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It’s been a crazy few weeks here at The Traveller’s Path. I’ve been consumed with getting all the details ready for the big launch of my book, which happened on Saturday! Whoop!
Like everything else associated with this writing journey, the whole process of the book launch turned out to be way more complicated than I thought it would be. So, just for fun, this week on the blog I am giving you a Tale of Two Book Journeys. I’ll let you guess which one mine has been like so far….
Book Journey One
The author has a great idea for a book, and after clearing her calendar of all other distractions, her manuscript is written within a year. After carefully vetting through many agent and publisher requests asking for the privilege of representing her, she decides to take her destiny into her own hands and go the self-publishing route.
She sets a date six months ahead for launch day, picking a time that is most opportune for her for the big day. After skimming a few books and blogs on the self-publishing process, she easily compiles her manuscript from Scrivener, the fabulous writing program she uses, formatting it into the three different formats she will need – one for Kindle, one for everything outside of Kindle, and one for paperback.
She then turns her attention to the launch. She calls up the many successful authors she knows for advice on how to do this, and they are happy to oblige, giving her some great tips. She spends a couple months preparing: writing newsletters and blogs in advance for the month before and the month after, setting up blog tours to promote her book, making contacts with influential people who can do reviews and get the book in front of important influencers. She gets some Advanced Reader Copies to people who can read the book and review it, so that right away it will start moving up the sales chart on launch day. She gets a series of count-down newsletters written, and develops a bunch of swag to give away at her book launch: bookmarks, buttons, and even cute little journals featuring quotes from her book, designed by someone who had heard about her book and wanted to help promote it for free.
All of this takes longer than she thought it would, but no worries. Her other job has given her a paid leave of absence, because they support the arts. Her husband and family continually shoo her into her office, urging her to keep on going.
Two days before launch she uploads her book, as per recommendation (just in case there are some problems with getting the file uploaded), but everything goes smoothly, and she is excited to see her book up live. Pre-orders have skyrocketed, her mailing list is booming thanks to all the clever bonus items she has developed for new subscribers. She is giddy with anticipation for the launch.
Launch day arrives, and she can sit back and watch the sales start. Her social media is buzzing, thanks to all the scheduled FB and Twitter posts she had prepared weeks ago. Occasionally she hops onto her social media channels to offer live updates.
The day ends with a successful party, where friends and family gather to toast her success! She’s got lots of activity planned for the next month, which will ensure her book’s placement on the top rankings at Amazon and the other retail sites for a few weeks at least.
She goes to bed excited and grateful, ready to start Book Two!!
Book Journey Two
After wanting to write for most her life, our author finally decides when she turns 40 that she isn’t getting any younger so she better get started. She is raising three kids and has a busy life of work and volunteering, but she carves out time on the weekends and in the evenings to write. She starts with short stories, and joins an online writing workshop. But her ultimate goal has always been a book, so after about three years of learning the writing craft she starts. She has a general idea of a story. It’s so exciting to get going!
After awhile the story fizzles. It’s just not working. Now what? She tries other angles, ignores the prompts to explain WHY her 21st century main character showed up in Dark Ages England, then finally gives in and abandons the story she thought she was going to write to explore the one that showed up, instead. The story takes unexpected directions, some of which are good, some are not. And why did she decide to write about Dark Ages England, anyway? So much to learn….but it’s fun, and she perseveres.
Finally, about a decade later, she types THE END! Phew! Of course there is revisions needed….a couple more years pass and it’s ready to go. She ships the manuscript around to agents and publishers. There’s not a lot of those for historical fantasy set in the Dark Ages, it seems! She gets a couple nibbles, but she’s getting nowhere fast. After some research she decides to self-publish, and after saving up a large sum, hires a professional editor to guide her through the final revisions. She eagerly waits to hear the feedback.
Hmm. Editor says it’s a good concept, and the writing is okay, but it’s too long. Only one POV, please. Take the trilogy you have written and make it into one book. Much gloom commences. Finally the author picks herself up and tries to do as the editor suggests. She trims half of book one out, taking out all other POVs except the main character. It’s ok, actually, and she starts to have hope this will work. But she just can’t make the three books fit into one, or even two. Back to square one. Three books it is.
She sends out the revised manuscript to a new Editor, because in the process of revisions she concluded that Editor #1 was not quite jiving with the vision she had for the book. She does a little research, and remembers an editor she had connected with a few years past. She contacts her, and joy! She’s available and interested. Editor #2 does the final edits. Some changes are needed, but it’s doable. Author gets back to work sets a date for Book Launch.
Book Launch date comes and goes. She’s running into trouble with those final revisions, it’s taking longer than she thought. And the tangle of info on self-publishing is getting very confusing. She pushes the launch date back. The second date comes and goes. Oh, this is getting frustrating. She’s got the manuscript ready now, but how on earth is she supposed to figure out all this publishing stuff? She reads endless blogs, books, and listens to podcasts and other experts on what to do and when. She sets another date. She’s sticking with this one, no matter what!
She starts a course on marketing. Great info, but yeesh…the work….She learns about Amazon keywords, reader magnets, blog tours, etc and starts to try to implement these. Life outside of writing is crazy, and the work on the book suffers. The book launch date is looming. Time to compile her manuscript out of Scrivener (her fabulous writing program). Almost done now!
But wait! She has updated Scrivener to the new version. There was a warning before doing it that the new version handled compile differently than the old one, but she ignored it. She’s been using Scrivener for a long time. How hard can it be?
Gloom. Turns out, very hard. She spends hours figuring out how to do it the new way. Hours. Scrivener forum, online help, emailing Scrivener….finally she gets it done. Super. Now to get it uploaded into Amazon and the other book distributor. Amazon goes great! IngramSpark, the distributor most recommend to handle all other channels besides Amazon, is a different story. Formatting the files is torturous. There may have been a bit of weeping at the kitchen table.
Finally, FINALLY she figures it out with a little help from family, friends, and virtual strangers on the internet, other authors who have travelled the path before her…although one of those sent her down a complete dead end, which wasted quite a bit of time. Not the other author’s fault, entirely hers, but still…
Book launch is a week away! She is so behind…she is supposed to be writing blog posts, newsletters, pre-scheduling Facebook and Twitter posts, but the uploading of files to Ingram has taken another turn, and she’s stuck again. Argh. This has to work for book launch to happen, so she has to let the other stuff go and focus on that. She gets her author proof copy from Amazon – yay! She’s holding her actual book! But there’s a few things that need to change, so she does that, which means that she has to re-upload files to both Amazon and Ingram (super)…
The book has an Acknowledgements section, in which she asks people to sign up for her newsletter. She indicates that they will get a short story featuring one of the characters in the book as a bonus. It was a great idea at the time. But this story is just not coming together. Book launch is looming and she is frantically trying to make it work.
IT’S LAUNCH DAY! Her book is live! Yippee! Or is it? She can’t find it…not everywhere. It’s on the US Amazon store, and then she can’t find it. Oh, it’s back. Phew. But what happened to the paperback? It should be there on the Canadian Amazon store? Ah, it’s there. But it’s certainly NOT on iTunes. That’s one of the places Ingram is handling distribution to. Grrr….no time to look into this now. She spends the morning scheduling a bunch of posts for Twitter and FB to broadcast her big news throughout the day, as well as trying to design and print some bookmarks she wanted to bring to the launch. Nope, it’s not going to work, and she gives up. Ack. She has some friends and family coming for dinner so she abandons everything else and gets supper ready….
What a great time! Everyone is so kind. And then it’s off to the Launch Party! She has a wonderful evening with the people who came to hear all about her book and to congratulate her. Fabulous!
She goes to bed happy and grateful, excited to get to work on Book 2….
And here I am, six days after launch. There is still so much to do, and so much to learn. I’m still working on the bonus short story for newsletter subscribers – it’s almost done! I’m also working on getting the book ready for iTunes. Apologies to those who want to download it for their iPad or iPhones. Apparently there was a section of the IngramSpark website that I missed in order to have Apple distribute my book. Drat. I’m working on that now and hope to have it resolved soon.
Phew! I’ve learned so much and I know next time it will be so much easier. I HOPE.
Thanks to all of you who have stuck with me so far. Here’s the links for all the places WILDING is available. PLEASE NOTE: Outside of Amazon, there is only the ebook format available. Apparently it takes a little while (up to a month) for the paperback to be available on the rest of the retailers sites. So if you are wanting to get a paperback immediately, Amazon is the only place it is available for now. By the end of the month you should be able to get the paperback through all the channels. It will also be available for libraries and bookstores to purchase at that time.