Saturday, September 1, 2012

This Self-Publishing Gig is No Day at the Beach


I am almost finished with the first draft of the second book in the Coursodon Dimension Series.  While I’m pleased with both the progress and the content, I find myself dawdling a bit.  When I was close to the end of the first book, I relentlessly plowed ahead, sometimes writing for 8 hours straight without a break.  And when I was finished, I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment.  I had done it, I wrote a complete novel!  With the current book, however, I feel much less inclined to forge ahead with the same tenacity.  I haven’t quite figured out why, but I suspect it is because I don’t want this story to end.  Oh, I am already planning the third in the series, so it isn’t angst over the end of the characters.

Maybe I’ve enjoyed writing this one more than the first?  I don’t think so, I’m just as excited about this plot as the first, perhaps more so.

It’s more likely I’m dreading the not-so-pleasant tasks of edits, re-writes, cover design, formatting and marketing associated with self-publishing.  I was blissfully unaware of the amount of time I would spend on what’s required after the book was done when I gleefully completed Special Offers.  Now, I know in excruciating detail what I’m in for.  Days and days trying to design and implement a cover that illustrates what the book is about, captures the feel of the plot and characters and doesn’t look like it was done by an amateur.  Then, dithering over if a professional cover artist is worth the cost.  Hours sending out review requests, most of which will go unanswered.  And on and on.

People may think that self-publishing is easy; you write some stuff, you put it out there, and that’s it.  WRONG!  To me, that’s more what traditionally published authors do.  Sure, they have to get someone to agree to publish their work in the first place, but after that, the decision making is mostly out of their hands.  They may not always like what the publishing house decides, but they don’t have to use time they could be writing on marketing and cover design.  I guess the difference is traditionally published authors may spend more up-front time convincing someone their work is worthy of being published, while self-pubs make up for that on the back-end of the process.

In any case, I’ll have to suck it up and finish writing.  Only a couple of chapters to go, and then the real craziness begins.  Time to refill that prescription for Xanax.  Or maybe I'll just take a trip to the beach...

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