Busy E-days

The prospect of some extra months or years added to my life expectancy has prompted a fairly busy time over recent few weeks.  One of the things I did while on holiday in Canberra was explore e-publishing work done by Smashwords.com for independent ("indie") publishers like myself.

Coming home, I first worked on my book of short stories. It was print-published just last year so should have been in good shape to convert for reading on an iPad, tablet or phone. But it was quite a long journey getting it prepared for digital publication. With some coaching I finally got it uploaded and it's had a couple of hundred downloads in three or so weeks. The book on the century of Russell Methodist Church went up next. It was a little easier to manage and has also been downloaded a remarkable number of times.

After that I uploaded my two main books on church and ministry: Ecclesion - The Small Church with a Vision and The Cavalry Won't be Coming. These are also being opened up by quite a few readers. Of course, I am not looking for any payment for any of my books at this stage and everyone is on the lookout for free books. But it's still a surprise that so many copies of the ministry books are going out so quickly.

It's been a fascinating experience to attempt something quite different. I've been negotiating a very steep learning curve. And from time to time it's taken two of us to sort paragraphs into proper order. But there's a rare sense of achievement in solving a range of new problems and devising ways of dealing with the written word for an unfamiliar new medium.

We all need a new challenge now and then. Without the intellectual stimulus and the physical activity that may go along with it, life could easily become just ordinary. Not around here at the moment, anyway!