The *joy* of self publishing
The reports of my imminent publication may have been premature. I thought I was in the home stretch, but apparently I have yet to leave the farm.
I don't remember the first book being such a royal pain in the ass, but that was four years ago. Since that mch time has passed, either the memory of pain has faded or I have lost any ability I may have had. Despite following an excellent tutorial by India Drummond on YouTube, I still had fits trying to reformat my first book.
So, after spending an entire day uploading, previewing, reuploading, repreviewing, ad infinitum, I appealed to my fellow writing junkies at Fiction Writers Anonymous for tips on how they get their books out into the world.
I already knew about and used Calibre, an ebook managment program. I had not, however, known it could be used to edit my own book. I have not yet investigated this avenue further, but I'll play with it. Meanwhile I will continue to use it as a fantastic way to manage my ebook collection and interface with my Kindle.
I have run my manuscript through the formatter on Draft2Digital. This service will format your manuscript into all the various types, .epub, .mobi., and .pdf, so all platforms are covered. For 10% of you royalties, they will also distribute it to various outlets such as Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Inktera (formally Page Foundry), Scribd, 24Symbols, Tolino and CreateSpace. I however, am a cheap bitch and plan to distribute them on my own for the most part.
Smashwords doesn't format for you, but they do distribute. Their page proclaims: 'Smashwords will distribute your books via multiple online channels, including but not limited to the Smashwords.com web site, major online retailers (Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, OverDrive, Scribd, Gardners, Baker & Taylor (operates Blio, a popular e-reading app, and also operates Axis360 which distributes ebooks to public libraries); Kobo on all mobile platforms) and other online venues.' So I'll probably go with them for those channels that are a pain in the butt to publish to on your own. Also, you povide information to Smashwords which allows them to issue you a tax statement at the end of the year, so you don't have to figure the income taxes for your royalties yourself. Draft2Digital does not do that. So, for me, it's worth giving Smashwords the commission if I don't have to worry about taxes.
Back on the formatting front, there is a program called Jutoh. Download it to your computer and it too will format your manuscript into the various types. It does cost $39, but that is a one-time deal. This may be in the cards for me, although exploiting D2D for their formatting for free appeals to the miser in me.
So, the processcontinues. The most charitable thing I can say about the process of getting this second book out is that it has been educational. I still have all my own hair, my bone density is probably through the roof from the copious quantities of Tums I've been consuming and I hope like hell it doesn;t take me another four years before I finish the next book so I don't forget eveything I've learned.
