Publish

Chapter 14

I continue to plan my next professionally published book. Earlier on, with London Red, I had learnt the lesson to spend time on the plot before committing words to the story. In the past, I had made this mistake three times with three stories, completely written and finished ... until an honest established author told me the plot in each case was flawed (from a publishing point of view). I went back to this author contact, a person I follow on wattpad, and asked her to look at my new synopsis based on the draft story, Swap With Me (which I originally wrote here on wattpad). Anyway the story has been revamped based on her advice which means I have a better plot now.

I've asked Lulu Publishing to let me have a pdf of the book cover for London Red, so that I can place it on wattpad. My idea is to have selected scenes/ chapters of the finished book so that readers can open it and assess if they want to buy.

Also, I can take the cover image down to the local printers in town and get bookmarkers printed. These could be easy things to hand out to encourage potential buyers to the online links to the book. Bookmarks can be used like a business card, and handed out to interested people.

I've just received disappointing news. Although Lulu will have the paperback and eBook ready for sale within the time limit they predicted, I didn't appreciate this applies to the Lulu site only. Apparently it takes longer to get the book distributed to the various retailers (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, etc) who in turn update their lists once a month. I'm told  a delay of maybe 6/8 weeks to get my book onto theses sites. This has put back all my plans for sending copies to the reviewers, because there won't be any Amazon details to which they can post their reviews. I worry what to do.

Also, Lulu are emailing me with all sorts of other things I got to think about, like registering for US tax, and a host of other stuff. I feel negative. There's a whole bunch of questions spinning around in my head and I can't get the answers quick enough!

The postman has just delivered the draft paperback of London Red. Yes, here in the UK, postmen/women come right up to the front door and push the letters through the box!  I opened it with great excitement! Fab. It's the publisher's proof copy of the paperback, the first print, and it's perfect. I have to email Lulu now my final approval to print and launch the book. One of the things about Lulu is the number of times they've got me to approve each stage of the process ... edit/check/ corrections/check/ more corrections/check/ proof copy/check/ printed copy/check ... I didn't expect the level of care taken (and the delays!).

Now that the book is up on the Lulu.com site, I have a mountain of stuff to get my head round. Everything from the stages of distribution ... to google connectivity (lots of articles from Lulu for me to read).