Self-Publishing Journey

When Amber Quill announced that they were closing their doors, after I got over the initial wave of sadness, I started to think about what I would do with my titles there. I toyed with a lot of ideas, from trying to shop them to another publisher to doing nothing at all and letting them disappear. But I didn’t want them to just be gone, especially because Peace was barely out, so I had to come up with a solution that was the best for me and my books.

After doing some research and talking to some people, I decided I would release them myself.

Self publishing has a bad rap because of the multitude of people who take advantage of it. They don’t care what the quality is, they just slap some book up, typos, mistakes, and all. Some of those people don’t know better, some are just looking to cash in. But overall, it’s given self publishing a bit of a stain.

It can be done right, and there are tons of authors who do it. They care about quality, and they have hired editors and cover artists who help them create the best book they can before they upload it themselves. I’m a big fan of some of these books, and I give these authors so much credit. They produce high quality books for everyone to enjoy.

So I was totally intimidated. I’m not very tech savvy, I didn’t know what I needed to do exactly, and those things combined had my anxiety very high. So even though I’d made the decision, had fully edited manuscripts, and I’d contacted a friend and cover artist to make me new art, I didn’t do anything more.

Now granted, I could do anything at all until after AQP officially closed their doors. So I had time. And I got to ignore things for a little while, put off the worry and fretting for a bit.

But I’ve finally gotten my act together and put things in motion. I’ve learned a lot about programs and how to use them in the past couple of days. I feel more confident about how to do certain things. I’m not quite ready yet to upload any titles but now at least, I know it will happen. I’ve got some confidence.

I’ll post details when I have them about when and where things will be going live. I anticipate it happening within the next few months. There will be new covers, and a few minor edits and tweaks, but no new content on the whole. If you have the original version, there’s no need to buy the new versions. But fairly soon, the Something Like books will be back on the shelves.

And it won’t be too long before I start writing book four.