Back to the subject of self-publishing advice by the experts. It’s said you should do all your promoting and name building well before you publish your book. Seriously? I don’t have the patience for that! I want my book in print two years ago! Now now now!

That was when I was in my frantic writer’s brain.

Then, I finished writing.

Whoa.

Eventually, after actually formulating my goals and deciding what I wanted as a successful author, I developed the brain and mind-set of a more business-minded publisher.

So many other things that needed to be done (who knew!), the act of publishing and being published kept getting pushed further and further away. I was amazed to realize this stopped bothering me. Not because I’d given up. Far from it. I became more supportive of myself. I saw the logic and benefits of being patient and taking my time, building things up from ground-level first, and setting clear steps that needed to be in place prior to going to print. Nothing can grow or thrive without a solid foundation.

My original goal was by July. But I didn’t get the DBA until June. I formulated a Facebook Page and then dove into more research and another big edit throughout July.

August was formating for CreateSpace specifications. I went through a whiny period of self-doubt where I wanted to find someone else to do it for me, where I knew it’d be done fast and perfect. But reality and finances said ‘That’s funny!’. I decided to at least try to tackle it myself before pursuing a designer, and I found it wasn’t quite as daunting as it sounds.

Cover art…..oooooo. YAY!

But before I can finalize a cover, I need a website and a logo to stamp on it. I posted something about this experience in a previous post, Adobe Ate My Logo! I asked my brilliant Facebook network for alternates and decided on Inkscape. Not only did I redraw my entire logo from scratch (as my original via Adobe was locked), but I made it even better. Then I built myself a website (Midnight Tomorrow Books!) using Weebly.

I want a QR code on my cover that’ll lead back to the website. Got it!

Cover art! Yay!

But I couldn’t figure it out. Images playing in my brain are reminiscent of old-school sci-fi fantasy, which is absolutely not the way I want to go. Screams self-published? I want the concept ‘Screams Self-Published’ to be this glowing recognition of brilliance and multi-modal talent for all of us. Which that cover was not going to do. Had another ‘Duh!’ moment where I went toward a completely different thought process, which turned out to be perfect. I can’t say brilliant, cause it took a ‘Duh!’ moment. However, how can I tell a designer what I want if I don’t understand the process by which a cover is made?

I then played around with Inkscape and got my draft made. That is my moment of brilliance. That was all of September.

Maybe October I’ll publish? Yay?

October is here! How did that happen? Weebly is giving me issues and my publishing patience ran away. My meta keywords don’t pop up in search engines, Google isn’t accepting my submissions for sitemaps, and if no one can google my book’s title after seeing it in my Pinterest pins, what good does that do (type it in and all you get are red tail boa color morphs)? I sent a very frustrated email to Weebly after spending days and hours on trouble-shooting forums.

I received a very polite and helpful response, and a disclaimer that it can take several weeks for new keywords and websites to be crawled by search engines.

Dammit. There’s that patience thing again. And another reason why these things must come in advance of publication.

(big, deep breath)

My kids came into the room tonight and saw my cover art and went Ohhhh in tones of awe and pride. They then went on with scenarios of being famous and bragging to teachers that their mother is a famous author. While I can’t quite buy into that fantasy quite yet, hearing that from them about made me cry.

Patience is a virtue and I have to learn to subscribe to it. Since originally drafting this post, search for Red Moonglow on Snow and my links are appearing (I just typed it in to search for those snakes, not my own book! And was shocked that my book came up first and not the snakes!). This is a huge yay I haven’t quite absorbed and celebrated. Too much to do!

At this point, I’m thrilled to be making so much progress, which does make the whole patience concept a little easier to employ.

Fine. If not October…..Well, New Year’s is a huge event in the book. Maybe I should take advantage of that.