To continue my story from yesterday, I’ll describe the activities and sources of my “Epiphany”. In continuing my research I stumbled upon a couple of sources, and the talented folks who feed these resources. Joanna Penn, Carol White, Judy Cullins, Jane Friedman and others, I discovered that I was about to make a serious error. Congruently, the LinkedIn group Book Writing, Self Publishing, and Marketing for Business People rather forcefully convinced to cancel my order with the (best in class) Publish on Demand (POD) company that I was about to jump into bed with. Since I had done (and paid for) almost all of the front end work, it didn’t make much sense to those would should know.
Another major influence was Mark Levine’s landmark book; The Fine Print of Self-Publishing clearly shows that going my own way, to become my own independent Publisher, was my best course of action. I wanted to retain ownership of my own ‘production’ files, I did not want to pay an exorbitant mark-up on individual book printing, and if you think about, the splendid list of services that they sell in increasingly more expensive packages, really are not possible without a major emphasis on ‘template’ and ‘cookie cutter’ tools.
So, with heart in hand, I asked for a refund and they agreed to reverse the charges on my credit card. I have no ax to grind with AuthorHouse. It was simply a matter of my personal ignorance, and the approach that I took in Part One of this dissertation.
(By the way, I am keeping a diary!). It doesn’t make sense to learn all of these lessons and skills and not to write a book about it). So, with a completed and ‘ready to go to publishing’ book in hand, I’m back in learning mode, beginning to leverage my aforementioned friends as well as a few good resources.
Primary in this list of resources is The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing: Everything You Need to Know to Write, Publish, Promote and Sell Your Own Book by Marilyn Ross (Author), Sue Collier (Author).
On the cover front, my friend Becky Macri, author of PIP: A Very Special Little Caterpillar (which is selling like crazy in its first full week of release, provide me with great feedback on our cover. I’ve run it by several people who should know, and they LOVE it.
OK, enough dithering; back to studying and being my own Publisher. What have I done??
Cliff