It’s been almost a week now since my upload of Unexpected Obsession (The Unexpected Series Book 1), and I still can’t believe it happened. Self-publishing is a hard task master when preparing for publication. I couldn’t count the amount of times editing has occurred to get to that publishing stage only to find ‘niggling little horrors’ show up anyway. It’s all part of the process, and I trust in my readers to understand this.
I have debated the self publishing question long and hard. Despite its appeal there are still many people that don’t consider self-publishing a legitimate way to put your book out there. Some view it as a path you take when you fail to navigate your way on the traditional road. Paul Lucas, a well-known literary agent recently said that as “products, the e-books are indistinguishable from other offerings. So if the book is good, it will receive attention.”
The trouble with self-publishing is that whilst this may be true the publishing process is such that there is only one place to lay the blame when things go wrong. This is why I have spent the week reading the up-loaded manuscript and searching for errors, both grammatical and formatting, and then spent a long days checking and fixing, and checking and fixing. Both Amazon and Smashwords copies have now been addressed. I am hoping Paul is right and can’t wait to see what readers have to say.
Only readers can decide if a book is good or not. However as much as people reading the book is what I long for, more has come out of this than just the book. For me, the most exciting thing about writing Unexpected has been having good people around me who have supported my crazy leap into writer outer space. Sean, my go to man has been an enormous help. I know how to bookmark, link and goodness knows what else because he has had the patience to teach me, as he worked tirelessly trying to turn my ideas, into a website. My editor Pat has taught me the value of a comma although I still don’t always get it. I am grateful for the patience of Alyson Walton and Kay Want Cheung for sitting with me when I was too scared to press a few buttons alone. They also see it as a practice run for when they publish their own books.
Yay at last!
Stories of the Dark and Light (found on Amazon and Smashwords) back in July 2016 was a group self-publishing experiment. It gave us grounding and because we shared some pitfalls together, the three of us are still in there hoping and doing. I can’t wait for them to publish their first novel. The incredible thing is these wonderful people are like me, and are on their L-plates. They are learner drivers just as many of you are out there, and just like you we are stumbling through to get to our destination dreams. Sharing skills helps us become stronger individually. Stronger individuals are better able to help others.
Is it worth it? The experience, I mean? Absolutely! Any experience that takes us out of our comfort zone is worth it. Once the girls have their first novels out we are going to tackle the print copy. Again, we will use Stories from the Dark and Light as our experiment. Working together on a project is a great learning curve.
Oh, you might want to know about the novel, Unexpected and how it is going. I don’t know because without your input I can’t know. I would love some comments from you either here on the blog site or as a review if you purchase my book. Anything you say can only help me get better.
So please, come and have a say,
Barb
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