As I venture forth into self-publishing, I need to wear many hats. The question remains: What if I’m not good at a particular skill?
Publishing houses have employees that oversee every step of a book. Some examples include: editors, cover designers, layout designers, promotion, etc. If I can’t edit or design or promote, I should hire someone.Ā Start as IĀ mean to finish. I want a professional book at the end of all this work. I want a person to pick up my novel and fall into the story, unfetteredĀ by errors or poor design choices. I am amazed by the quantity of BAD cover design out there. Hard working authors do themselves no favors taking on cover design. Their expertise lies with writing. A bad cover can affect sales. I don’t want my cover listed on LousyBookCovers.comĀ and neither do you. In my case, I am blessed to have worked as a graphic designer for half my life.
Last week I ordered my second set of proofs, and this time selected a glossy cover (see above). Can you tell which one is glossy finish and which is matte finish? Looking at andĀ feelingĀ them (yes, the feel of a book is important), I have decided that glossy is the way to go. It just feels right to me.
On Saturday I sentĀ TiedĀ off into the wild, and the process of converting to Kindle flagged some issues. I could have let it go, but I could not allow myself to do it (start as I mean to finish). I decided to take one more pass. Remember when I said you only catch ninety-percentĀ of the errors each time you proof? I caught a few more minor errors that required fixing. This starts the review process on KDP Print (formerly CreateSpace) all over again, but I thought “Don’t rush this. Get it as close to excellence as possible, then let it go.” I can’t self-publish a book knowing of unfixed errors.
I went through the approval process again, only to realize I had missed another small detail. I blame my severe head and chest cold frazzlingĀ my thoughts. I went through the CreateSpace review process a second time.
Now, I think I’m good. Sometime tonight, maybe tomorrow morning, I will send Tied out into marketplace.
On all my promotional material, I stated TiedĀ would be available “Winter 2015/2016”. Now it’s Spring 2016, by a day. I missed my window by a week or so, but Tied is now as good as I can make it.
I’m okay with that.
