Starting the Self Publishing Journey

 

For those of you youngins', the image above is a typewriter. They predate computers and suck to type on. I'm glad they were mostly phased out as I was growing up.

Hello, Readers. I hope everyone is doing well. This post is going to be a little different from my usual posts. I've been trying to branch out from just the book reviews and challenges where I can. Some of you may know that I'm currently working on publishing a book. I had initially planned to do a few posts to share what I learned after I was published but recently decided that it might be a good idea to share as I go. If nothing else, this will help me going forward if I ever get around to finishing more books. 

To start, here's a little background story on me as a writer. I definitely get my love of writing from my mom. From an early age, before I could even write, she was helping me make poems. We both have poems published in random anthologies, but beyond that, she never got a chance to become a published author before she passed away. When I was in elementary school, one of my teachers gave points for writing in a journal. You could write whatever you wanted, and so many points meant you got to have popcorn at your desk. This was a win for me because I loved writing and popcorn, so I always had some story or something in my journal. It's a wonder I actually got through High School with a 3.0 GPA because the vast majority of the time, I was not paying any attention because I was too busy writing poems and songs.

I guess I've always just needed to write, and at nineteen, I started writing a story. I don't think I knew then that it'd take me fourteen years to finish it and attempt to turn it into a book, but here we are. I am really awesome at getting ideas for stories and writing 2-3 pages. I am not great about finishing said projects, so it feels huge for me to even be at this point. 

Current standing:

The story I'm developing is a middle-grade children's fantasy adventure book. It came to me in a bizarre dream, and I've just been turning it into a story ever since. I won't go too much into what the book is about. I'll save that for a later time, but there are pirates, wolves, and adventures. It's a lot of fun. My editor gave me the latest feedback, and given that it's mostly just some grammatical corrections (damn you, commas), I feel really good about where it's at. Because I don't need to do any serious chapter changes, a binder of things has been sent to my dad so he can draw pictures for each chapter. I'm also having someone do the cover art, and they're on board. Right now, it feels mostly out of my hands. 

The plan is to self-publish on Amazon and see where it goes. I don't really feel like trying to beg publishers and agents to read my book and then lose a lot of control over it in the end. 

Things I've learned so far:

1.  Writing is the easiest part of the publishing process. The biggest issue in writing for me is finding the time to do it. Because a full-time job and full-time school for 2.5 degrees make it really hard to find time to write. Plus, I have other hobbies and a husband. Also, writer's block, but the creating part and actually developing the story is fun compared to the other stuff I have to do even to self-publish.
1. Trying to make fourteen years of changed writing style into one cohesive story is really hard. I've had to do many rewrites just for this reason. Part of this is because I lost the word doc for several years. (Shout out to my sister in law who found it hiding in her email and was able to make this entire thing possible again).
2. Have a plan for after writing. Like most things I do, I am going about this with reckless abandon and have no clue where it will lead. Seriously, I had no idea what order to do anything in (I still don't, but I know the order I have done things in is not ideal.) There's a lot that goes into creating a book after it's written. So I think it's important to know who you need to involve (or the additional jobs you need to involve) and when to bring them in. For me, I can't draw, and I know that my grammar is mediocre at best. So I'm investing in people to help me out with that. I think the when to get them involved is up to each individual author. 
3. Along with having a plan, I think going forward, I'm going to set up specific times to write. It'll be a little tricky this next year while working on my Master's, but I'll figure it out. 
4. Do your research. Seriously, I had no idea what I was getting into. I'm still not sure, but at least now I have a rough idea of what I should be doing. Lurking around on Reddit's r/selfpublish has been incredibly insightful. I highly recommend going through some of the resources there.
5. It seems like I should have more finished works before I launch. I've noticed that many authors seem to write a few books before they publish the first one that way, they can publish on a monthly or quarterly cycle. I don't know that I can ever get to this point, but I guess that'll be my goal or something. I definitely don't want it to be like every four years I'm publishing a new book. Maybe one or two a year to start? I definitely wish I had a few more pieces closer to being ready.
6. Learn about marketing. If you're self-published, there are some places you can hire to help you market your book. There's a lot you still have to do on your own. I am trying to keep my costs low, so I'm doing the marketing myself. This may or may not pan out. We'll see.

Going forward:

I'm hoping to have this book ready to go by next year. It's all kind of in my dad's hands at this point. He has many drawings to handle, and I refuse to go to print without the illustrations. In the meantime, I'm just going to develop more stories as I can and try and do more research. I know that I still need to get a copyright, create an actual website, and prep my social media. I don't really know what publishing will mean for this blog. I imagine I'll do more writing centered posts, and I hope to keep doing reviews. I don't really know if there are any ethics behind reviewing books when you're a published author yourself. I've tried to research it and haven't really come up with the right answer. I'd like to think that as long as I'd continue to approach it from a reader's point of view that it'd be fine, but who knows. 

I'll be curious to revisit this post once I am published. I'll be sure to share my thoughts and what I've learned with anyone trying to go through this crazy process as well.