I got no drawing done yesterday. I was asked to write a piece on US politics so I got side-tracked until very late. Hopefully, it will appear sometime today. If it doesn’t, it will eventually appear here.
I might not get much drawing done today either. Last week I mentioned that I’m putting together a book of cartoons that I’ll probably make available as an ebook. This was prompted by an email I got from somebody representing a charity who are publishing their own book of cartoons (not sure it’s been officially announced so I won’t give out the details). They’d asked to use some of my cartoons and I’d agreed (I’m great at giving things away). But that got me thinking: maybe ebooks have progressed enough to make graphic heavy titles a possibility. In the past, Amazon used to charge authors for uploading large files, meaning they discouraged authors from adding more than a cover and a few flourishes to a book.
To that end, I logged into my old Kindle Direct Publishing account last week, to see if the process had changed. It has. But is also appears that I’d not been keeping an eye on the account. I hadn’t looked at it in *years* so part of the log-in process involved clicking on an obscure tax form related to books sold in Kathmandu during the month of Poush to Tibetan monks earning less than three rupees a year. Yet it must have been important. What’s now clear is that by not filling in that form when I should, Amazon had been withholding payments for whatever tiny sales I’d made. They’re the kind of amounts that you really don’t notice if they disappear. Maybe 20p a month. No big deal.
Except I guess all those 20ps mount up. Suddenly, yesterday, I had a nice payment of £60 appear in my bank account from Amazon, which isn’t exactly a lottery win but, in my life, it’s not far from. So that got me thinking. First: that I’m an idiot for not maintaining my KPD account, for getting bored and moving on from old projects too quickly. Second: I’ve written books I haven’t looked at in a long time.
Two I’d even taken out of circulation. One was a book of cartoons drawn back when I couldn’t really draw cartoons. It was too ambitious and I took it down because I ashamed that I ever thought it worth buying. The other book, however, might be worth republishing.
I must also have had this idea before. I’d lost the original files and now dimly recall buying a copy of my own book myself so I could strip off the Digital Rights Management (the clever stuff that stops people from copying books) and grab all the text.
That is my plan today. I’m going reread/proofread it and see if it’s worth saving. If it is, I’ll draw a new cover and produce a new copy. Then I’ll stick it back up on Amazon and see if I can improve my sales from 20p a month.
