Bloom Box, a novella in the Heartsville series came out a little less than two weeks ago. It was my first time self-publishing anything. For a long time I’ve been hesitant to try it out. I love Dreamspinner. So much. It’s an amazing publisher and the staff there go above and beyond to help you create the best book possible.
But then when Piper approached me about participating in the project, I signed on immediately. It sounded like it would be a blast, and since they wanted to self-pub, I thought it would be a great way for me to try it out with a group who knew more about it than I did.
Here’s the most important thing I learned:
The term Self-Publishing is incredibly misleading. In no way is it done alone.
The best way piece of advice I can give anyone contemplating self-pubbing is to surround yourself with good people. Even better is to surround yourself with good people who know what the hell they are doing.
I wrote the book. And just as with traditional publishing, that’s pretty much where it ended for me (okay, maybe not really, but it felt like it.)
The Professionals:
Editing & Proofreading
I cannot stress enough how important this is. It doesn’t matter how advanced your knowledge of the English language is. You could be a grammar nazi or a punctuation genius. You will miss something. Probably a lot of somethings.
Erika Orrick edited the book for me and I cannot recommend her highly enough. She’s a fabulous editor and a great person, which I feel is as important in an editor as their ability to identify a comma splice. I really clicked with her and I know she cares as much about my books as I do.
You can find her here: Erika Edits Books
Sandra Walsh, the owner of One Love Editing, did the proofing for us. She is incredibly sweet and down to earth, as well as being meticulous, and thorough. If there is a typo, a stray quotation mark, an errant comma, or a small plot detail that slipped by everyone else, Sandra will find it.
You can find her here: One Love Editing
Cover Art
You’ve heard it a million times. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover. And you know as well as I do that everyone does. I do. It’s impossible not to. So get a good cover artist. It’s worth the investment.
Natasha Snow did our covers for us, and I think she did a fantastic job. She was plagued with the task of pleasing not one, but five authors, since the covers had to be different, and yet appear cohesive since they all take place in the same “gayborhood”. Add on the difficulty of trying to find stock images that not only matched our characters, but looked like they all fit in the same setting. And she knocked it out of the park.
You can find her here: Natasha Snow Designs
Formatting
I am so thankful I didn’t have to touch this portion of the process. Honestly I would not know where to begin. Terry Milien from Reines-Beaux did this for us. He is a prince among men. Seriously. I’m not entirely sure if formatting is his typical gig, since he does a million other things, but he did an awesome job and definitely deserves a shout-out.
You can find Terry here: Reines-Beaux
The Mentors:
In addition to finding a host of professionals who, as I mentioned before, know what the hell they’re doing, you’re also going to want to find someone who has done this before who you can pester with millions of questions, who’s okay with holding your hand and relaying the same information over and over. Make sure this person likes you (they may not feel the same way by the time the process is over) and make sure they are patient (because some portions of the process make you want to tear your hair out or take up drinking professionally).
For me, those people were my co-writers on this project.
Thank God for Nico, Jayden, J.H., and Piper. We were all relative newbies, but Nico in particular really had her ducks in a row and guided us through the whole thing, beginning to end. We all kind of fumbled toward the finish line, but we made it! And I am super proud of the books we put out.
You can find them here:
Bookmarked
Unscripted
Another Shot
Clique
Bloom Box
