Three years and a bit in the making, I began the process to publish my first novel this week. Not the traditional process, mind you, but the self-published way. The more traditional method is to seek an agent or publisher, send a cover letter, wait, and hopefully an agent will respond wanting to see a full proposal. I visited many a website researching this method and couldn't help but feel pretty much unwanted. More than one literally said, "Don't call us; we'll call you!" I had thought that an old Hollywood cliche, but I now stand corrected.
Of course the first thing to note about self-publishing is that you don't have to literally print the book all by yourself. The publisher I selected offers many options for editing, describing, marketing, and illustrating books. One thing I did not see was an option to print my book in a nice hardcover format. As a first-time author, I may not have seen that going the traditional way either. Having not used this blog for too many postings yet, I decided yesterday that I would give you a week by week log (on a weblog no less!) of what goes on with this process.
On Tuesday, I signed up for an account with Createspace, the publisher mentioned earlier. The following day I received my first call. Bryan, led me through some initial setup on the web account and I created a horrendously difficult password that, alas, I had to write down - a major no-no from my days in the IT department. I'll get that memorized as soon as possible and destroy the paper copy. Later in the day the Createspace account notified me to take the next step and enter my personal or business account information for receiving royalty payments. Unfortunately, the payments won't begin until after the first book is published. There are no advances in the self-publishing world. I guess self-publishing means that I get to trust in God to take care of my "self" until the book starts selling copies.
During the initial consultation, Bryan asked a few questions and set up a meeting with the next level, the publishing consultant, who would call me. The phone meeting with Sarah took place on Friday and the first thing I discovered is that I am a bit of a disaster when it comes to verbally selling my own book. Listening to my verbal synopsis of the book, you might wonder whether I actually wrote the thing! I suppose that after using more than 98,000 words to write the novel, I am allowed to have a little trouble describing it in a few hundred words. In any case, Createspace offers services to take care of my shortcomings in that area as well.
Among the other services I selected, including cover design, interior layout, book description, marketing, Library of Congress Control Number, and others, one service stands out - copyediting. I had thought that traditional publishers would be all over this, but I read in one book that this is no longer the case. Strangely, the book listed something like seven different editors who apparently don't do the kind of editing a first-time novelist really needs. Remember the Jack Nicholson part in Wolf? Yeah, it kind of led me to believe that publishers did that kind of thing. Anyway, Createspace does offer basic and comprehensive copyediting. Although I believe that I have the talent to be the next bazillion-copy, best-selling novelist - just like every other first-time author - I can read my copy and tell that it needs something to make it read more like the great novels you can find in your bookstore.
Finally, I started two projects on the member dashboard. One for the first novel, The Rumble of Wheels: A Toledo Ted Adventure, and another for my second novel. As this process moves forward, I will do weekly updates each Saturday until the publishing date. Next week I am to expect contact from the design team assigned to my book. The damage thus far: just over $3,000 for the options mentioned above. A more experienced (or less verbally and graphically challenged) author might need to purchase less to get started. As a first-timer, I decided to risk more to get the professional help I need (pun intended).
The grace of God be with you this week!
Bucky
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