The Digital Age

I know many of you have grown up in this digital age, where everything is available online, on your phone, or on your tablet. And I will admit, it can be extremely convenient when doing research, especially thinking back to all the hours I spent in the library before this digital age. College papers would have been so much easier if I could have researched them online.

The thing is, though, that we are now dependent on all things digital. At the moment, I'm having a real problem. If you've looked at my profile, you will see I'm an author. I write fantasy romance. In order to publish anything, whether I self-pub or go through a publishing house, I have to be able to get the manuscript out to someone else. It could be Kindle, or Smashwords, or Siren/Bookstrand. But I need to get it from my computer to my readers.

And that is my problem.

We live out in the country, and though we pay for high speed internet, right now we aren't getting what we paid for. Oh, yes, the downloading portion of it is fine. But uploads aren't happening.

I had a manuscript to send to my editor. It was all of 228kB in size. It should hardly make a ripple on a high speed connection. Right?

It took the better part of ten minutes and multiple tries to get it to her. And forget the graphics for the cover art. We're talking at least 1 MB for an image large enough for them to produce the front cover.

It isn't going to happen. Not with our upload speeds. Earlier today, I checked our connection speed. And while the download speed was 2.8 mbps, the upload was 79--Kbps.

Most places don't even accept printed manuscripts any more, which in a way is nice. All those pages and all that postage, just so they can tell you they're not interested.

I've called our provider so many times, I'm sure they're sick of hearing it. But it has been going on now for months. Before you ask, they are really our only option for phone and internet. Since we need unlimited internet for work, the other company out here is not an option.

Part of this is due to an overloaded system. With everything growing so very quickly, the infrastructure can't keep up. And as far out in the woods as we live, nobody is in a great hurry to do anything about it.

So this is my dilemma. I have a manuscript which should be back from the editor soon. As an indie publisher, I will need to upload my manuscript and cover art.

How?

I guess I'll drive the fifteen miles into the local Starbucks, buy a latte, and connect to their WiFi long enough to get it accomplished.

With any luck at all, it won't get lost in the ether...

So what about this digital age? Yes, it is convenient. Yes, it gives us a lot of options we didn't have before. But we may perhaps rely on it too much.

In the meantime, I'm going to feed the cat and make a cup of tea while I figure out what's for dinner.

Manuscripts can wait.

The cat won't.