"From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere." ~ Dr. Seuss I started out self-publishing. I published my first novel all the way back in 2010. Back then, there weren’t as many of the vanity press publishers as there are today. Many of the publishing contracts, when I originally was thinking of publishing my book, were not very advantageous for the author, but rather lucrative for the publisher. So, unless you sold millions of copies of your book, you really weren’t going to make much profit.  The idea came to me to self-publish. I knew absolutely nothing about the process and admittedly, my husband did most of the work for the first book, so I will not write about that experience. But the second and third books I published were all me. I did everything from writing, to layout, to cover design, to promoting. It was a lot of work and I sold very few copies of my books. It was a challenge to learn new software. I used Adobe InDesign for the layout. Luckily, there were a lot of YouTube videos on how to do things because it was very frustrating. Adobe Photoshop was worse. The program itself was fine. The error was with the user. Maybe that’s not entirely fair. The program is so extensive, unless you use it often, there is so much that can be done it’s overwhelming. I ended up just watching videos on the specific things I wanted to do. Otherwise I got too confused. Once I finally managed to get the book laid out and the cover conceptualized, I needed to figure out how I was going to print the book. I chose to use Amazon’s CreateSpace, which I think now has changed its name to Kindle Direct Publishing, though if I type in "CreateSpace" in the internet search bar, I get to where I’m wanting to go. CreateSpace is pretty easy and there are many helpful links. You can use this site to do everything. It’s an a-la-carte type of thing where you pay for the services you use. They have folks who will copyedit the manuscript, lay out the book, and even design the cover, depending on how much money you want to spend. I did everything myself and used their service simply to get my book for sale on their site. The three books I self-published didn’t make me enough to allow me to pursue writing as my career. Admittedly, I got a little discouraged, and thought I might as well not put forth all the effort if no one was going to read the books. Once the three books went up on Amazon’s site, I focused on writing and stopped thinking of publishing. Fast-forward ten years. During that time, I not only added my daughter to the family, I wrote something like fifteen novels. And by novels, I mean extended novels. Ernest Hemingway I am not. I tend to write BIG books. My average novel is a hundred thousand words. Some are between eighty and ninety thousand, and some are a hundred fifty to a hundred eighty thousand words. “There is no friend as loyal as a book.” While I was busy writing, tons of vanity press publishers sprang up and the idea came to me to give one of them a try. My mom saw a television commercial for one such publisher and encouraged me to give them a call. With naïve hope, I did and decided to give them a try. I went with Newman Springs out of Red Bank, New Jersey. The problem with this is all the costs had to be paid by the author. Their contract stated they wouldn’t take any royalties until a hundred percent of my investment was returned, which sounds like a win-win, and it probably would be if enough books sell to actually recover the cash outlay. For me, that wasn’t the case. I was out thousands of dollars and did almost as much work as when I had done it all myself. Needless to say, I didn’t use their services for a second book.  Fast-forward another five years, and here I am now. We left the busy, over-crowded, and expensive area of Seattle and moved to a small town in North Idaho. The housing is manageable, and the people are friendly. I now have the luxury to be retired at a fairly young age. I get to be a full-time mom and unschooling guide for my daughter. I never stopped writing and added a few more novels to my unpublished bookshelf. As the calendar flipped over onto my 50th birthday, I decided it was time to give self-publishing another try. "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." ~ not Albert Einstein Turns out Albert Einstein never actually said this quote. Funny how things get mixed up.
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Hello, and welcome to my blog. This is my first time writing a blog. I’ve read many of them over the years and enjoyed … less than half of the ones I read. I’ve never really been a blog person, preferring to keep my thoughts private. I’m not a social person, nor am I one to thrive in social situations. I’m an introvert who enjoys being at home. So, why, you ask, am I writing a blog. Well, I really don’t have a good answer other than I thought it was something I wanted to try. I’ve just set up this new website to promote my books. I’ve written over twenty novels and have previously published four — one with a publisher and three self-published. I thought it might be enjoyable to try my hand at blogging to talk about my adventures, or misadventures as the case may be, in getting my novels published. You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished. ~ Neil Gaiman I tend to be a bit wordy, but I will try to keep these blog posts fairly brief. I’m going to try to post one each week, but I’m terrible with schedules and often don’t stick to them out of spite. So, I will TRY to post one weekly, but I won’t guarantee it. Let me tell you a little about how I got to where I am now. It all started a long time ago… Just kidding. I’ve been writing ever since I was a child my daughter’s age. I “published” my first book in the third grade. It was just a handmade cover made from cardboard and wallpaper and someone sewing the pages to it, but I wrote it and I illustrated it. I still have that book and have used it as inspiration in my endeavor.
I was an avid journal writer throughout school. I did it mainly to keep my sanity in a difficult and dysfunctional family life, but it kept me writing. Then, I went to college and sort of fell out of writing. I’ve always loved stories, though, and have had vivid, colorful, and often memorable dreams. When I remember a dream, it stays with me forever. Call it a mental quirk, but my brain is like the Hotel California for dreams. Anyway, the desire to write didn’t return until much later, after I was married. My husband and I were living in Alexandria, Virginia, at the time. I was having a wonderful dream one morning about meeting my favorite hockey player in a restaurant. Not actually being there together but happening upon each other. He bought me a dessert and had it sent over to my table. I gazed into his eyes and invited him over to my table. He rose gracefully from his chair across the room and began walking toward me. Just before he got to my table, my husband woke me up to get ready for work.  I just wanted to go back to sleep to find out what happened. But I couldn’t. I had to go to work. I couldn’t get that dream out of my mind. Several days later, I decided I just HAD to know how the scene ended. So, I sat down and wrote it out. It ended up being the first chapter of one of my books. Fast-forward fifteen years and here we are now. In my next post, I’ll take you with me as I reminisce about the start of my self-publishing journey all those long years ago, in a galaxy far, far away … no, wait, that was something else!
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