If you’re like me, you’ve probably considered self-publishing a book (or two, or three). I initially published my book The Veil back in 2010, but it was primarily to get a few print copies of the book to give to some friends. The book languished for a decade and probably not a single person read it or downloaded it.
As 2020 had me sitting at home for long periods (thank you COVID-19), I decided to edit a book I wrote in 2011 and sent it to a publisher. The publisher ended up sending me a contract in return (much to my surprise). Suddenly, I decided that the whole fiction author thing may be something to investigate after all.
Part of my new strategy was to write and write a lot. I’ve tried different genres this year and different ways of writing. Do I think all of my books are bestsellers waiting to happen? Probably not. Do I believe they have an audience? Most definitely.
One of the first things I decided to do was relaunch my first book and see what happens. I started by getting a professional to redesign the cover (http://getcovers.com/). I was excited with how the cover turned out. I think the new cover did a great job of making the project look completely professional. I liked my first cover, but it was clearly made by an amateur who didn’t know what he was doing.
The second thing I did was go through the entire book and edit, edit, edit. Even though I’d published the book back in 2010, my writing knowledge has grown in the last decade, so I found quite a few things that needed to be fixed.
Once I got the book where I wanted it to be, I found a beta reader on Facebook who gave me a lot of great advice on a few areas that needed clarification.
After that round of edits, I then hired a proofreader to go through the manuscript before I decided it was time to publish.
The first thing I did was publish the print version on KDP. I wanted to get a physical copy in my hands to make sure everything looked like I wanted it to look. Of course, I found a few minor formatting errors that I fixed before reuploading it.
Once I was happing with the formatting, I used www.draft2digital to distribute the book across ebook sites. Draft2Digital’s website was very easy to use. I was very impressed with the quality of the ebook I was able to produce there. I do wish I had been able to use my original formatting for the ebook. However, InDesign still isn’t that great for converting ebooks in various formats (sigh…).
I wanted to use The Veil as a tool to get people interested in me and my writing, so I wanted the book to be permafree. Thankfully, Draft2Digital will do this even though they don’t get any profits from the book as a result. I plan on releasing other books through them just for the simplicity of my life.
However, once I got the digital versions up, it took a few days to get the Kindle book to $0.00. Kindle requires all books to be priced at $0.99 to begin with. However, they will match book prices once it’s uploaded and free on other sites. I tried to get the price match myself, but ultimately, I had to get Draft2Digital to request this change.
If you haven’t downloaded my book yet, check it out: https://books2read.com/u/boDlxL