Word Count Miss

This week has been more work on the B'vellah novella. I didn't meet my 10k per week word count. I got just under 6k done. I had a couple of minor, last second changes to make on Avatars of Espionage, which is up for pre-sale. Part of the problem was because I was tired due to a tooth infection. Or gum infection. It's hard to concentrate through pain and fatigue. Despite all that, I'm getting close to the 50% mark and am on schedule to finish the rough draft before the end of February. I'm hoping for somewhere between the 15th and the 21st. A minor roadblock this week was doing a little research in order not to be describing something I don't know specific details about. I ended up writing around it. Once I get my author YouTube channel up and running, how to write around something is a topic I already have planned.

I spent a limited amount of time looking for a cover for the Mystery/Romance. It should already have been out the door under a pen name with no pre-sale, but I haven't been letting it get in the way of the word count. When I was looking for the cover for AoE, I found a couple that might work, but they don't quite fit. I may use one of them anyway. I could always change it later.

Something else I've put some time into is trying to get AoE onto Barnes and Noble for the Nook. I uploaded it using their formats, but it doesn't look right in their viewer. Their online tools are not Amazon quality. Amazon's put a lot more into making their tools work, although they still have problems like freezing indefinitely. The B&N requirements are much more rigid. They require either a .doc file or a .pdf. However, the .doc file requirements are for MS Word, which I don't have and costs too much. I might could work around it, but I'd have to go through and reformat the manuscript and page numbering almost chapter by chapter just to see. Sadly, the .pdf upload doesn't remove page numbers the way Amazon's conversion tool does. It looks decent, but e-readers don't have page counts. If I approved it, there would be random page numbers in the middle of screens.

I thought about getting a Nook to experiment with, but the price is much higher than what it used to be. Even the refurbished ones are higher than the Nook used to cost full price. I guess I'll have to use the software version on my PC. It kind of looks like, if I want my books on Barnes and Noble, I'll have to create yet another version of the manuscript. That would be a pain. I already have four versions of AoE in different formats just for Amazon. I'm looking at putting AoE on the Apple and Kobo platforms, too. If I had to change something like a spelling or comma mistake, I'd have to change the master file. I'd have to convert it to Kindle format and .pdf. I'd have to fix the B&N version. I'd have to create an Apple version and a Kobo version. Maybe I could use the same file for more than one platform. There's got to be a better way. People do all this for money, but I can't afford that. Maybe there's a program out there that will do it for me. I downloaded Calibre which I've used in the past, but it doesn't do what I want.

Hopefully, I'll figure it out this weekend. AoE goes live Feb 3. I'd like to have it on B&N, too, and the others. We'll see.

Have a great weekend.