My Week in Review

1. The majority of my week was consumed with trying to create a paperback version of my novel. It's interesting how much time a person can waste when they have no clue how to do something. My first dilemma was somehow molding my cover into one that would wrap around a paperback. KDP was good enough to supply the dimensions, but then what? I knew the cover would not only need a front, but also a spine and a back. The instructions one finds online are, in my experience, mostly unhelpful. Someone said that a cover image simply needs to be resized so that it wraps around the book. Had I thought that through, I would have realized that a spine needs the title of the book printed on it. A "simple" wraparound would not suffice. The template KDP provided was no help. I was supposed to download it, then overlay my cover. No clue. I don't have an app that allows a photo to be overlayed atop another. This led to a fruitless search for someone who creates paperback covers. While I somehow found someone on an old Reddit post, I was hesitant to spend money before exhausting all my avenues. In desperation, I tried KDP's cover creator, and voila. 

It turns out the cover was the least of my problems. I then had to get my manuscript formatted. As you know if you've been reading along, I ended up wasting $147.00 on Atticus, a site that is endlessly frustrating to navigate. I'm not going to detail the number of times I had to re-upload my manuscript and try various methods for including the front and back matter. When I finally got something "good enough", I downloaded it and tried uploading it to KDP. Nope. Wouldn't work. I'll never know what was wrong with the finished product Atticus provided; all I know is that I made a very bad financial decision.

Desperate, I tried KDP's template, which also required a bunch of manual formatting, which I was sure wouldn't work out in the end. But to my surprise, after two days of hell, KDP accepted my upload. Now I await the proof copy and pray that it isn't a pile of crap.

On the upside, my paperback passed review, so barring any glaring issues once I scan the proof copy, the book will go live on March 1.

2. Fingers crossed, I started looking for ways to promote my pre-order (of both the ebook and the paperback). Very few sites exist for that purpose, and those that do have weird requirements. One even makes an author purchase a book about pre-orders before they can proceed. Really? (I'm guessing where that site derives its income.) Another makes an author earn credits by reviewing other books before they can get their own book reviewed. Yea, no, I don't have time for that. In the end, all I was left with was Book Sirens, a site that has rejected me twice in the past. Am I hopeful? No. It's akin to submitting to BookBub for a pre-release spot. Never going to happen.

My other alternative was social media. Well, fine, I'd play the game. I went to Canva and created an Instagram post and posted it, only to have it removed for violating something; I think they said it was "stolen" copy or something. You know, whatever. I created it myself, so the only person I could steal from was me. I could be upset by that, but I don't care enough. Next was Facebook, which I hate, but I made the obligatory post, which I don't know if I'll even bother to go back and check for any engagement. I dipped my toe back into X by making one post that was innocuous and didn't even mention my book. I figured I'd ease back into the site before spamming people. None of these efforts will produce any results, but at least I could tell myself I tried.

In the end, I'm going to have three idle weeks before I can actually start pushing the live book. My research, however, has informed me that hardly any promo sites feature full-price books, so I will either need to discount it or...nothing.

It's probably time to take a break from thinking about my novel, except now I have a lot of free time and I feel like I should be working to persuade people to buy it.  I should use these three weeks to learn about Facebook ads, and I likely will. But other than that, I'm officially at a standstill.