Seth Godin is great at the short and sweet blog post that’s a mini kick in the pants.

Here are two:

Forgive yourself

Stumbling your way to greatness

In other news, let me just recommend that no one wait to set up a mailing list for their pen names until they have 40+ titles published that need to be reloaded with a link to the mailing list.  First, it’s painfully boring to do.  Second, you’re more likely to make mistakes when loading that many files in a row.

And, third, you of course have missed out on all the possible sign-ups you could have had if you’d had a mailing list in the back of your books from the start.

(Of course, note that I still don’t have a mailing list for my M.H. Lee titles.  Then again, now that they’re up on Amazon, through D2D, and on GooglePlus that would be three file uploads per title, so close to twenty-five uploads right there.  Maybe next week…after my next promo for one of my free stories runs and I miss the 400+ downloads generated from it…)

I have to say, there are so many moving parts to self-pub that it’s semi-ridiculous.  And I don’t even do half of what some people do.  Audio, translations, paperback of everything, promos with twenty+ sites, promos across platforms, etc., etc.

For me this all (a) makes me appreciate what a publisher could do for me and (b) makes me realize that if I do sign a trade pub deal that I want it to be with someone who is on the ball enough and experienced enough to do all of those things.