A learning curve. That’s how I’m describing the journey of becoming a self-published author.

I just discovered the importance of requesting a physical proof from Amazon before the book goes live. It took maybe a full 48 hours between ordering my proof and having it arrive at my front door, which was a lot faster than the four weeks I was expecting.

At first I ordered it just to see my book in person, but as I took it out of the package I realized why it was such a good idea. The cover looked darker than the original art work, and there was a small gap on the top and on the left hand side where the cover didn’t quite get placed correctly. An easy fix, but one I would have never known about if I hadn’t ordered it.

And then I opened it up. I have a few copies of my book document, and I uploaded the one copy with no copyright page to Amazon. Ooops. I also, for whatever reason, didn’t think that the double spaced lines would show up in the physical copy, and yet it did. The chapter header spacing was all funky as well.

All these things are very fixable, but it makes me so glad that I thought to order a proof a month before I want to publish the book. I can take the time to fix all of these things, and maybe get one more proof just to be sure.

So that’s my advice to anyone who is looking to self publish. There is no one else out there looking out for your book. If you want to put out a quality product, you have to be the one to put in the work for it to become quality.

Be proud of what you put out, but make sure it’s exactly how you want to present it to the world. It’s so tempting to just finish a story and then hit publish, but your words, characters, and worlds that you’re creating can wait the extra few weeks it takes to shine it up.

This is my debut novel. It will set the tone for my career. Once I hit publish it’s out their in the world and I will be proud of the work I put into it.

Back to formatting,

Have a great night, and thanks for being here.