Going Digital

And so, the experiment begins.

I’m going to be publishing (with the blessing of Tartarus Press) a digital version of Sourdough and Other Stories via Smashwords. I’m the digital guinea pig, which is a lot less creepy than being the canary in a cage beging sent down the mineshaft, but feels equally experimental.

I’m also going to do a digital version of the short story collection I wrote for my MA, Black-Winged Angels, which consists of nine (9) reloaded fairytales. Some of those stories appear in The Girl with No Hands and Other Stories (which will not be digitised).

I thought I might document the process as I go.

So, step 1 was setting up a Smashwords account – easy and free. Done.

Step two is going through and reformatting the whole damned manuscript so it’s a suitable doc for the Smashwords meatgtrinder (i.e. the thingy that converts the file to a wide variety of ebookish formats for Kindles, Kobos, Apple i-Bookery, etc, to luurve).

I am mid-step 2 right now. In all honesty, I’m sick of step two because it’s a matter of stripping out the formatting you use for traditional printing and publishing and making the doc very, very plain and simple. It’s days like these I wish I had a word-monkey locked in the cupboard … then I realise I am the word-monkey. And I accept that this is a required part of the process and that the new formatting is simply something I have to get used to – refusal to learn and adapt is why the dinosaurs died out.

Well, that and meteors.