December 29, 2023
Today is Mama’s birthday. I honored her memory by setting her picture and two lighted candles on a small table in the living room. I’ll keep it there all weekend because I draw my inspiration from her even though she left this world in 1985. I miss her, but today, I felt her presence as I sat in front of my computer and followed the guidelines in kdp build your book. It took all day yesterday to input the manuscript and book cover. Every time I tweaked the manuscript, I had to reload the entire document and review it. I am nit-picky enough to go through page by page again and again instead of just fixing the issue and approving the input. I kept thinking to myself, If someone finds a mistake and states it in their review it would reflect on me and my writing skills. When I finished with the eBook, I had to repeat the steps with the paperback, and, again, for the hardcover.
The process of self-publishing is not an easy one—but neither is pitching your book and waiting months for a reply. Since this is my first novel, I liked the idea of having control over the book and making it ready for publication. The writing took five years. I put the chapters through the Phoenix Writers Club Critique Group twice. When I finished with these edits, I contacted six friends to be beta readers and bribed them that their names would appear on the acknowledgment page. Although the readers were finished by September, there was a long lag because I left the title and the cover for last. I couldn’t invent a title until one day in late Fall it came to me in a dream. I know that sounds weird, but when waking up to the sun shining through the upper windows of my house, the words The Perils of Beginnings sounded in my morning brain. I immediately jumped out of bed and wrote it down. Once I had the title, I hoped to have the manuscript ready by October, but the artist I asked couldn’t commit to such a timeline—she had a life. My talented granddaughter was at the end of her second pregnancy and she, too, had life happening and couldn’t commit. I was lucky enough that my stylist’s son is an artist who just graduated with a degree in computer graphics. He collaborated with my husband, Joseph, and together they completed the cover.
While the manuscript was undergoing reviews with the critique group and later, with the beta readers, I took five Udemy courses on self-publishing. I know, that’s a lot of learning, but I found out that I lacked some of the most basic Word formatting tricks. I took a comprehensive Microsoft Word course and four that included self-publishing and book covers. I am not an artist, so I wanted this first book to have a cover that told the story. It turns out that the courses were worth the money. While taking them, I used an old-timey alphabetical Rolodex file to keep track of my notes. For example, under F, Format has all the information I needed to structure the document for kdp. I referred to the Rolodex many times while inputting my manuscript on kdp.
There’s more, but I’ll present that another time. I just wanted to have this manuscript ready for a book today because it’s Mama’s birthday, and this book about her ancestor is her present. The Kindle version is online, but the printed versions are still in review. Have patience, it’s happening.
Happy Birthday, Mama. Here’s the link…https://www.amazon.com/author/bernadetteinclan