Writers in the Storm

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August 31, 2011

Naked Publishing - Part 4

Today we welcome back Denise Domning, contributing blogger here at WITS, with the fourth in her series detailing her self-publishing journey.

by Denise Domning 

I did it!  I made my deadline!

Kind of.

It’s August 15th and the book, The Men Wars, Book One  Men-ipulation,  is up on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

What about the iPad version?

Well, that’s another story.  I did have it up on Lulu briefly.  I can’t say exactly why I was so uncomfortable with them, but I suspect what bothered me most is that Lulu was a middle man.  Having them standing between me and the iBook version just didn’t feel right.  Then my husband bought the Lulu version and tried to install it on his iPhone.  Lulu doesn’t offer the Apple version.  It only offers the book as a PDF via Adobe digital.  That was it for me.

I pulled the book down and had my son, who owns a Mac (along with six other computers; my niece has my Mac and it’s too far to drive to go borrow it back), start our iBook account.  I can’t do it with this laptop without installing Quicktime and Quicktime has never worked on any of my other computers so I didn’t bother.  Now, No Regrets the Book, LLC (that’s the company Monica and I formed around the book) is in the approval process with Apple.

If you didn’t know, Apple won’t publish a book on iTunes that (1) wasn’t created on a Mac and (2) doesn’t have its own ISBN.  I’m only guessing, but I think they must assume that only publishing companies would buy ISBNs.  Ergo, one of the questions was how many books a month would we be publishing.  Our lowest option was one.  So I had Justin put in “one”.  Who knows?  It might be possible.  Not probable, but possible.

Why didn’t I go with Smashwords like so many other authors?  For the same reason I didn’t feel comfortable with Lulu.  They’re a middle man.  That, and Smashwords wanted me to put up my Word doc, properly formatted of course.  That wasn’t happening.  (Read my last post for my Word issues.)

Instead, I sent my son the link for Sigil for Mac, then sent him the eBook I made in my Sigil for PC.  It should work, or so I read on someone’s blog.  When my son ran the PC version through the Mac version it validated with no errors.  Nice!

Now, this is just my opinion, but I want to state for the record I don’t think much of Calibre.  It’s one of those ebook editors, and it’s one that comes up first on a search.  I didn’t like the way it took control of my computer and wrote itself in with its own directories.  That’s just rude.  Then, when I tried to input my book, it reset all the sizes of the images.  Didn’t ask or anything.  Like I said.  Rude.

Sigil.  Free, easy, clean and it’ll do a search through every file in the whole document.  Now we’re talking!

And we’re still fighting to get the Createspace files uploaded.  So, the book is available on two of our four chosen venues.  We’ve received a stupendous first review and …we sold three copies on the first day.  (And I did not buy one.)  That’s three more copies than I thought we’d sell right away.

Meanwhile, Monica is gearing up to take over from where I left off.  And that’s nice, that’s very nice.  All I had to do was write the book.  She’s going to carry the ball the rest of the way.  Well kind of.  I’m still trying to figure out how to get more reviews and putting together ideas for our ad campaign (a Facebook ad).  I’ve helped her complete her questionnaire for Annie Jennings (our PR person).

And I’m still trying to find out how to reach Howard Stern.

Minor details.  The book is done.  VBG.

How is your self-pub journey going? Are there roadblocks you've encountered that you'd like to share?

0 comments on “Naked Publishing - Part 4”

  1. Congratulations, Denise! I've been following along, biting my fingernails for you! You must be exhausted, and wondering what a normal life feels like. Go get a massage, read a book at the top of your dusty TBR pile, and relax!

    1. I, too, must congratulate you, Denise. You took on this Herculean task and finished it in such a short time--and shared the process with our luck readers.
      Best of luck with the sales!
      -Fae

  2. Thanks everyone. Connie knows already, but I'll share it with the rest of you--Monica has already found a Hollywood producer and he is courting her story (not her, for a change). Now get this: he wants it as a love story. Isn't that a twist--the romance writer had to write non-fiction to have some Hollywood type read it and want a romance...???
    Denise

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