Just one week until the publishing of Misspelled Paradise! What did that process look like for me? Here are the 50 easy steps to publishing your own book.
Making of a (Travel) Book:
- Go to some cool place (in this case Colombia)
- Keep a weekly blog about said cool place
- Keep a daily journal about said cool place and what I did for a year
- Say goodbye to said cool place
- Enjoy hot showers, fast internet, and salads again. Stop blogging
- Decide that I should organize old blogs
- Realize how bad the writing was on the blog and start rewriting
- Rewriting turns into reorganizing into a narrative
- Realize I could write a book on this stuff
- Start writing book
- Realize I still don’t know enough about Colombia to write a book
- Do copious amounts of research, including but not limited to Wikipedia and scholarly articles
- Write some more.
- Edit
- Write some more
- Go drink more coffee
- Research self-publishing and realize this might take over my free time for the next year(s)
- Start website and blog
- Write and edit some more
- Find an editor and send book to him
- Wait for editor
- Blog some more
- Start thinking about a title
- Get edits back from editor and rework seemingly every other sentence
- Edit
- Keep blogging
- Get a Facebook page
- Work on cover ideas
- Keep working on title
- Scrap all old covers and start over
- Scrap all titles and start over
- Edit
- Decide on title
- Decide on cover
- Join Twitter
- Go back to Colombia for “research” (and lots of fried street food)
- Drink lots more coffee
- “Finish” writing
- Edit
- Finish cover
- Send away for proof for book
- Put book on Goodreads
- Send to proofreader
- Decide on release date
- Have Goodreads giveaway
- Send away for another proof
- Figure out formatting for ebook
- Figure out sales channels and pricing
- Decide that proof is final
- Take a deep breath and press the “publish” button on Amazon.
And there you have it: 50 easy steps to publish your own book!
Misspelled Paradise is out on amazon.com March 4, 2014.
Interesting process. Good excuse to go back to Colombia for ‘research’ – I like that one – might turn my blog into a book so I can do that!