Woohoo...... I did it.

Wow I can't believe I actually did it. I am now officially a published author.

My book Guardian is now available on line. Check it out if you get a chance and let me know what you think.

I'll tell you what though it isn't easy getting a book ready for publication when you’re an indie. It's not that it’s hard, it’s just that it's fiddly and time consuming and takes a lot of effort and a lot of patience. If you want to publish yourself the first thing you need to do is get on the smashwords website. Then download their style guide and book marketing guide and these will tell you what to do. I’m still half way through the book marketing guide though.

Firstly I set up my Guardian Facebook page, but you can't just let it sit there, you need to generate interest and set a network of likers so you need to become a Facebook stalker. Get on and like as many book related pages as you can find and don't be afraid to ask them to like you back. If you can become friendly with one of the more popular book review sites they will probably do a lot of the work for you and you'll end up saying thank you an awful lot. You have to spend time working it if you want to generate interest, but the facebook family are happy to help out when they can. Make sure you also have a twitter page, not that I have any idea what I'm doing there, the followers are slow coming so I have to admit that help and guidance about twitter would be appreciated. Then you apparently also need to set up myspace networking but I haven't gone there yet which is why I say I’m only half way through the marketing guide.

I set up a web page and a blog, and there are a lot of free options out there that are really easy to use so don’t feel you have to spend a fortune.

During all this I was busy formatting the book for smashwords. They recommend what they call the nuclear method if you have problems with reformatting but I just decided it was better to be safe than sorry so I implemented it straight away. Then I just had to go through and reformat all the formatting I had just undone. Hard tedious work especially when the main character can communicate with her mind and all those conversations were in italics so I had to go through the whole book and reinsert all the italics. Oh well it's for a good cause and If you are planning on uploading to smashwords I think it's the safest way to make sure your formatting is right from the onset.

Then finally, the really hard part. Clicking the ok button when it asks “do you want to publish”. My answer was yes and it's done. Woohoo. But now the really hard work begins. Now that it's available I have to let everybody know and really start implementing the tips available in the book marketing guide.

I live to write

Gillian