Independently publishing a theological science fiction series, for a while I was overwhelmed by everything that has to be learned well enough to do it well enough and/or recognize and recruit good enough help for it.  Finally I made a table of the skills and IT or online tools that are required.  The table ran four pages. No wonder I felt outnumbered!  On the other hand, each of these skills is learnable. Some of the digital tools are rather wonderful.  And with this most of this stuff something can be accomplished in hours, not the months it takes to write a new novel. I just have to tackle the dreaded learning curve.  My latest fun involved:  learning how to convert a pdf file to jpg (Cloud Converter works really well); learning how to download new, free fonts (from Fontsquirrel) and install them in my PC;  getting better at noodling around in Picasa (the free photo program) to put new typefaces on the covers of two novels;  and recruiting my writer and independent publisher friend Pauline Baird Jones to do more sophisticated versions of same on Photoshop.

So I now have even more items to add to that skills/tools table.  But I also have two nicer looking novel covers. Real progress!