It has been awhile since I wrote, but life has been very busy with travel, family health issues, and my children's chapter book! I feel the other issues are mostly under control and therefore I'm very excited to be talking about my decision to self-publish Fiona - the Lighthouse Firefly.
When I last wrote, I was pursuing a publishing lead through a friend. Circumstances, the death of a well known agent in that agency, kept them from taking on my book - the shared workload had increased for them all. That was a turning point for me and I decided that it was definitely time to seriously investigate the self-publishing route. Fiona needed to be out there.
I talked to a number of people and searched the Internet for leads and decided CreateSpace, tied to Amazon, would work for me. This is my first self-publishing effort and I wanted an experience that would be fairly easy and quick. CreateSpace appeared to offer both.
The process of uploading text and illustrations was straightforward with CreateSpace providing a proof copy within 24 hours. They also provided a set of different cover designs to choose from - I would have liked more choices to tell you the truth, but.... They did offer a personalized cover consult for a fee which I didn't choose. As I said, I wanted something quick, easy and relatively inexpensive. I did go for a color book, glossy cover. I think the illustrations demanded that.
Proofing the book took maybe five times before I was satisfied with the illustration and the text placement. I tried all the offered cover templates just to see how the illustration would look in each one. I chose one and then went back and changed it to the one above. It has a nice front to back look and a story description on the back.
The book is available on the CreateSpace website today, but I'll provide the link to Amazon in 3-5 days when it is available on their website. Profit from the book sales will be sent to my sister's scholarship fund and the Lighthouse Society. I wished that she had lived long enough to see Fiona come to life.
I am excited about this step and wanted you all to know that I had made great progress since I last wrote. I'm now going back to my other novels and may self-publish them as well. The novels will be much easier to publish because they have no illustrations.
Stay turned - I'll be back in a few days. I'll describe more of Fiona's story and let you see what it looks like on Amazon.
Keep writing -- it's good for the soul.
Till,
Judi
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