
A little over a year ago, I wrote a post (my second here, I believe) about my rough draft being finished.
I am relieved to say that, as of 11:35pm this evening (28 March 2017), the 53 chapters of my second draft are complete. I have some final, “clean up” tasks to complete, but I don’t see why these would take more than an evening…which means I’ll have a complete manuscript for my editor by the 30th.
A couple people have asked me if I’m excited to be this close to finished with the book; one of those occurred just today over lunch, in fact. The truth is, as much as I want this work to become a published novel, I am far more relieved right now than excited. I feel like I can do other stuff with my life for a little while before diving back in for Book 2.
Don’t get me wrong; I love writing. Writing is very rewarding for me, and there are a number of stories I want to tell. In fact, I’m considering a plan to produce two novels every 12 – 18 months…but we’ll see how that turns out.
From here on out, the road to publication looks something like this:
- Send the manuscript to the editor on or before April 1st.
- Hire a graphic artist to produce the image for the cover.
- Have the cover laid out.
- Purchase ISBNs and an ISBN barcode.
- Work with the editor to revise the manuscript.
- Build the website and digital identify for Knightsfall Press, the publishing company I formed to publish my novels.
- Send the manuscript with front and back matter to my formatting service of choice. (In my mind, Booknook.biz is the only formatting service to be considered.)
- Choose a publication date.
- List my ebook on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and several other sites. Purchase a used Mac (no way am I paying their inflated prices for a new one) to list my ebook on iBooks…or use an ebook aggregation service such Bookbaby or IngramSpark. Personally, I like the idea of listing my novels myself, but that may change after Book 1. 🙂
- Advertise the novel.
- Hope and pray I’m telling a story people enjoy and want to read.
Steps 2 – 6 can happen concurrently, but the rest are fairly sequential.
I’m also still turning over in my mind when I want to release/publish the audio-book version and whether I want to publish an actual book. The question of whether to publish an actual book carries with it the question of pre-printing or print-on-demand. Print-on-demand is very nice, in that I don’t have to pay for X number of copies before knowing whether they’ll sell…but it has a longer lead time than if the books were sitting in a warehouse, waiting to be shipped.
Also, there’s the question of whether print-on-demand books show as “In Stock” or “Out of Stock.” I know if you use print-on-demand through Amazon’s CreateSpace, Amazon always shows the book as “In Stock,” but I’ve read enough bad reports of the CreateSpace’s print-on-demand quality for any books sold outside of the author’s ordering portal that I’m leery of using CreateSpace. If I go the print-on-demand route, I’ll probably use Bookbaby; I like what I’ve read about their service.
Either way, I’m certainly pleased the chapters are complete.
[…] next step is formatting the eBook. In an earlier post, I listed sending the manuscript to a formatting service for both the eBook and formatted PDF for […]