The Birth of a Book

So, back in April I acted all high and mighty and said on this blog that I wasn't going to self-publish The Land of Lost Secrets (now renamed The City of Lost Secrets) because...well, there were many reasons: I wanted to find an agent, I thought I needed help with marketing and publicity, I wanted to know what it was like to be in the inner circle of the publishing world.

Boy, how things change.

In the weeks after that post, I tried to purge that novel from my system and started writing the novel I thought would finally get me an agent and the attention of a traditional publisher. I got to about chapter three on that new book and then I had to stop writing. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get The City of Lost Secrets out of my system. My thoughts kept drifting back to it. I started seeing the book cover in my head. And I started dreaming about it, for God's sake! I couldn't let the project go. So, after more research and soul-searching, I've decided to self-publish it.

Why? Well, I have writer JA Konrath to thank for that. Poor guy doesn't even know who the hell I am, yet there I was, obsessing over his blog, which dedicates itself to convincing writers to self-publish their work. His theory is that agents and publishers are unnecessary gatekeepers who don't really know what readers want. He's honest and irreverent and full of awesome ideas and his blog is a must read. His theories about Legacy Publishing make total sense. Hell, it convinced me to self-publish. After all, I have at least a dozen people clamoring to read The City of Lost Secrets, asking when it'll be available, yet no agent wants to touch it. I thought Mr. Konrath was on to something....

So I dove in head first in the self-publishing pool. And it's been grueling, to say the least. Ms. Self-Publisher Amanda Hocking wasn't kidding when she said self-publishing and publicizing her books were a full-time job. I won't go into the minutiae here, but needless to say, being your own marketer and PR director and IT department is fucking hard, man. 

But after a couple of months, I'm in the final stages of preparing the book for publication. The cover is done. It looks like this:

I came up with the cover concept myself and found an awesomely talented guy to create it for me. I had the manuscript edited by a wonderful woman who I'm proud to also call my friend. I created the book trailer myself. Now I'm just waiting for the manuscript to be formatted for Kindle and hopefully soon it'll be available for download as an e-book for Kindle and other e-reader devices. (A lot of people are asking for the print version, but alas, it's more expensive to create a print book so to keep costs low I'm publishing as an e-book only for now. If I'm lucky enough to recoup my money then I plan to make it available as a print version).

And then the marketing will begin. As the mantra goes:

Write
Edit
Publish
Market
Sell
Repeat

And so it goes.

(The City of Lost Secrets isn't quite available yet. But I do have a short story that'll be available for purchase very soon. Like tomorrow. I'll post when it's available.)