Invito Rex Strategy

0053A few weeks ago, I made schedules, promises, and guesses. Not one of them turned out to be right.

At the beginning of this month, I knew I could edit 2000 words per day if I could just find half an hour a day. I further knew that I was going to have outpatient surgery (nothing dangerous, just something I needed to have done), and I knew the doctor was going to have me stay in bed for a week. I also knew that I was a good worker, and that if I was going to be laid up for a week, I would be able to put at least four hours a day into my editing.

Armed with these facts, I made some basic assumptions about what I could get done over April. I figured I could finish editing the entire book. I even made the promise online that I could, by the end of the month, have something available for people to read.

What Folly

Some of you are already shaking your heads at my empty-headed presumption. And you’re right. I should have known better. Instead of spending the week editing, I spent most of the time lying down, staggering to the bathroom, trying to blink my eyes into focus, and generally being befuddled. The anesthesia did a number on me, and the number was greater than five days.

So there I was, recuperated and staring down the barrel of too much work. I had to come up with another plan. And here it is.

I’m going to release my book in pieces. Every week, I am going to try to put up one chapter of my book. It’s not going to be the final version, but it will be a version that I’ll be sending to my editor at some time in the future.

Audio Posts

And because I’m no slacker, I’m going to present both the digital version and the audio version at the same time. Every week, I’m going to try to have a new chapter in both e-book and audio.

It’s worth noting that these are not short chapters. They range about 6k per chapter, so I may have to cut some of them into multiple weeks. However, this I guarantee. I will have a new episode every week, aiming for about 20-30 minutes per episode.

These episodes will NOT be podcasted, for reasons I’ll go into in a minute. I will be presenting the basic audio, with no sound effects, incidental music, or chapter breaks. However, once I have five episodes in the can, I will send them to Podiobooks.com, and continue with new episodes there. At that time, they will be available on your favorite podcatcher.

Interactive Chapters

Every chapter will continue to have it’s own entry in my blog, with the digital text and the audio file there. The reason for this is, at some point I am going to publish the full book (print and e-book). When the book comes out, every chapter will have a QR code for a heading, which, if scanned, will lead the reader to a blog post where they can listen to that chapter, read the text in a web format, and read the comments left by others who were reading that chapter.

It’s my small attempt to make this book more of a shared experience. I really hope you all take advantage of it, and enjoy this feature of the book.

Now, I need to get back to editing the audio for chapter one, which should drop by Saturday, May 4th, 2013. I hope you like it.

 

(By the way, this isn’t as easy as it looks. Throw a couple bucks to the hardworking pixel-stained wretch)


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