After resisting the suggestion the first couple of times, I finally caved in and decided to start a blog specifically devoted to my book. Now I’m really excited about it, and think it will be a great extension of my vision for the book itself.

I still plan to update Journey to Self-Publishing with information, resources, and progress reports relevant to the publishing side of things. The “journey” just becomes more involved all the time! It is still often overwhelming, but I suppose it is good for me to feel that way – it keeps me dependent on the grace of God, rather than my own strength and abilities.

Here are a handful of interesting self-publishing success stories in a recent Publishers Weekly article. I love reading real-life stories of the process people went through to write and publish their books. Right now I don’t have any plans of signing on with a publishing house, but the last sentence of the first story is what scares me:

“When administrative and distribution work became too onerous, however, Tillman was ready to find a publisher.”

Right now I’m just trying to take one step at a time, but we’ll see what the future holds!

HT: John Kremer’s Book Marketing Blog

Author Josh Harris shares How to Write a Book in 16 Easy Steps on his blog. Even though I’ve only written one book, I can totally relate to his bit of tongue-in-cheek commentary on the emotional rollercoaster of writing a book. A great little dose of reality for anyone working on a book or aspiring to write a book!

…but such is not the case. 🙂 I’ve just been so hard at work that I’ve been negligent in posting updates for the past month or so. Sorry! Here’s a quick list of some of the things I’ve been working on:

• Implementing the editors’ suggestions and marks into the final manuscript.
• Meeting with various people who are helping with the project – editors, a marketing advisor, my interior page designer, etc.
• Gathering pre-publication endorsements.
• Creating a Pajama School Fact Sheet.
• Designing a new website/blog for Pajama School (soon to be live!).
• Opening a bank account for Sibro Publishing.
• Opening a PayPal account for Sibro Publishing (I’m linking to it in case you want to make a donation to the cause 🙂 ).
• Setting up an Amazon Advantage account so that I can sell Pajama School on Amazon.
• Acquiring a business license from our city.
• Thinking and praying a lot!

It took a while to go through the whole process, but I just mailed off my application to Lightning Source. Although I’m planning to use an offset printer for the final print run of Pajama School, I wanted to find a fast, high-quality option for a short-run print job. I’m planning to order about 50 books that I can send out for endorsements and reviews to include in the final book design. Numerous people recommended Lightning Source as a good POD (Print-On-Demand) option, so after doing some research I began the application process.

After setting up an account on the Lightning Source website I received an e-mail from a sales representative thanking me for my interest and asking me several additional questions. Once I answered those, the sales representative e-mailed me a comprehensive File Creation Guide and gave me instructions on how to proceed. I completed the remainder of the on-line application process and then received another e-mail with the final step of the application process. This involved printing out the attached application forms, signing them where indicated, and mailing them back to Lightning Source.

I’ve just finished thoroughly reading the Operating Manual and the File Creation Guide. Whew, there’s a lot involved in printing a book! I’m just so grateful for the two amazing designers who are working on this part of Pajama School for me!

One of the things that I have found most helpful in this whole process of writing and self-publishing is hearing from others who have traveled the path already. It’s so helpful to know what worked, what didn’t work, what they would do differently, etc. This wonderful interview with Sandra Tayler is no exception.

I also found this collection of posts on the shipping process instructive. This is one area that is way outside of my expertise or past experience! I’ve briefly tried to figure out how to anticipate sales and prepare for orders and shipping, but I’m pretty much shooting in the dark (of course, that’s how I feel about almost every aspect of this self-publishing process!).  I still have numerous questions, but I am so grateful for others who have taken the time to record and share their experiences to lessen the learning curve for some of the rest of us!

HT: Authors on the Net

About a month ago I distributed copies of my manuscript to the four people who are doing editing for me. A couple of them are focusing more on the “big picture” of the book – identifying gaps or concepts that need clarification and evaluating the overall feel of the book. The other two are doing detail grammatical and sentence structure work.

Since I distributed the manuscripts, I haven’t personally touched the book. I thought it would be helpful to step back and clear my mind a little so that I can approach it with a fresher perspective when I set about to incorporate the editorial suggestions. As I’ve begun getting feedback from my editors, I had to decide how to respond. Here’s the list I’ve come up with for how to handle feedback from editors:

1. Listen.
2. Humbly receive every comment and critique.
3. Ask questions to clarify what changes they are suggesting.
4. Take notes that you can refer to on your own later.
5. Don’t become discouraged; remind yourself that it will be better in the end because of the contribution of others to the finished product.
6. Re-evaluate what you want readers to take away from the book and what you want the overall tenor of the book to be.
7. Wait until you have received complete input for the entire book and/or from all the editors before you begin implementing changes.
8. Pray for wisdom and discernment.
9. Determine what suggested editorial changes will enhance the message of the book and are worthy of implementation.
10. Implement changes.

I’ve made it to number 7 thus far and am in the waiting stage. This has been a tough process, but I continue to learn a lot and am truly grateful for the friends who are expending their time and energy to help make Pajama School a success. I am clinging to the hope that it will all be worth it in the end!

Today I’ve been digging a little more into what Press Kits are and what they should include. The SPAN website (Self Publishers Association of North America) has some very helpful information and resources for self-publishers pertaining to press releases and press kits. In particular, I just finished scanning this handy e-book called How to Write Trash-Proof Press Releases. It is chock-full of examples, lists of what works and what doesn’t, and advice from those in the media industry. A great resource!

From reading over the information on the SPAN website page, I also seem to be getting the idea that, “Always include the book title, author, ISBN, format (hardback or trade paperback) and price on every piece of correspondence.” Maybe because they include that statement no less than five times throughout the page!

I knew I needed to start working on putting together a press kit, but I feel much more clear now on what it should contain and how it should be presented.

Since my book is in the hands of editors right now, I haven’t been focusing at all on the writing aspect of the project. I finally sat down and made a list of the top things that I need to do right now business-wise in preparation for the launch of my book. These are things that will be necessary further down the road and I’ve been putting them off because, well, frankly because I didn’t want to do them. 🙂

But last night I assigned numbers to the list so that I had an order to work from and this morning I set about to tackle the first item on the list: Research and set up affiliate program. I used the open source Joomla CMS to develop my website and have installed VirtueMart as my e-commerce solution. There is supposedly a built-in functionality for an affiliate program in VirtueMart, but it doesn’t work. So I’ve been scouring the forums and extension offerings for the past couple of hours trying to figure out if there is a solution that has been developed to handle an affiliate program. It appears that there is a lot of demand for such a product, but only a couple in development or available and I’m a little leery of forking over the money before I know for sure that the company behind it is legitimate and the product works as advertised.

So, I’m still researching. Some of the more well-known affiliate programs are exclusive to downloadable content, so that’s no good. The search continues and hopefully I’ll have this figured out soon so I can move to the next item on my list. That’s my favorite part – crossing items off my list! 🙂

Last week I received an e-mail from a lady who writes a column for one of our local papers. She was interested in interviewing me about Pajama School and featuring it in an upcoming column! It was completely unexpected and I am praising God for what He is already doing to help me get the word out about my book! We just concluded the interview this morning and she said the article should appear in next Wednesday’s paper. I’ll be sure to post a link to it here when it’s available!