Yes! It's my turn again!
To refresh your memories, since I don't write all that much these days, I'm the executive editor here, which means .... hmmm .... I seem to spend my days planning a lot of things that don't have instant payoffs.
For example, I wanted the experience of putting out an ebook from scratch this year, just to learn the process hands-on, from beginning to end. I spotted a couple of interesting diaries from our own FreewayBlogger about a great adventure he had delivering clothes to the poor in the Sierra Madres Mountains in Mexico. I contacted him, asked if he'd serve as my guinea pig as I learned all about creating a small ebook from his work, and we were off to the races.
The result: Take to the Hills: Clothing the Sierra Madres.
It was fun experience, bringing the book together. The editing part was the easiest—he's a great writer, fun to work with and a very compliant and genial guinea pig. The harder part was the publication part. We found a firm that would format the book and host a sales page for us, putting the book out on Amazon and other vendors.
But as anyone who's done it knows, proofing galleys and making adjustments takes time. Finding photos, coming up with captions and placement, approving a cover ... all of this tends to bog down the excitement of releasing a book. But it did happen, and it was a fun learning experience, and I'm hoping Kos Media can release more of these shorties in the future. We don't expect to make a lot of money—breaking even on the publication process would please me at this point.
The process, however, did show me how much of my job is often postponing a concrete, hands-on result. It was extremely satisfying to bring this baby to fruition, but there were months between conception and delivery. Much of what I do doesn't even see that much of a result, certainly not a sales page to link to: mentoring feature writers, brainstorming possible features or series we could undertake, updating style guides, meeting with tech about possible tools. A lot of these tasks are fulfilling, but kind of squishy when it comes to pointing to exactly what I accomplished today when I log off in the evening.
Yet I still want you to know, I have the best freaking job in the world, bar none. And it's this community—this whole surprising, quirky, funny, smart community—that makes it so great.
So take a bow, dear fellow readers and writers. And ask me anything. I'll try to answer (or at least hunt down someone who can).