I can DO this! (I AM doing this!)

It's been quite the week for this beginning writer. It sounds weird to say that. After all I have been writing stories almost as long as I can remember. But this e-publishing journey is quite the trip and def something brand new for me.

I want to share some of what I learned this week for those beginning this journey or thinking about it, or for the merely curious.

For those who only want the writing, keep reading, there might be something special for you. ;)

For the rest of you, the biggest thing I learned these last weeks is just keep moving forward!

Let me rephrase that:

I know, I know, like Marlin you may get tired of hearing it, but hum that little ditty to yourself and don't stop.

Not because you are terrified of formatting, of creating a website, of braving Twitter or having to decide on a cover. Just take a deep breath and wiggle those fins.

First of all, after all my research I decided on KDP, otherwise known as Kindle Direct Publishing. It seemed the simplest, and definitely the cheapest (how does FREE sound?) way to get my book to the biggest amount of people. If you have an Amazon account already you can use that sign in info, or just join.

KDP

It really walks you through the process like a helpful friend, giving you hints on everything from what genres to choose(you are allowed 2 for each book), search terms(don't use ones already in your title or blurb to increase your search power and reach more peeps).

It doesn't however say much about formatting, so I will. Let me say I got really scared because of an article I read via Twitter. Twitter is weird, IMO, but there are a LOT of helpful people on there and its a fantabulous way to reach other writers and readers. However, like a lot of other places, watch where you step because it gets pretty deep in there. Some people are on there just to make $, which is fine except when they do that by terrifying you. So let me ease your mind:

You do NOT need to spend $200 to have someone format your book for the Kindle!

You do however, need to be fairly skillful with Word, or know enough to search youtube for helpful hints on things you do not know. Like creating a Table of Contents that will work in Kindle for instance:

Creating a Table of Contents

That's the big one. Other than that, just make SURE your margins and indentations are consistent throughout and obviously, edit, edit and EDIT again. You do not want to see the happy dance I did when I clicked the upload and convert to KDP button and it returned successful. Or when I used the handy preview on Kindle feature and everything looked bee-you-ti-FULL. I only had one glitch, my title page subheading was off-center. Kindle gives you directions to edit using a zip file. I am not going to get into my struggles with that, but it didn't work for me. So after some head-to-keyboard therapy,  I decided to just go back and submit a second edition of my book, correcting the centering on that. I will probably just delete the first edition once the 2nd clears, but for those who want a sneaky sneak peek before the release:

Shhh!

There is also the tax and royalties stuff, but it is pretty straightforward and I had read up on most of it before hand, so that was cake.

Oh and the cover. You can pay people to do covers and I probably will on my next book, just to get something a little more original than the stock Kindle formats. Their Cover Creator, though, is pretty simple to use. I am very lucky in that my baby sister is a great photographer and she let me browse her images and I picked one that I really loved and used that.

M Blomquist Photography (shameless family plug)

Her work is quality and the right pixel count. If you do use your own images, make sure you have a good resolution, so it looks professional. I was quite happy with what I was able to come up with for my first shot.

And then voila! I have a book on Kindle, ready for the masses. ;) Masses, of course, being relative. lol

Release of Shivers is next week! OMG!!

More, more, MORE to come, I am sure. I am having fun on this journey and having fun sharing it, too!

**Note** it appears I may not be able to republish after all, BUT it also appears I do not have to do the zip and re-zip file either, I tried just re-uploading a corrected Word file, will let you all know if it worked!***

**reuploading the Word file was a total success, woo-hoo!