How To Drive Yourself Crazy

This whimsy on ways to drive yourself (and everyone else) crazy when self-publishing; should be taken with a grain of salt. Or, to follow the old wives’ tale on spilt sugar; you may toss over your left shoulder for luck. I thought I’d share my personal experience with you, either as advice or an instruction manual. This is offered with the best of intentions.

* It’s 12.02 am on the 1st January 2010 when you discuss your New Years Eve resolutions with your flatmate to fireworks, and declare this will be the year you will publish your second novel in the Circulate Series.

* You apply to different Literary Agencies however they don’t like your writing style or subject. They say they don’t do Young Adult which the book isn’t, or they don’t do Fantasy which also isn’t your work. The day you get your 30th rejection letter, two of your chapters win gold and silver in separate competitions on Storywrite. You decide, “bugger it, this girl’s doing it for herself!”

* You research self-publishing companies and decide on Lulu as it seems the cheapest and you have the most control over the project. At the same time, you contact the fabulous artist who did the cover of your first novel, and email sweetly if she will do your second.

* At your day job, you ‘buy’ a photo taken in Alaska by a workmate who’s been where your story is set. You’re both ‘Northern Exposure’ fans and you wish you were attending ‘Moosefest’ with her. You send the photo to your artist along with ideas for the cover and give her the date you need cover. Then you pester the poor artist who’s also working a day job, when the date passes.

* You take a hardcopy of the book to work to edit between calls, or even on the train to and fro. You implement the changes and realize there are still mistakes. Now you have to edit your editing.

* You get a landline phone bill, mobile phone bill, credit card bill, electricity bill and letter from the Real Estate advising rent is going up; and you realize you can’t pay by the due date. You call and apologise to the poor artist on a Sunday morning when she’s still in bed.

* You receive the cover and it’s frickin’ awesome! You pay the artist and think, “yes I’m on my way now!” You put in her email address with the copyright.

* You find the Thorpe-Bowker site for Aussie writers to purchase an ISBN and wait 5 days for it. You also open a Pay Pal account to receive payments from Lulu when you start selling and have to wait 2 days.

* Whilst at your day job, you receive your ISBN via email and show it off to anybody who will listen, including your managers.

* You log onto Lulu and click on ‘start project’. You put in the ISBN and come to the page to upload the book. The first attempt takes 30 mins with dial-up and an error occurs, with the second attempt the same.

* You download SmartFTP Client and finally upload the book and get to the cover stage but Lulu says it’s the wrong size. So you cut and paste the front and back of your cover but you can’t use the beautiful spine. Then Lulu warns the pixels are wrong and it may not come out clearly. It’s 1 AM and you’ve been on Lulu since 5 PM and you decide to go to bed and start fresh in the morning.

* You delete project and start again, uploading 714 pages and go back to the Cover Wizard but the page won’t load. So you get up and clean the bathroom while you wait for the page to work. Congratulations! You now have a sparking clean shower, but Lulu’s Cover Wizard still won’t load.

* It’s 4 hours later and you’re still fighting with the Lulu website, so you pour yourself a wine at 11 o’clock in the morning. You call the poor artist again on a Sunday morning, when she’s on her way out the door to see a musical. She says send her a screenshot of the error message and she’ll later resize the cover.

* Then the artist’s home computer goes down and she can’t email you the enlarged cover. Instead she emails it from her work computer when you’re also at work. Whilst answering calls, you upload and publish ‘Circulate’. During your eight hour shift whilst completing all the work assigned, you publish ‘Circulate 2nd ed’.

* You meet a workmate for drinks and toast that at least one the books are published. You get very merry, before catching the train home at 8 PM. Feeling tipsy but empowered, you go back onto Lulu to have a go at publishing ‘Scent’ again.

* Success! At 3.31 AM you publish ‘Scent’ on Lulu. You send out emails to your friends and then literally crash in bed. However you’re still on edge, so you wake up at 8 AM and go online again. On the computer screen, the covers look OK.

* You update all your writing sites by posting links of where to buy the books with the ISBN’s and copyright. However, when you look at your Storywrite page, you think the site must be playing up as your list of trophies look longer. Then you find out that your SSIT Report on the Different Breeds of Werewolves won silver, your SSIT Report on the Separate Species of Vampires won gold, and your ‘Writer’s Anonymous Confession’ won another gold. As all three pieces were written as companions to the Circulate Series, you’re giddy with glee on your first day of publishing.

* You log into Bowker’s ‘Books In Print’ and update the publishing information and upload the covers of ‘Scent’ and ‘Circulate’. Thorpe-Bowker advises you have to do something similar with the National Library Australia and register it for CiP. Later, the Library tells you that your books are now in the Catalogue in Print. They also say as part of the Copyright Act, you have to mail to Canberra as well as your State Library, copies of these books. Um, are you going to pay for this Ms. or Mr. Librarian?

* Later, you get a notification from Australia Post you have a package. You’re hoping it’s ‘Scent’ but you find it’s ‘Circulate’. The inside of the book looks perfect in trade paperback, however the back cover is a bit blurry. When you re-published the novel, expanding it to 6’ by 9’ size, it stretched it. So you hope and pray the artist still has the originals from 2005 she can manipulate. When you log onto Lulu to try to delete the book and start again; it won’t let you use the same ISBN and says you’d have to purchase an all new one. The reason is it’s registered in ‘Books In Print’ and it would mean you have two books called ‘Circulate’ by K.R. Smith under one number.

* Much later, you pick up ‘Scent’ from the post office. The cover looks better and you give your personal copy to your mother as a birthday present. You decide to purchase the Global Distribution Package on Lulu for this novel. Much, much later you hold a Belated Booklaunch and invite the artist, photographer and your nearest and dearest over for celebrating. Although party pies, wine and cheese may seem like pittance, it’s your way to say thank you to everyone who helped you when they said ‘yes’ after you heard a hell of a lot of ‘no’.

~~~~~

The Circulate Series
Circulate © K.R. Smith, 1st ed. 2005
ISBN: 978-0-646-53776-4
Scent © K.R. Smith, 2010.
ISBN: 978-0-646-53730-6
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