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:

1.  Go to some cool place (in this case Colombia)
2. Keep a weekly blog about said cool place
3. Keep a daily journal about said cool place and what I did for a year
4. Say goodbye to said cool place
5. Enjoy hot showers, fast internet, and salads again. Stop blogging
6. Decide that I should organize old blogs
7. Realize how bad the writing was on the blog and start rewriting
8. Rewriting turns into reorganizing into a narrative
9. Realize I could write a book on this stuff
10. Start writing book
11. Realize I still don’t know enough about Colombia to write a book
12. Do copious amounts of research, including but not limited to Wikipedia and scholarly articles
13. Write some more.
14. Edit
15. Write some more
16. Go drink more coffee
17. Research self-publishing and realize this might take over my free time for the next year(s)
18. Start website and blog
19. Write and edit some more
20. Find an editor and send book to him
21. Wait for editor
22. Blog some more
23. Start thinking about a title
24. Get edits back from editor and rework seemingly every other sentence
25. Edit
26. Keep blogging
27. Get a Facebook page
28. Work on cover ideas
29. Keep working on title
30. Scrap all old covers and start over
31. Scrap all titles and start over
32. Edit
33. Decide on title
34. Decide on cover
35. Join Twitter
36. Go back to Colombia for “research” (and lots of fried street food)
37. Drink lots more coffee
38. “Finish” writing
39. Edit
40. Finish cover
41. Send away for proof for book
42. Put book on Goodreads
43. Send to proofreader
44. Decide on release date
45. Have Goodreads giveaway
46. Send away for another proof
47. Figure out formatting for ebook
48. Figure out sales channels and pricing
49. Decide that proof is final
50. 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.