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Backups And Guest Bloggers

I lost about an hour's worth of work yesterday when Word froze up on me and it turned out the automatic backup hadn't been functioning properly. I've done quite a bit of preaching about proper backups, so I was a bit taken aback when I found out I'd not only lost my revisions, but the chapter I'd been editing. My strange system for working on this book involves cutting the chapter I'm going to work on out of the old file, pasting it into the new file, and editing it. Between one save working and the other failing, I ended up with the chapter missing from both files. Fortunately, I found backup from December that was saved as an attachment in my Yahoo! mail account, and believe me, I was relieved it was there.

I've been thinking again of inviting on some guest bloggers or doing interviews, as a different form of blogging backup. My blogging output has fallen all the way to around a post a week because I'm busy and saving my eyes for real work. I'm more inclined to the interview approach than the guest blogger approach, because I'd hate to solicit a post from somebody and then have to tell them I didn't want to use it for whatever the reason. Within the realm of interviews, I'm leaning towards e-mail interviews, in part because it prevents misunderstandings, and in part because it saves typing.

So, if you're interested in answering a few questions about your self publishing business on my blog, either drop me a note directly or post a comment with a way to contact you. Just don't be surprised if the questions I ask aren't necessarily the ones you would have chosen to discuss if you were doing a guest blogger post in the traditional sense.

What I think would be most interesting to my readers is people who don't follow the short discount approach that I push for new publishers getting their feet wet. It would be more interesting to hear from publisher doing the traditional distribution or direct sales route, or using POD but going with the 55% discount, returns, and pushing for bookstore sales. It won't make you famous, but at least you'll get a decent link to your website:-)

2 comments:

Keef said...

Gimme a link!

I've been lurking around your blog for some time now, and it really has been very useful. I'm just about to self (ish) publish a book. It's a novel. Yes, I know, self-published novels don't sell, but I just want to get it out there. Anyway, I'd be very interested in contributing to your blog in some way...

Morris Rosenthal said...

Keefie,

Interesting bid, but I'm going to pass for the moment. Not because it's a novel, but because it's not published yet and it's your first. I'm looking for interviews where the publisher can share some ideas of what worked well and earned money, especially if the approach differs from my own.

Morris