The Exciting Labyrinth of Self-Publishing.

 

Hello. Great news. Vivaldi’s Lost Concerto should be available for you in February 2019!
Give yourself a treat and listen to the concerto that inspired the novel while you read on.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g6kK1Iq8us
After much deliberation and encouraging conversations with friends who have already gone over to the dark side, I have decided to bite the bullet and self-publish my first novel, Vivaldi’s Lost Concerto. The decision has led me into a labyrinth of choices to be made. If you are at all interested in the writing life of a novice self-publisher keep reading to learn about some of my decisions. (non-writers please feel free to ignore the links – they are aimed at author friends who may be lost in the same labyrinth)
I’m using IngramSpark http://www.ingramspark.com as my publishing platform. I will produce pre-printed, print-on-demand and e-book options to accommodate the various purchasing and reading styles of my potential readers. The print-on-demand eliminates the age-old problem of a self-publisher ending up with a hundreds of yet to be sold (aka unsold!) copies in the garage. Lucky, because I don’t have a garage!
Because I have already paid for a manuscript assessment and also had it read by several beta readers I decided not to pay for an editor.  But I have sent it to a  proof-reader, a fellow Masterclasser from my Fiona McIntosh group. She is a local South Australian woman with good credentials.
Next came the decision about the cover. In the traditional publishing world different genre’s demand different styles and those styles change regularly. Even though I have already had a go at designing my own cover using Canva http://www.canva.com , and come up with two covers that I am pretty happy with, I will use the services of Open Book Howden, OBH, http://www.openbookhowden.com.au to get graphic designer input.  Once I have settled on two or three possible covers I will hold a “Vivaldi’s Lost Concerto Cover Competition” ^. The participants will be eligible to win a free copy of Vivaldi’s Lost Concerto.  
Without a doubt the part of the process that has freaked me out the most has been reading the instructions on how to prepare or design the manuscript to be loaded on the IngramSpark platform. As soon as I see words like “type-set”, “gutters”, “bleed” and “convert to press quality PDF” I break out into a sweat. So, I was overjoyed when OBH said that, even though I am not using them to print the book (because they don’t do print on demand), they can help me with all that for a competitive fee. Phew!!!
While all that is happening, I am also getting up to speed on perhaps the most important skill I will need – marketing. I am planning to do an online course with either Creative Penn http://www.thecreativepenn.com or Self Publishing Formula  https://selfpublishingformula.com to help me access and extend my contacts in the online marketplace. One of the first steps is to create an email following, hence the invitation to join my mailing list on the Home page of my website. Please register. I promise not to flood your emails and you can unsubscribe whenever you want.

Along the way I have learned that there are plenty of people out there with little or no credentials wanting to take my money, Vanity publishers aka co-contributive publishing, is alive and aggressive and should be treated with great caution.  Some hybrid publishers e.g. She Writes Press https://shewritespress.com/about-swp have a good name and are worth considering but may have a long lead time. I may use them next time around. 
So if all goes to plan Vivaldi’s Lost Concerto should be available for you to buy in February 2019.