October Challenge Books

I hope everyone in the States had a great holiday.

A person would think that after thirty-five years in this publishing business (which works at a glacial pace), I would have calculated the time involved a little better with getting the challenge books out to subscribers. But alas, even old dogs must continue to learn.

When I started this challenge, I didn’t really expect, as I said, to be writing much in the first four or five months of the challenge. Other deadlines and business stuff wasn’t going to allow it and I knew it, and I was right about that. But that hasn’t worried me because I figure I’ll make a run at the 100 stories between now and July.

So in the mean time, to get the subscribers enough to make it worth their money every month, I’ve been doing stories in nifty trade paper books, about eight per month, thirty so far since the challenge started. And I’ve been having a great time, to be honest. Yet when I started the challenge I thought it would be no problem to have the books in the mail to the subscribers by the 10th of the following month. I think I hit that date once.

(Someone implied or said in a comment that I had minions. Uh, nope. I do every detail of these books from cover to layout and including shipping to subscribers. All mistakes are mine. If I had minions to help, I might get them out on time.(grin))

October challenge books are just going out on Monday by Priority Mail (and to the electronic subscribers this weekend by e-mail). Sixteen days late from the date I hoped they would go out. Very sorry about my inability to hit that 10th of the month date. More than likely November books will be this late as well. It seems that even after all these years in publishing, I just couldn’t estimate the time it took to do production and get books from the printer. (grin)

So here are the eight October challenge books. As I said, I’m having a great time, and as soon as I get all these into Ella Distribution system, I will have them available in signed editions as well. Stay tuned.