find writing time. On the other hand, unlike creative tasks, like writing a book from scratch, I can do one graphic at a time.
March 5th "2021 An Astronomer's Year"
I finished the February entry and added a few more words about Betelguese that I also used for the 4th edition of "Being An Astronomer". Off-pen issues dominated the period but I took some satisfaction from doing some writing, even though most of the work was graphics.
March 2nd "2021 An Astronomer's Year"
Due to off-pen issues, writing had ground to a halt. I started writing up the February entry, having finished processing the photos. So far, I would say that the year had been less interesting than 2020 but astronomy can throw up many surprises, such as the previous year's comet.
To get an idea of what this year's book is like, check out last year's:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/2020-Astronomers-Year-Philip-Pugh-ebook/dp/B08X2ZBSWD/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=2020-Astronomers-Year-Philip-Pugh-ebook&qid=1614112663&s=digital-text&sr=1-3 #astronomy
February 23rd Finally Out
The third edition of "2020 An Astronomer's Year" has improved graphics presentation that will be used for all my future releases: https://www.amazon.co.uk/2020-Astronomers-Year-Philip-Pugh-ebook/dp/B08X2ZBSWD/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=2020-Astronomers-Year-Philip-Pugh-ebook&qid=1614112663&s=digital-text&sr=1-3 #astronomy #Reading #WritingCommnunity
February 21st General Musings
I have been writing long enough now never to use the word "imminent". I have submitted the third edition of "2020 An Astronomer's Year" but it can take a long time before it sees the light of day (up to 72 hours according to Amazon).
"Houses of the Holly" is on the back-burner for now. Life is too noisy and interruptible for the foreseeable future. It may even get abandoned entirely. I was musing about this while washing up. There is no shame in abandoning or sidelining a writing project, although I think it takes real guts to abandon one that is nearly finished. Rightly or wrongly, I have never abandoned a project in the later stages. I don't consider an abandoned project a total waste of time. It is part of the learning experience and if it is not "flying" or one is not in the right place life-wise to finish it, it is OK. Besides, some abandoned projects can find their way into other projects later on. This happened with "The Quantum God", although the lack of sales sometimes makes me wonder if I should bother writing novels at all.
But all writers need a project. Sometimes life gets in the way, but most of us have something ticking along, even if slowly. I may or may not become a "successful" novelist one day but, although some books have been better received than others, my core writing expertise is astronomy. Having re-done the graphics for "2020 An Astronomer's Year", I decided to re-do them for "Being An Astronomer". Remember "never say never"? I was "never" going to do further editions but I honestly thought that the graphics presentation needed improvement. What swung the idea was that I had some new photos that belong in the book, especially the bright comet a mere month after publication of the third edition!
However, in any shape or form, I will not use the word "imminent". There is no publication timescale and I would rather release it later when I am happy with it. The chances are that I will also take many photographs this year that "must" be included.
February 20th 2020 An Astronomer's Year
I have sorted out the graphics issues. Now I'm trying to get the titles to line up properly.
Later: Now being released on Kindle. Wait for announcement.
February 17th Graphics
12 days later. I've had to accept that "Houses of the Holly" is firmly on the back burner and have to confess that it may never happen at all. I'm just not able to engineer enough quality "me" time to sit down and be creative. The graphics on "2020 An Astronomer's Year" are still incomplete and every editing round turns out not to be the last. Most of you in the #WritingCommunity on Twitter are fiction writers, so won't have this problem.
Fortunately, although editing graphics can be boring, it is a job that is not difficult to pick up and put down, as long as you remember to save.
I expect life and writing to be incompatible for a while. It is likely that my next project will be one that I thought I would not do - a fourth edition of "Being An Astronomer". I'm not intending to add many words but I'm not happy with the graphics presentation of the previous editions and I took a large number of interesting photos in 2020, many of which are better or more interesting than those in previous editions.
February 5th Graphics
I had a go at "2020 An Astronomer's Year", having edited some of the graphics, I loaded it up on Kindle and it looks like many more pages (if not all) need to be corrected. It may take some time, as I have a busy week coming up.
February 1st General Update
I have started "2021 An Astronomer's Year", which I update monthly. I have used 32 point text on all graphics so far but, further to my post from the day before, I felt unsure how the graphics would appear in the final version.
I have hit "writer's block" on "Houses of the Holly". The plot line that I was going to write would have contradicted parts of "The Quantum God", which I released during the spring lockdown of 2020. Surely writers must stay faithful to the details when writing a sequel, even if it is fantasy.
I have also found that it is easier to work with graphics when normal family life is going on but for writing fiction, I need music in the background and no interruptions. Most of my "writing" will be re-doing graphics, possibly for most of the year.
January 31st Graphics
Releasng a novel on Kindle is quite easy. If you have written a book with lots of illustrations and photos, it is hard. I'm not suggesting that I have cracked the problem completely, but I have come to a more acceptable solution. Kindle does not seem to recognise figure captions, so these end up on a different page to the graphics. I have found this on all Kindle versions of my astronomy books.
I (painstakingly!) re-did the graphics on "2021 An Astronomer's Year". This solved that problem but introduced a new one. On large graphics, the text is rendered too small. OK, yes, users can use zoom but it is rather irritating.
On large graphics, I have used 32 point font. This has made all of my captions readable but they are still rendered as different sizes. It is visually irritating but at least all captions are readable and on the same page as the graphic.
January 27th Houses of the Holly
I must be honest and admit that "The Quantum God" failed, Maybe it was the title, maybe it was the way I "sold" it. The fact is that even my worst selling astronomy book outsold it. Honestly? A bit of everything but hopefully the sequel, although designed as a book in its own right, might just This stimulate sales of "The Quantum God". Don't get me wrong, I love writing about astronomy but sometimes I get a bit fed up with tampering with graphics and want to work with words.
Am I like the comic actor who wished to act Shakespeare? You bet!
Of course, the title has little to do with the story. It's just a play on the title of a Led Zeppelin song.
January 26th 2020 An Astronomer's Year
The graphics are better but many of the captions are too small. The third edition will hopefully fix it.
Meanwhile, my latest attempt is on free promotion:
January 22nd Graphics/General
I have the second edition of "2020 An Astronomer's Year" publishing on Kindle. I will announce a free promotion when I am ready and then ask for feedback on the graphics. One doubt I have is that my titles on the graphics are too small but I will see what they are like. Could be a third edition on the way?
Oh yes, the other bit: "Turn right at the lights" will have a new title.
January 8th Graphics
I'm not claiming that I've totally cracked releasing books with a large graphics content on Kindle but I have made progress by including the caption with the photo. It will take some time and I will use it from the start of "2021 An Astronomer's Year". I will also use it for some of my videos as well.
I am currently working on an updated release of "2020 An Astronomer's Year" with the new graphics style. Please be patient.
January 3rd Got there (well sort of)
"2020 An Astronomer's Year" is finally out:
I should be pleased, or at least relieved but I am not quite either. The truth of the matter is that I discovered that Kindle just does not like large manuscripts with lots of graphics. I partially solved the problem by stripping out all Level 2 and below headers and picture captions. I STILL found out that the Kindle Create files and Word files did not load. I resorted to using the PDF and it works but not perfectly. I will need to do a lot more learning and experimentation. There are too many captions that are on different pages to their graphics. Kindle does not like page breaks, so you cannot ensure that graphics and chapters align properly.
I have now started "2021 An Astronomer's Year" which should be about in January 2022. I'm not expecting 2021 to be as astronomically exciting as 2020 but then I did not not expect 2020 to be as good as it was. About managing expectations.
Writer Productivity
Lots of writers tweet about this and there are almost as many opinions as there are writers. A common belief is that we should write 1 000 words a day. This is too optimistic for most of us and pessimistic for a minority. Now 1 000 words a day comes out at about 3-4 novels per year. Now if you are a full-time writer with publishing contracts, I think 5 or even 6 is achievable. Most of us have day jobs, we are also parents, partners, children and friends. Depending on how the rest of your life fits in around writing, 1 000 could be a real struggle. Set a lower target or follow my lead and abandon using daily word counts completely. The sad fact, in any case, that if we all wrote more, there would be even more books competing for readers' attention.
One of my (own) favourite sayings is:
"A single word read by a million people is better than a million words read by one person".
Where word counts have their place is that most fictional book genres aim for 80 000 to 120 000 words. For books that contain lots of graphics, page count becomes important and you are looking more like 250 to 350 pages. If your target is electronic and not print, you can write as much or little as you like.
As I have said before, for 2021, I will write less, as I expect a busy year.
January 1st Writing Blues
I have had problems with releasing "2020 An Astronomer's Year", which I was going to make available on free promotion.
Watch this space for announcements.
Instead, "Astrophotography with a DSLR" will be on free promotion from Jan 3rd to 7th (inclusive):
