Overwhelm central

 This week I've just finished the third in my series of novellas which I'm going to indie publish.  I have one more editing pass to do on book one to ensure it's consistent with the later books, and then I'm ready to publish.

Many people casually say "oh, just put it up on Amazon", but that's the amateur's way of working.  I'm choosing to indie publish because the mainstream industry has shown not a jot of interest in my stories.  I turned seventy this year, and that was a massive change point for me.  I decided that I was no longer going to let my voice and vision be ignored.  I would publish my stories myself.

The writing of the novellas was easy, but that's just half the process.  Now I have to turn publisher.  I have to take my Word files and turn them into formats e-readers can use.  I have to design the text for physical print-on-demand paperbacks.  And because I'm not messing about with this, I'm intending to treat it as a professional business.  And that's where the overwhelm comes in.

Yesterday I sat down and wrote my first action list of the steps I need to take to get to the point of having two novellas published in ebook and paperback by the end of this year.  This list has 22 action points on it, and at 3 a.m.this morning I woke up and thought of three more crucial steps which I hadn't put on it.  My brain became overwhelm central, and I'm very short of sleep today.

The second issue I have to overcome is finding the money to self publish.  "Oh, it doesn't cost you anything to put a book on Amazon" people say, but that's not true if you're serious about selling them.

No, Amazon doesn't charge a set-up fee.  Neither does Ingram Spark now.  But it's up to the author to provide a fabulous cover for their books, and beautifully-designed text files.

The one thing everyone agrees on is that the cover sells your book.  In every piece of advice I've seen the view is that paying a professional to design your cover is non-negotiable.  I will certainly be doing that, but, of course, the cover designer needs to be paid.

I've decided not to hire editors.  I've been learning my craft for over 40 years, and I've had enough feedback on my work - some of it reads from professional editors - to know that my work is good.  There is a marketing concept called Minimum Viable Product.  Applied to books, it means stories need to be well-plotted with engaging characters and reasonably well written, but perfection (whatever that is) is not required to sell books.  With that in mind, I shall be doing my own editing.  Given that I already do around a dozen edits on every story now, not much will change there.

Other costs I can't avoid are buying ISBNs, the standard identification numbers, to put on my books.  They're a couple of hundred pounds per block.  Then there's my ten year old laptop which needs replacing, purchase of a copy of Office 2021, and a copy of Atticus software for formatting the books.  All in all, I'm looking at £2,000 in costs before I even get the books out there.

Hence the waking up in the middle of  the night with my brain as overwhelm central.  But I just need to take a deep breath, tell myself that I have the money, and that I can learn as I go, and get on with it.

The next step is to open a business bank account.  After all, if my plan comes off and I sell books in the millions, I'll need to keep my records straight for the taxman.