We're getting close!
I think I'm actually on track to self-publish by the end of July. Here's what's done:
- ✅ Book 1 proofreading (all copyedits finished)
- ✅ Book 1 cover design and illustration
- ✅ Book 2 proofreading (all copyedits finished)
- ✅ Book 2 new cover illustration complete
- ⏳ Book 2 new cover design underway
- ⏳ Book 3 copyediting in progress
- ✅ Book 3 cover design and illustration
- ⏳ Book 1 typesetting, formatting, inside work underway
- 🚧 Books and 2 & 3 typesetting, formatting, to come
- ✅ Amazon Account, keywords, genres, page ready to go
I have all the ISBNs, for the e-cover, paperback, and hardback formats. I even linked the Book 1 ISBNs and registered them. Holy shit, this is a lot of work. I think it's amplified because I decided to complete the entire trilogy all at once. But I guess this is the school of hard knocks. My fourth book, at least logistically, won't be this maddening.
On the marketing front – well, I don't really like marketing. Mainly because I never know the right way to do it. For example, I like to use ElevenLabs for their voice overs, but they rarely feel natural and I end up wasting a lot of time tinkering around with the settings. But, I do like posting on TikTok. Despite less than 200 views on posts, I'm still happy that someone out there gives me a like. I'm trying to find my people, and hopefully I can find them via TikTok or Substack.
Substack is new for me and also pretty interesting. It's a mega community of self-published authors, and if you're planning to self-publish and not on Substack - what're you waiting for? But for Substack, I've observed that it's not a place to market yourself. It's really a platform for sharing work - in some cases, serial fiction - and to meet other authors. So on Substack, I'm using it to decide which book I'm going to write next. It will either be a Death-Personified-Space Opera or an Evil-AI-Corporation-Scifi.
But for now, it looks like July 20th is the soft launch. 😎