JIM’S SELF-PUBLISHING PROCESS

by Jim Bates

Please welcome Jim back to the Writer's Journey Blog with some info on his own self publishing process!

JIM’S SELF-PUBLISHING PROCESS

Many thanks go out to Elaine for allowing me to share my publishing journey with you. I have been fortunate to have been published through Gill James and her publishing companies Bridge House Publishing and Chapeltown Books. I’ve also been published by Steph Bardy and David Montoya through Dark Myth Publications. Finally, the late Steve Cawte and Impspired published numerous books of mine. THANK YOU all from the bottom of my heart!

Recently, with the encouragement of author PC Darkcliff, I’ve embarked on the self-publishing journey. Last year I published two collections of short stories, The Stargazer and Other Stories and On Rainy Lake and Other Stories. To say it was a learning experience was putting it mildly. I’m the kind of person who can begin a project and make EVERY POSSIBLE MISTAKE that can be made before completion. Seriously! Just talk to my significant other about fixing the cupboard door LOL!

With PC’s encouragement, I dove in. You know what? It wasn’t so bad. It was a learning experience that’s for sure but worth it. I now feel confident to publish whenever I want through Draft2Digial and Amazon. The big key is this: It’s important to have one’s document formatted correctly. Elaine’s article a couple of issues ago was spot on! For me, it was making sure each section was separated by page breaks. The fact that I hadn’t been used to doing that messed up my first book Stargazer, skewing lines and screwing everything up. Once I got the formatting down, the rest was easy. D2D allows you to upload your document and check it over as much as you want. If you have to make changes, you make them on your original document and upload them again. Like I said earlier, as one prone to making MANY MISTAKES, I find that feature invaluable.

With the document in place, you then upload the cover. I have a fantastically creative person, Andjela (suggested by PC), who does my covers. This is great because usually, there must be some fine-tuning to ensure the cover meets D2D’s specifications. She can do that in an instant if it needs to be done. I do the ebook first, which uses just the front cover, and then the paperback, which has the front cover and back cover blurb. I save my ebook cover and my full front and back cover for the paperback in my “pictures” file on my laptop so I can access them easily.

Draft2Digital does not charge for this service. They send the ebook and paperback out to a variety of locations, Barnes and Noble probably being the most recognized.

With D2D completed, I move on to Amazon. The process is basically the same. Since most people still purchase through Amazon, it’s always fun to see my books get distributed there.

This leads me to the final point I want to mention, and I feel it’s the most important one. With my books being published by me, I can market them as I wish. I’m using Amazon to offer free ebooks which I love to do. I can do five free days of marketing a free ebook every three months. I’ve published The Stargazer and Other Stories, On Rainy Lake and Other Stories, and The Time Traveling Healer through them so I can offer them for free whenever I want (within the guidelines I mentioned above). I really like that!

Will I continue to use traditional publishers like Bridge House Publishing, Chapeltown Books, and Dark Myth Publications in the future? Absolutely! But in the meantime, I love having the option of publishing my work. It’s a great feeling!

Okay, that’s about it from me. The publishing companies I mentioned above are wonderful to work with. Self-publishing is another way to get your work out to the public. If I can do it, you can too! Give it a try. You won’t be sorry.

Click the covers below to buy or browse Jim's Books. 

Bio: Jim lives in a small town twenty miles west of Minneapolis, Minnesota. He loves to write! His stories and poems have appeared in over five hundred online and print publications. In addition, he is the author of ten collections of short stories, two novels, three novellas, two collections of flash fiction and drabbles, one collection of haiku poems, and four collections of poems, all available through traditional outlets. To learn more and to see all of his work, check out his blog at: www.theviewfromlonglake.wordpress.com.