It's in the catalog...

The Fort Vancouver Regional Library catalog, that is. They've ordered two copies (yeah!), so go ahead and place your holds now -- if you have a FVRL library card, that is.  ;)

I'm still waiting for the "Look Inside" feature to show up on my book on Amazon.

This week my e-Book publishing class starts. I'll find out if my computer can handle it or if I'll have to use library computers.

This post is late because I was away for the weekend. Sorry!

That's it...

How much does self-publishing cost?

I can't speak for everyone who self-publishes, but here's what it has cost me so far to get Just Like Magic available for purchase:

$29.49   iStock photo credits, for my cover photo. I still have a few credits left, too.
$  7.08   First proof copy from CreateSpace, including shipping.
$25.00   Extended distribution from CreateSpace (optional).
$  7.11   Second proof copy from CreateSpace, including shipping.
$23.40   Five copies of final version for me, at author's discount, including shipping & tax.

Total: $92.08.

Note: Just Like Magic is 198 pages long. Price for proofs and author's copies is based on the book length; my copies are $3.22 each plus shipping and tax. (The second proof copy had two more pages, hence the higher price.) For fatter books, you need fatter wallets.

Buying an ISBN would have cost me from $10 to $250. But I didn't; I used the free CreateSpace ISBN. If I had paid someone to edit the interior or design the cover, that would have cost me hundreds more. But I didn't; I did it myself, with help from friends and family.

Further expenses? Well, marketing. I really haven't done anything about marketing besides this blog and posting about it on my Facebook page. Sending out review copies will obviously cost me for books and postage.

Considering that I don't expect to make a mint from this, I think the cost is reasonable.

But those are just the monetary expenses. There are also time costs: 6 months of my spare time to get it published, and that's considering that I had the whole book written when I started. That 6 months included formatting, designing, rewriting, waiting for proofs, proofing, waiting for other people to proof, and more proofing. Having more experience now, I don't think another book would take me six months.

And there are emotional costs, too, to putting your baby out in front of the public. Cheers, jeers, and silence all take their tolls.

Meanwhile--I have signed up for a (free! through my library) online course entitled "Publish and Sell Your E-Books" which starts in about ten days. I think I'll let what I learn in that course guide me in my attempts to get the e-version out. What research I did this week into publishing for the Kindle led me to believe that 1) it's so simple a child could do it, but 2) you have to be a child with a PhD in HTML. So I think I'll see what I learn in the class before going further with that.

This week--more break time for me! Have a good week, everyone.

It's available! And other thoughts...

Thanks to those of you who have bought a copy of Just Like Magic! I hope you enjoy it. It's a quick, light read complete with humor and a happy ending. If you haven't gotten yours yet, follow one of these links to buy one for your very own:

The CreateSpace eStore
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Amazon (United Kingdom)
Amazon (Germany)
Amazon (France)
Amazon (Italy)
Amazon (Spain)

If you're online searching for the book, I suggest using the title and my name. Otherwise a lot of extraneous stuff will come up.

If you read it and have something to say about it, please consider posting a review to Amazon or Barnes and Noble. I'd appreciate it!

The "Look Inside" feature on Amazon will be added sometime in the next few weeks.

If you're waiting for the Kindle version, I haven't forgotten you -- I'll start working on it soon.

This week has been interesting. I had a post-publishing letdown and didn't even want to think about the book for a few days. I also was bummed because I thought I had spelled the word "Acknowledgements" wrong, because Blogger spellchecker underlined it in red when I used it in last week's post. But turns out that putting that "e" between the "g" and the "m" is an acceptable variant, which is why all my Word spellchecking hadn't alerted me. I feel better now.

(A random thought -- there are eleven consonants in "acknowledgements." Doesn't that seem excessive to you?)

Coming up on this blog -- How to Edit Interior Files for the Kindle! What I Learned About Self-Publishing and What I'd Do Differently Next Time! Marketing and Other Stuff! Why My Blog Title Should Be Changed! And more...

Published!

"It's the last, long, mile..." (That's from a World War I song my mom has sung to me recently.)

This week has been crazy.

Sunday through Wednesday, I continued editing. I fixed the problems I had sticky-noted, then found that I had some serious comma problems and used "of course" too much. (Why did it take me this long to discover this?) I fixed the "of course" issue using the "find" command in Word and did end up removing about half. But the comma issue meant another read-through of the whole manuscript, fun, fun. That took through Wednesday.

Thursday, I thought I was done. I made a new PDF--four times! I kept finding problems, especially the fact that the conversion process occasionally caused those weird hyphenation problems: at the bottom of one page would be a hyphenated word like "Step-," and at the top of the next page it would say "Stepmama." Really odd but I did in the end fix all those (or I thought I had). There were also some extra blank pages put in near the end of the file and I had to change some section breaks to fix that. I also edited the cover file and made a new JPEG.

Friday morning I reviewed the file, fixed more hyphenation stuff, made a new PDF, and uploaded it. I also edited the cover slightly, made another JPEG, and uploaded it. Late that afternoon I got word that the files were printable!

(Does Friday sound a lot like Thursday? Yeah, it was. These final little changes are killers, but I had to keep reviewing the file because I didn't want to kick myself later.)

Saturday morning, I looked over the new file, hoping to find it fine. But argh, I found a spacing error (one measly extra space between words). Well, phooey. I could live with that. But then I found a verb tense error! Oh no, have to redo it and upload it again and go through the review process again!

So--I did. I used Word's grammar checker and found another spacing error and another verb tense error, too. (I also found out that when I grammar-checked the whole book at once, Word crashed and all the changes were lost. So then I had to do it again chapter by chapter! And since I was in there, I also slightly changed the last page, acknowledgments, and author page. Then I made a new PDF and uploaded it and submitted the whole book for review again. Remind me not to be a copy editor for a living.

This morning, the files were again deemed acceptable for printing. I went through the interior file again, and hit the "Approve" button. Because it's time. Yes, there are still errors in there. That's life.

And do you know what I found out when I looked up my title in Amazon? (Btw, it won't be available to purchase through Amazon.com for perhaps a week, but it's available right now here.) Anyway--four days ago, guess what was published for the Kindle? Just Like Magic: A Cross-Dressing Threesome Story of Male Domination and Bisexual Male Submission by Keri Carver. (31 pages.)

"If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Yeah, Jimmy Buffet, you got that right.

Armageddon sic a disol book

What? You haven't read The Ship With the Flat Tire by Todd Hunt?*

Moving right along... The second proof arrived on Wednesday.** On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I read it all again and marked errors. Yes, I'll need to upload both the interior and cover files again. That is all.

I mean it. That is ALL. Once I correct the files and re-upload them, there will be NO third proof copy headed my way. That's right, I have reached the point of Author's Denial, aka "I Refuse To Tinker Anymore." The book isn't perfect. It will never be perfect. I think I've caught the most egregious stuff. There were only a couple of actual typos in this proof; mostly I was moving commas or tweaking words. Much of it still makes me smile, even reading it over for the umpty-umpth time. What more can I ask?

So--this week I fix the files, look over the final PDF and JPEG very carefully, re-upload them, wait for the acceptance, and then PUSH THE BUTTON, BETH. Look for it.
___________________

* You should (if you can find it--it was published in 1967); it's really funny. It also might help you decode the title of the post, although that shouldn't be too hard anyway.

**By US mail, not UPS like last time. Curious.

Second proof

Here's what happened this week:

1) On Monday, I checked over my file for widows and orphans again, made a PDF/X from the interior file, and uploaded it. I was notified right away by CreateSpace that there was one mistake found. I couldn't find out what the mistake was because of my computer's age and inability to run current Adobe software.

2) On Tuesday, I checked my file at the library. The mistake was just a margin error on the title page, easily fixed. However, after I fixed that and made a new PDF, I realized that I had, with editing, added two new pages to the file and my chapter numbers were wrong on the Contents page again. Sigh. I fixed that, but decided to scan the PDF page by page for more errors, which was a good idea, because I found some spacing problems which I then had to fix. (On one page, there was a totally random blank line added for no particular reason. It had showed up on the first proof, but I thought I'd fixed it. Apparently not. I had to delete not only that line but the paragraphs above and below and then retype them to get rid of that stupid blank space.) Yipes. I thought I'd gotten all that before.

3) On Wednesday, I uploaded the PDF of the finally-all-correct-I-really-really-hope interior file. CreateSpace didn't find any problems. Hooray! In the evening, I tried to make my cover file into a PDF (after revising the back cover blurb). It didn't work! Frustration ensued, and I decided to leave it for the next day.

4) On Thursday morning, I did some research and found that the cover file wasn't supposed to be a PDF! It only needed to be a JPEG. Well, whadda ya know. Hey, it was three months ago that I did this conversion before, and I'd forgotten. Anyway, the JPEG was easy to create. That evening, I submitted the new cover file (no problems found) and submitted both files for review. CreateSpace said they'd get back to me within 48 hours.

5) On Friday morning (5:45 am!) I checked my email and wow--my files are approved! I ordered a proof copy. Why? Because even though I don't want to do any more checking, I'd feel pretty stupid if I didn't and some gross error went through. While I was in an ordering mood, I signed up for CreateSpace's Expanded Distribution plan, which includes the "Bookstores and Online Retailers" channel and the "Libraries & Academic Institutions" channel. (In other words, the Ingram and the Baker & Taylor catalogs.) And -- I got notice on Friday night that the proof is in the mail. If it comes as soon as the first proof did, it could arrive tomorrow.

This week: stalking the condo office for possible proof delivery, seeing what else I can do on the CreateSpace website to prepare for publication (though I think I've done most of it), and praying that the proof looks good enough to publish. Keep your fingers crossed, okay?

So near...

I am so near to uploading both my interior and my cover files again.

This week, I read my whole book out loud to myself. That was helpful in finding bits that didn't flow well and continuity errors (Character A was sitting on this page, but standing on the next, with no transition. Stuff like that.) I also tweaked the cover; it didn't need much.

I'm at the point where I don't want to look at the book anymore, but I need to. I had to determine a "reading level" for it for CreateSpace, so I tried to use a reading level function in MS Word. It never worked (guess I hadn't set the settings properly) but I did end up going through the whole book with Word's spelling and grammar checker. And whaddaya know, I found more spelling errors (incorrect compound words, mostly) and some grammar stuff, some of which I corrected and some of which I let stand because It's Just My Style, thank you very much, Word. Oh, and I used an online "readability index calculator" to determine my reading level (7th grade).

This morning I've been messing around on the CreateSpace website, resetting my BISAC code (which tells bookstores how to classify the book), entering the price ($8.99), rewriting my book description (which will also go on the back cover)--it goes on and on. But really, I'm so near...

That's my goal for the week--uploading both files. Once they're approved, will I then order another proof copy? Do I want to? Noooooooo (that's a horrified wail). I just want to push the "publish" button. But will I? We'll see.