Updates And Distractions

One of the best and worst things about being an Indie author is the ability to pull my books from Amazon or anywhere I published them, revise, resubmit, and publish again. It is a huge advantage over traditional publishing but also a tremendous distraction from the writing process as a whole.

I read a great deal and whether it is another Indie author or a New York Times bestseller I notice there are often editing mistakes and typos. When I go through my own stories I constantly find things I know can be changed, whether it is a grammatical error, the wrong word used, or just a spot I think could be rewritten to help move the story along more smoothly. The great thing about that is I am able to fix it and put it back out for the world to read. I can make adjustments quickly, see what feedback I receive from current readers, then incorporate anything I feel would be helpful.

The fact that it is so easy to make those little fixes though, means it can be tempting to constantly look for ways to fix my books. Instead of trusting my stories and working on the next project I find myself drifting back over previously released books looking for ways to make them better.

From the time I put out my first book, Never Give Up, to now I have grown as an artist in many ways. Another book I published, Survivor, is the first in a series and I will be pushing to publish the rest of them in the next year to eighteen months and I find myself wanting to go back through and rewrite Survivor in an effort to make sure all of the books will flow together. I may in fact choose to do an updated version and release it with the rest of the series when I am closer.

Because of issues with the original publisher, an Indie like myself, that unfortunately proved to be the complete opposite of what they represented themselves to be, I am being forced to publish Never Give Up all over again as well but because of that I will be doing updates. I will also be completely redoing Rescue Me as an entirely new series because of the same person from Never Give Up. I have so many other projects to work on, it is my goal to finish the current updates and find a way to trust my writing and myself so I don't fall into an endless loop of rewrites and never move forward.