I want share some of my new experiences with you about writing my book. If I only knew what I was getting into… believe me when I tell you, there is way more to it than just getting the words on paper. That is a challenge within itself, to make the word count for the Genre that you choose to write. Then you have edit, re-edit, and more editing, this of course is all done by you.
Then you must find a cover to match your story or edit your story to match your cover. Find a few Beta Readers to review your story, oh not to mention find an Editor to review your book. Next you must decide are you going to send your book to a Literary Agent or self-publish. Be careful of some Literary Agents that just work for one company do your research for some are Vanity Publishers. Which they ask for money upfront to do your publishing and they get to set the price, plus a percentage of royalties. After finding out about one that I was looking into how much money they wanted, I decided to Self-publish (Indie Author) for less money.
If you choose to be an Indie Author, you will be doing a lot of writing, demand is high for a quick turn-around. Where traditional publishing normally only allows one book a year. When you’re an Indie Author you will need to check out the many platforms for doing self-publishing. There are some that have several platforms in one that makes it much easier to distribute your book.
Now the next step is marketing. No matter how you publish, you will be marketing your own book. So, keep this in mind when you set off to do this journey. I recommend to setup a blog to attract an audience, while you are writing your book. This way you’ll have an audience to be able to share your work with and help spread the word.
However, knowing you achieved this accomplishment makes it all worth while in the end.
Karen Carnahan 