Continuous Learning...

One of the things I've always believed in is that you must be a continuous learner in life. The minute you stop learning, you stop growing. There is an adage, "The more you learn, you the more you realize you don't know." I have certainly found this true in my life. When I started my career at GE Lighting, I had no idea how difficult it was to mass produce something as 'simple' as Edison's light bulb. (It turns out making a million a day of anything is hard) As I learn about what is involved in becoming an author, I discover many detailed alleys of learning that one must traverse on the journey to publishing a book. In today's world, self-publishing is becoming easier and easier, however, it is estimated that >90% of books published today sell less than a hundred copies. In some cases, that is by design. It might be a personal project for a family. However, to fully explore publishing a book and to gain a broad audience to read it is as much of a task as writing the book in the first place! Here's a very abbreviated list of the alleyways I'm exploring relative to publishing a book.

• Book Cover design - A critical component in selling a book today. People often DO buy books by their cover, and the cover must consider the fact that many people will look at the postage-stamp-sized version of the image on their phone when considering the purchase!
• Social Media Marketing Techniques - You do need to advertise if you want to sell to more than just your family and friends. Social Media is the place.
• Amazon - The big gorilla in selling books today. There are entire books written on how to master selling books on Amazon.
• Formatting - Fortunately, computers are really good at making this easy. I use Scrivener to write, and it can format the final manuscript in many formats to serve editing, e-book, and final manuscript formats.
• ISBN, Copyright, other registration needs… good to cross all the T’s…
• Editing... I am currently anxiously awaiting the editorial assessment of The Quantum Contingent. There is the editorial assessment, the developmental edit, the copy edit, and the line edit... not to mention all the creative editing you do along the way. I am using prowritingaid to do a good first pass at the copy and line editing work, but humans still outperform AI when it comes to book writing / editing.

I hope you are enjoying my Quantum Contingent Spotify Playlist and the photo blogs along the journey to publish The Quantum Contingent. I've recently updated the location page and technology page of the website with some new additions. If there is a particular location or technology you'd like featured in a future blog post, please let me know!

Thanks, and have a great week,

Greg