The Next Stumble on my Self-Publishing Journey

 

Dammit, I’m an author, not a marketer, layout artist, proofreader, cover designer, publicist, interviewee, cartographer…

But wait. I chose to self-publish. And if ya wanna do it right, ya gotta do all those things and more!

Sometimes I need to remember what brought me here in the first place and just sit down and write, but finding the time to do that when you’re caught up in the myriad of other jobs can be a challenge, and it makes for some very strange moments – like feeling guilty about fiction writing because you need to get the newsletter out or write letters to reviewers. I tell myself it would be easier if I was able to write full-time. I could just divide my day into strict time zones – mornings for writing, afternoons for marketing and the rest of the writing-related things that need doing. All my full-time-writing friends are giving me the stink eye (or laughing quiety behind their covid masks. I can feel it.

“Oh, yeah,” they say. “Just you wait. We’ll see how that works out for you.”

My biggest challenge so far has been dealing with the tech side of launching a website and a newsletter. A friend helped me work out some glitches and clean up links and whatnot after I initially designed and set up my website, but I’ve recently run into what feels like insurmountable barriers trying to send out newsletters with Mailchimp. I first used the app about six years ago when I was working for a magazine publisher. In addition to editing the print editions of three of the magazines, I was doing weekly newsletters for each title. They used Mailchimp and I found it clunky and counterintuitive. I did eventually get quite good at it, despite the Himalayan learning curve. When it came time to put out my own newsletter, I already had Mailchimp installed on my computer. I figured all the other NL apps would be just as bad. Better the devil you know, right? And the interface had been revised and updated. It had to be easier now. They had to have worked out some of the annoying quirks. Or so I thought. 

It took me almost a week to get back up to speed with the design interface – which is still like driving a bumper car at a Corvette rally.  But I persevered and actually came up with a nice looking newsletter.

It wasn’t until I went to send it that I started pulling out what’s left of my hair. The first time I hit send, Mail Chimp explained that it couldn’t/I shouldn’t send newsletters from a g-mail address, because they would surely end up in everyone’s spam. Rather than telling me this when I signed up with a g-mail address, it waited until I hit send – after investing tens of hours in actually creating the NL. (to be fair, it was in the documentation - the reams and reams of documentation that I didn't bother reading.

Ah well. It seemed like a minor problem. I’m not sure how I ended up getting my domain from name.com or why I went on to sign onto their hosting plan but I did. And I figured, “surely it must include an e-mail address or two. Except it didn’t. So I bought the e-mail separately, then went back to Mailchimp and eagerly hit send.

Did you know that even with an owned webmail account you have to verify it, and then you need to authorize it – but it can’t be authorized without dropping some dkim code into your host server’s DNS. Quite an ask for someone who wasn’t even sure what a DNS is.

I tried. And I tried. And I’ve now reached my nineteenth nervous breakdown and still don’t have the freaking newsletter out.

Seems MailChimp and Name.com don’t quite agree on where that code should go where. I also learned that CPanel and Wordpress don’t co-exist. Which makes sense if I think hard enough about it. But name.com did answer my support request, so I’m all ready to do what they suggest and find out if that’s good enough for Mailchimp. Yes, my brain hurts. No I'm not sure if this - if anything - will work

Dammit. I’m an author, not a techie! But I’m learning, very, very slowly. My launch isn’t until November 14th, and I should be able to get at least one or two newsletters out by then. Shouldn’t I????



Get the scoop on my new novel, The Human Template at https://dalelsproule.com.


I write literature of the fantastic. My short story collection, Psychedelia Gothique is mostly psychological horror. My just released novel, The Human Template is available through most online book retailers - and book two of the diptych, The Carnivorous Forest will appear in 2021. https://www.dalelsproule.com As a book reviewer I have written for Rue Morgue Magazine and AE Science Fiction. As a visual artist, I have illustrated books and magazines and have carved numerous sculptures out of stone.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Review of William Gibson's Agency

Image
  I recently read some reviews on Goodreads saying that  Neuromancer  is badly dated, has thin characters and is written in an unreadable style. I think what grates on me the most is that - to an extent, they are right. When you write near future science fiction, it will, by its nature, date quickly. Style preferences have changed considerably since the early 80s. But none of their observations struck me as particularly fair. They might react quite differently when the future he is addressing is more immediate. As in Agency .
Read more

Review of C.J. Lavigne's In Veritas

Image
I am not a particularly fast reader, but I did spend an unprecedented amount of time immersed in C.J. Lavigne’s debut novel, In Veritas . It is a story ostensibly about communication in which the major character, named Verity, is pretty much unable to communicate in the usual manner. The crossed-wires in her brain give her a severe case of synesthesia which lock her into her own somewhat non-sensical world and contributed strongly to making her an outcast from a very young age. – with the added complication that people have an impossible time lying in her presence. She escapes from incarceration in a mental health facility with Jacob, a wealthy young man who seems to be somewhere in the autistic spectrum. Having been cheated out of control of his family fortune, he does pretty well on the stipend he receives. Jacob and Verity live together in an affectionate - although emotionally distant and seemingly platonic -  relationship where he switches career paths every five minutes ...
Read more

The Book After Which Everything is Different

Image
I’ve never called myself a Chuck Palahniuk fan. I’ve been aware of him only since the  Fight Club  movie and have read only  Invisible Monsters  and  Fight Club . I’ve never been to one of his readings, though they seem to be pretty amazing and I’ll probably catch one if I get a chance. While looking him up online, I came upon a piece of his writing advice on Litreactor about avoiding the use of thought verbs. It was genius. It spoke directly to me and my worst tendencies as a writer like no teacher or article has before – and it came to me at exactly the right time. IE: while I’m on the fourth draft of the novel and that level of editing is at its easiest (which is a bit like saying it’s easiest jumping the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle when the sun isn’t directly in your eyes). When I discovered that Palahniuk had written an entire book on writing, it seemed like a good investment, even if all I was doing by buying it was paying him properly for the though...
Read more