Saturday, January 28, 2012

Baby Steps

Having finally made the decision to publish my own books, I found myself overwhelmed by the options to the point where I wondered if this was such a good idea after all.  It became clear to me that I could spend the next year trying to figure out "the best."  Which would be another year that The Breast of Everything wouldn't see print (which I mean literally; I'm determined to have a print on demand paper version as well as epub and mobi digital books).  And if at the end I somehow did pick "the best" and learn all the new skills I'd need to get there, would it matter?  In this particular case, the old "vanity press" label is pretty accurate; I honestly don't expect BoE to sell more than a couple of dozen copies.  So I took a deep breath and made another decision.  I was going to get The Breast of Everything out the easiest way I could and I was going to do it NOW.  

Today was day one on the road.  I've already made some progress.  I chose a full-service publishing/distribution provider and I created an account on Bowker to purchase the ISBN.  Most important, I did a single small thing that made it all seem real: I used my chosen provider's online app to make a mock-up of the cover.  Now that I know what it's going to look like, surely it's going to happen.  Right?