Jumping into the Self-Publishing Pool

This weekend I was honored to be asked to give a talk to the wonderful Washington Romance Writers on self-publishing. I asked them what, exactly, they wanted me to cover and they said, basically, everything someone needs to know to get started. I was good with that. Even fact, I was great with that.

I get a number of new authors coming to me to ask me to format their books for them, which is terrific, but then they really have no idea what they need to give me or what to do with it once I’m done. They don’t know exactly what they want me to do either — there are a lot of options out there, which is one of the wonderful things about self-publishing. You get to do your book any way you want. It’s your book! No one is going to say “this is the way we do it here” because there is no here here. There’s only you. You are the publisher, so you get to have your book any way you want it. There are, of course, industry standards, and most people want their book to look like it was professionally published (or they should), so I guide them and help them create the most professional book I can. But there are a number of things you need to do before you even come to me to format your book. And here’s where this blog comes to a screeching halt.

There is just way too much information to include in one blog!

My answer to that? Put it up elsewhere. You can find the Power Point I gave to the WRW here (this is the section of my blog for writers, so you might just find other useful information there as well). If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write and ask. It’s that easy! Good luck!