IT’S A LOT OF WORK

I didn’t know how much work was involved in self-publishing, but apparently, it’s such an ordeal that there are thousands of youtube videos explaining how to do it. Yesterday, I had 7 hours of driving to do (3.5 hours down, and 3.5 hours back up), so I queued up a bunch of videos to learn the process.

Here’s my current checklist. Most of it is done!

• Finish writing the book and editing the book
• Hire a designer for the cover
• Purchase an ISBN so I can retain the publishing rights
• Write up a summary
• Create a Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) account 
• Format the manuscript for both eBook and paperback
• Pick a launch date
• Think about marketing

After watching hours of videos, I noticed that many of them were focused on book sales. And then I remembered that people monetize their youtube accounts, and everything is income stream for them. One video talked about strategies to artificially float your novel to a “best seller” category by manipulating the price. Disgusting.

I may take an entirely different approach to the marketing. The whole adage “You have to spend money to make money” holds no weight if your goal isn’t to make money. I should probably think about my goal at some point! 

Anyhow, that’s the quick update. More to come. I’m in the final stages of editing, and I should get the book launched soon. Stay tuned!