Self-publishing is NOT easy! | Graeme Ing, Writer

Some pundits have said that self-publishing is the easy way out, for someone who can?t handle a ?real? publishing contract. Well I?m not going to go into that open-ended debate here, but I would like to explain how doing it all yourself is?far from easy!

I?ve not been sleeping well recently. My mind has been churning through the hundreds of things I need to do in the final run up to the release, and afterward. The only way I could get peace of mind was to consider the old adage:

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

So I made a list of everything that I could think of, pulling on all the advice I had read from dozens of books and posts from Indie authors. Phew! In its entirety, it?s scary. Calm down, Graeme! One bite at a time. Here?s a snapshot of my list for the blissfully ignorant. (No?offense?intended, you lucky people!) My entire list is far too long but this sheds some light on the events:

• Work with artist to complete cover art, including fonts and lettering
• Pre-release marketing buzz
• Build a list of book reviewers to approach
• Put up sample chapters on Goodreads and my site
• Register manuscript with copyright office
• Format ebook for Smashwords and Amazon (Whole books have been written about this important piece that I am blowing off in one line item!)
• Add copyright material, acknowledgments, author bio and other end pages
• Upload book and then test it on all known e-readers (Kindle, Nook, Kobo, iBook, Sony, PDF)
• Finalize book blurb
• Publish to Amazon and Smashwords
• Tell everyone via every social media format known to man
• Launch party, including Rafflecopter give away of free books, via my site, FB and Goodreads
• Contact reviewers politely and send free copies to whomever is gracious enough to accept
• Author Pages: (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iBooks)
• Update my bio: (Web site, Bublish, Twitter, Klout, FB, Pinterest, Google+, Goodreads, LinkedIn?)
• Add cover art to FB page, Pinterest and Flickr
• Add blurb, cover, where to buy info to my site, including book widgets
• Blog tour
• Work with artist to make paperback cover art
• Format book for paperback
• Upload to Create Space, order and review proof
• Publish on Create Space
• Do the whole marketing thing all over again
• Book trailer?
• Start building mailing list and add subscriber widget to web site
• Print business cards
• Try to do some speaking tours or interviews

Almost makes writing the book the easy part. Almost. I?m sure other authors have a totally different list, or in a different order, and have ideas I haven?t even thought of.

Oh, and somewhere amongst all this, I need to continue writing my next book, actually do my day job and avoid alienating my patient wife.

Source: http://www.graemeing.com/2012/09/15/self-publishing-is-not-easy/

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