Writing yet?

Another day, another staring at a website trying to remember how everything works. Well, to be fair, things have changed quite a bit since I went to college. And for the better, of course. But my current struggle is with the fact that Vikki, my artist, gave me some amazing promotional images that I can’t quite figure out how to use - either they look great on the computer or they look great on the mobile. But at least I have a quick way to figure it out.

It seems like things are moving fast and furious over here. I’m closing in on having everything ready for publication. Things are different for me since this is a novel, and I am doing physical copies, neither of which I have done before. Things like, well, when you write for the kindle it’s going on and putting page counts in and adding your author name and book name to the top of the pages. When I got my first set of drafts on paperback, I realized I had a really nice table of contents - but you couldn’t actually find those pages. 

In case you were wondering how, and you are also using google docs, basically what you have to do is add a section break with a new page instead of a page break for a new page. Now that lets you divide it into sections so you can make your header and footer different. If you divide on each chapter you can make it so the first page doesn’t display whatever that author name or book name above. You can also make it so that it does show the page numbers at the bottom. It’s a little clunky but hey, this is a free program. I’ll make do.

You might be saying to yourself, “Hey, Kat, when do you actually get to write as a writer?” Well - that’s part of why I’m doing this. The blog, that is. Thing is, there are so many things you have to do to get out there and get in front of people. And it’s things you might not think of. Like, there are so many different kinds of editors out there! Seriously, you could spend serious cash trying to get your book edited. Also it takes a while - for mine it was about two weeks but I had to wait my turn. Now my editor was great, I highly recommend her, but she only did one pass. So anything that might be messed up after that is on me. (And I certainly had to keep going back and forth because I spent so long trying to fix those chapter headings! I had to make sure I wasn’t losing words in the previous chapter!)

Editing though, once it’s paid for, is pretty simple. And then comes cover art. I found a great lady over on fiverr who went boss mode. I love her designs. It got done so much faster than I expected, and was priced reasonably. I’m very pleased with that. I’d spent two or three days myself trying to make my own mockup. Now, if you’ve never done this sort of thing, usually they will ask you to find some photos on stock sites that they can use to combo up to make something new. This is very common and in fact was what I was trying to do to a much worse effect. (I may show you my terrible artwork as the art on this blog, hah!) 

Luckily for me, I’d had quite a few downloads from deposit photos from back in the day so I didn’t have to hunt through her other stock site. Not that it would matter, it was included in the price, but less hunting is good. Now I know what to look for when I go back to her for the next book. (If I can get past all of this other stuff to actually write!)

Then it’s websites and marketing and blah blah blah. Keywords are so important, don’t let anyone tell you any differently. Can I tell you how to make them? Nope. I have no idea anymore. Things were different long ago. So I’m going to struggle just like everyone else. I suppose I will need to buy ads and whatnot, but I don’t have information on how that works yet. I will blog about it when I do. 

And then there’s things that only have to be done once - but still have to be done. Domain registration, email set up, etc. These I’m waiting on my husband to do, but he’s been insanely busy lately. So hopefully I can get that done by the end of the week. I’m ready to release this book, I started working on it before I was pregnant. My kid’s in kindergarten. 

So, with all that being said, let’s get back to work.

-Kat

Takes seeing a professional doing your work to realize how crappy you are at it!