The digital copy of Deceived has been available for three months.

Good news:  Sales IMG_0725are higher than I expected with the limited (word of mouth) marketing I’ve done.

Bad news:  I’m a bit behind on publishing a print copy.

I had planned to provide the paperback version two months after releasing the digital copy.  Honesty compels me to admit there is no real excuse for the delay.

In the publishing process, for both digital and now paperback, I have learned something about myself.  I’m a procrastinator.  I never procrastinated with school or work projects, so it never occurred to me that I fell into that dreaded category.  Well I do.  For something as personal as putting my words and worlds out for anyone to read, I’ve found many excuses to put off taking care of necessary tasks.  I finally crossed that hurdle and the paperback version has been submitted for processing.  I now hold the proof of a book written by yours truly.

Self Publishing Notes:

  1. Modify digital front cover to meet print publishing requirements.  This was not as easy as uploading the front cover used for the digital copy.  The requirements are different.  Lucky for me, I always read the instructions, but even after I made the necessary changes, it still took some tweaking to get it just right.  This is not a task to rush.
  2. Create back cover and spine.  Going forward I will create all three at the same time for overall ease of creation and to make sure I remember which version of which files I used.  Keeping good notes on the titles for various versions of the digital artwork was a huge time saver for me.
  3. Description for back cover.  The description for the the digital copy of the book worked well here.
  4. Author Bio.  Again, the one created for the digital copy served the purpose.
  5. For my print copy, I chose to go with Create Space.  There are other options out there but since I used Kindle Direct Publishing for the digital copy, Create Space was a logical choice.  I found the process easy and the finished product looks amazing.  The quality of the physical product is high.

My biggest recommendation for preparing a digital book for paper distribution: review, review, and review some more.  I’m not talking about content.  That should have been addressed already if you published digitally first.  I’m talking format.  Read all instructions and double check your formatting.  Then have someone else review the formatting.

When the proof copy arrived I opened the book, eager to see my printed words, and laughed.  When you publish digitally you remove page numbers.  When you publish a hard copy of the document you need to add the page numbers back into the book.  Oops!  Guess I skimmed over that part.  That formatting error was corrected and now it’s good to go. Once I finished the format review and was happy with the result, I submitted the final copy for publishing, and took a five minute break to check another item off the bucket list.

On to my next writing adventure.