Month: November 2017

Novel Publication – Phase 3*

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My proofreader met with me notes in hand  and a two inch thick manuscript with yellow highlighted words and a questions written in the margin. She validated my locations. She felt one of my characters needed  to reveal her fierceness sooner.

Add to this my biggest supporter and critic, my husband, summed up the main character’s frustrations in two sentences. His observation stunned me.  His summation needed to be revealed by the character herself and in the right place in my story.

So, it was  back to the key board. Three days of intense editing and some long thoughts about my main character. I finished, two days before Thanksgiving.

It took three and a half weeks of reading, planning, and a very long conversations with the KDP representative before my book met the Kindle Direct Publishing requirements.* Take a browse through my newly published book Changing Habits.

 

* Phase 2  -My experience on Amazon’s self-publishing product is the topic of my next blog.

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Novel Publication – Phase 1

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This week I sent my final re-write of my first novel to my proof reader.  Now, on face value this doesn’t sound like a big deal. It is a big deal because I started the first draft of this story riding across the country by car with my daughter to Maine. I completed the first draft in 30 days during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It took me five years with help from my writers’ critique group, a professional editor, and several beta readers, to get this book in shape for a proof reader.

This is only one step towards the journey to publication. I went to classes on book covers, marketing your book, researched highways of the roads taken by my main character in the mid 1960s. Of course, clothing, automobiles, guns, restaurants, food choices, and hotels needed validation.

Warning: I learned early in my writing venture that even if you get an agent and an agent gets you a publishers, it can take from one to two years before your book is published.

The decision on the method of publication took me two years of agonizing research. The research and reading overwhelmed me:  traditional publishing and self-publishing, so many contracts with very fine print to read, talking to authors who published independently, talking to authors who retained agents, pitching my book, submitting it to publishers.  After much deliberation, I decided to become an ‘Indie Author.’

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Resources:

National Novel Writing Month