A Day in My Life as an Author and Publisher

Announcements:

Reading in Wonderland published her review of Take Me Tomorrow, and you can read her review here, but – as usual – here is a small quote,”I was going into this book with no expectations. I thought I was going to like it, because of the good reviews on GoodReads but this took my expectations, held them in it’s hand, then made a rainbow.” 

My other special thanks goes out to Arvee Frenchie, the artist behind the photo you (hopefully) see to the right. She posted it to her Instagram, and the fan art represents a popular quote from November Snow. For those excited for the new version, this quote will still be in there! It happens on page 528 during dialogue Serena has with a particular politically-driven family. That’s all I can say for now. ;]

I hope you all continue checking out my novels!

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A Day in My Life as an Author and Publisher

A few months ago, I started a post just like this, but – in the end – it turned into an exaggerated joke. You can read the post here: My Average Day as a Writer

But – in all seriousness – I decided to finally tackle this post seriously. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a few jokes here and there, but below, you can read about one of my days as an author and as a publisher. You might notice that my clock is rather unusual, and I can’t explain everything of course, so you won’t see all my coffee breaks (which normally means I’m having coffee while hunched over my laptop, hoping and praying that I won’t spill it) or my commute times since I often go to cafes to work. (What can I say? I NEED to get out of my apartment. Plus, I don’t always have the Internet.) More or less, this is a day in my life. All of my days are a little different, especially in regards to my publishing job, but I did my best to represent a fair workday in a shortened but readable piece. That being said, throughout the day, I speak with my team at AEC Stellar Publishing, and I am also on social media both as AEC and myself. You probably won’t see eating, cooking, or cleaning in here because I do that while I work. All of it. It’s my little juggling act.

1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.

Coffee fueled emails

This is when I woke up. I’m not going to lie, but this is not my norm. I normally get up between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., but I work at home, and right now, I have construction going on 24/7, so it’s impossible to sleep between the hammering and my neighbor’s dog who believes the boogie monster is working on our apartment complex. (I’m rather sleep deprived as I write this.) That being said, perhaps my late waking up hour will make more sense when you see how late I stayed up working.

I start off my day by making a full pot of coffee, and I start realizing I’m alive once I start drinking it. This is the same time I start reading and returning emails. I don’t give myself a grace period. I literally wake up, grab coffee, and start working. Spending an hour or two doing this is nothing. In fact, that’s probably a light load. I am emailing constantly throughout the day, but I try to get the main ones done first thing. This includes a lot of the prep work consultation I do with authors for publishing, but that’s for another post.

3:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Services

As many of you know, we now offer services to authors, writers, and bloggers of all kinds, even outside of AEC Publishing. In fact, I have a page on my own website, and I recently added some reviews, so click here to check out what we offer. (I know. I know. Shameless marketing.) But I like to believe our content editing has very competitive pricing at $1.00 per 1,000 words. That being said, I generally spend the majority of my day doing these, and technically, this involves even more hours of emailing. My most popular feature has been the book review requests, and I enjoy these because I get to speak to people about books, but I’ve been called on for every piece so far. In fact, in case you’re curious, part of my day later on was creating my recent reviews page and updating the services available.

5:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

Meetings

I don’t do this every day, but the day I was recording my life, I had two meetings. The first one was with my cover artist for Death Before Daylight, and the second one was a lovely phone call from my event’s manager. We might have another book signing coming up! But what you don’t see is that I was also working on my services while I was going through the meetings, so my job-life and my writing-life are very much a careful balance of chaotic causes. (Hence why the times overlap). I do – however – have meetings with my AEC team often, and we speak throughout the day.

6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Social Media

Remember: I do this all day long, but I’m mentioning this moment because this is for bigger jobs that demand more focus. This includes so many things. I don’t even think I could list it all, but I generally set aside this time for writing blog posts, scheduling FB posts, updating my website with lovely reviews sent to me, commenting on those blogs, and checking the AEC website as well as all of my own websites, including FB, Twitter, Instagram, Wattpad, etc. But – like I’ve said before – my schedule varies a lot. As I’m writing this (the day after I recorded my schedule) it is 4:28 p.m. on October 17, so I’m working on my blog a little early today. (You might also see that I do these days in advance.) This section can also take up a lot more time, but it mainly depends on the content I’m focusing on. Two things I did this day involved updating my photos on The Timely Death Trilogy FB page as well as adding a Reviews page to my Services page for The Author Extension Community. AEC is also hosting two launch events soon, so this time was dedicated to organizing those as well. This can also change depending on the time of the week or month. At the beginning and the middle of the month, I run statistic checks, and analytics based on social media for both myself and the AEC authors. Every month, I organize a guest post. (This month had two!) And I make sure to participate in Poetry Friday, Writer Wednesday, Monday Blogs, and Indie Thursday…and that’s just the beginning of my crazy, color-coded calendar.

7:00 – 10:30 p.m.

Writing

Oh, finally. The writing time. This is one of my thirty-minute commutes to various locations I write in. I have to be honest though, I haven’t been able to go in a week or two. The day I recorded, I finished up work instead, but I wanted to include this time to show writers where I fit my writing in. The writing time is generally focused on 7:30 – 9:30 once I actually get there, and I cut out some time, because I often have to finish some work up there instead of writing. It depends on my workload and whether or not I have the Internet. For instance, this time could be when I finally upload a post to my website. (I write everything on Microsoft Word first, so I spend a lot of time transferring everything, but that’s to prevent losing anything.) This is often my favorite time of the day, and 8tracks accompanies me through it.

11:00 p.m. – Midnight

Forced break time

If you haven’t noticed, I have not gotten off the computer once since 2 p.m. That truly is no exaggeration. (This is probably why my vision goes blurry.) But I force a break to sit and eat without a glowing screen in front of me. (My laptop, Weebo, also gets to charge and rest). This is very much dinnertime for me, and I generally spend it alone with my cat.

Midnight – To a questionable hour

I’m not done yet

I start working again at midnight. I update my checklists, and I check what is in store for my next day. For instance, AEC has a release party coming up, so I furthered the organization surrounding the party, but I try to get off the computer around 2 so I have an hour between that and falling asleep. Then again, I’ve been known to stay up until 6 a.m. to complete a task. This truly depends on how well my day went, if I slept well, and if my patience or passion is controlling me. It’s difficult to guess. The past two days, I’ve stayed up until 4 a.m. – but that’s a mixture of my lack of sleep from construction and trying to make up for it later. My car also broke down this week, so I fell behind on my work, so I’ve been trying to catch up. Sometimes, I sneak in a midnight run at the gym or a snuggle with my cat. But I do stop working about an hour before I go to bed. In that time, I generally read or sit on my patio so I’m not tempted to work again. That little screen will keep you up all night if you’re not careful. This is probably the hardest part of my day because I am a work addict, and I have a hard time relaxing, even when things are said and done for the day.

The end of the day comes.

It isn’t all glorious and fun, but it isn’t all misery and hunching over the keyboard either. I love both of my jobs, and I consider myself very lucky to be able to work for a publisher as well as pursue my writing career. I only have to giggle when I get a phone call asking for a favor or a friend telling me I don’t really work. Trust me. My schedule gets hectic, but – again – I love it, so perhaps hectic is the reason I stay up so late, perhaps it is a thing I love.

I hope this gave more insight to the life of a publisher and an author, but I also understand I wasn’t able to give as many specific details – like what exactly I do in terms of preparing a book for publication – but maybe one day I will write a post specifically about that. :] Until then, what about your schedules? What are they like?

~SAT