In the beginning was The Book,
And The Book was The Masterpiece
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How to publish?
Where to publish?
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When I started writing my first book, Future Confronted, publishing it had not entered my head. All I knew was that I wanted to, no..., that I needed to write the story of my son Rob who died from a brain tumour when he was just 20 years old.
When I had eventually progressed to about three quarters of the way through, I was reading a post on Facebook where a friend was talking on a thread about KDP. I had never heard of this before, so I put in a comment to ask her what it was exactly. That is when I found out about the wonders of self publishing through amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Oh my word! This was going to be the way forward for me. I looked into the whys and wherefores, the hows and how nots, and continued reading as much as I could about it. Fired with a new enthusiasm, I carried on to finish my book.
Another Facebook friend, who was going through the publishing process for the first time, was helping me with all sorts of hints and tips. He is a very successful author now, I might add. Unfortunately I wasn't sufficiently confident to do it on my own. I chickened out, in fact. I went with a publisher that helps the likes of me, timorous and lacking confidence, to get their book up on all platforms. All went well for a wee while. Unfortunately after some months we had a parting of the ways, and this is when I had to bite the infamous self-publishing bullet! And what a hard bullet it is! But going it alone has been liberating. Now I really feel like an Indie Author! Well, I'm as independent as I'll ever be.
I decided to walk through the process like the proverbial tortoise, slow and steady... this way I gradually ticked off each instruction from the list. Do you know what? The further I progressed, the more confident I became. I uploaded my book, which now comes with added content, to the CreateSpace website for the paperback version. Mission accomplished, or so I thought, because then I had to do the cover. Piece of cake.... NOT! I had no idea about the re-sizing, as my first edition was 5" x 7" and some 173 pages, and my new edition is 6" x 9" with 130 pages, so, not only larger, but with a narrower spine to the book. A big difference in the scheme of things. My cover designer, my dear friend Dave Slaney, re-sized it for me, and placed my B.R.A.G. Medallion on the cover too. I then uploaded it with great success. Huzzah!!!
Then I had to do the Kindle version, which I thought was going to be a diabolical faff, but was easy, so easy in fact that I couldn't believe it. This is because, when you have uploaded with CreateSpace, they send your file through to KDP for you and all you have to do is go through several steps, et voilà! Last night, (19.09.2014) at approximately 19:30, I finally uploaded the Kindle version, and within twelve hours it was there waiting for someone to purchase it.
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| The B.R.A.G. Medallion |
I'm very proud to say that my book received The B.R.A.G. Medallion from indieBrag.com this month (September), and indieBrag have supplied everything that is needed for updating the book cover, etc., and also help to promote the book on their website. Receiving The B.R.A.G. Medallion has been a humbling experience, considering the channels that a book has to go through in order to be awarded this honour. If you go to their website, you will be able to read the thorough and exacting process through which a book has to go before it is successful.
There it is then, my foray into the Indie Publishing realms. It's been such a journey, one I thought I wouldn't be able to achieve, and now I will go forward with my Work in Progress, with the confidence that I will also be able to publish that one on my own through the delights of CreateSpace and KDP.
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