It's published! It's published!!!

Over the last few weeks, I decided that it was time to just bite the bullet and get Book 1 published.  There it was, just sitting on my laptop, doing nothing at all but waiting.  If I got hit by a bus, then that's where it would stay, and that thought didn't sit well with me.  It's not that I think my writing is that amazing, it's just that I think that some folks might really enjoy it.  Lots of people love fantasy-sword and sorcery tales, and I think mine is decent.  With that in mind, I started working seriously towards publication.

Amazon.com is my go-to for buying books, and their Kindle Publishing division is extremely author-friendly, so I decided to start there.  I've seen some really good books on that site as well as some stuff that wasn't nearly as...um...polished.  I figure that mine falls somewhere between the two, so I read their publishing guidelines, watched YouTube videos on Kindle formatting, even had one guy format it for me.  That didn't turn out so well, but it was due to my own original formatting being incorrect.  I set about fixing that as quickly as possible, but geez, that process made me itch. In the end, I finally figured it out, so the next one will be far easier.


I knew that I wanted a quality book cover, so I asked around and several folks agreed to give it a try.  Unfortunately, nothing suitable turned up, so I found a fellow on the internet and commissioned one from him.  WOW!!!  I sent that image to another guy who made it into a book cover that knocked my socks off.  I admit, I got all teary-eyed when I first saw it.  It has been my dream to publish a book since I was old enough to know what books were, and there on my laptop was the cover of a fantasy novel with my name on it! 

Finally, I was ready to get it listed on Amazon.  I followed the directions on the website, uploaded the file, previewed it, made some corrections and uploaded it again, and then a third time.  It was after 1am last night when everything finally looked right to me and I clicked 'Save'.

This morning, I awoke to an email that had arrived at 6:27am, alerting me to the fact that my book was LIVE!  And so there it is.  I now have a book that's listed on the largest book retailer in the world!  As of this writing, 10 folks have purchased my book.  That's pretty darned exciting, and I'm grateful to those of my friends who've bought it.  I know they're doing it because they're my friends, and it means a lot, even if they never read it. 

While contemplating the whole publishing process, I've had plenty of time to prepare myself.  I think there will be lots of folks who say nice things about the story, but I'm equally certain that there are also folks out there who think nothing of totally trashing someone else's work by giving them a 1 star rating and a scathing review.  I get that.  I figure that their opinion is their opinion, and they are entitled to it.  At least they had to buy the book before they could say anything about it!

There is a lot going on at the moment...we're in the process of acquiring a new home for JMMA, which involves applying for an SBA loan, which involves a TON of paperwork.  Between that, running the school, training, and family time, there doesn't seem to be much opportunity to sit and work on Book 2, but I've got a running start and I've found that even short stints of writing can eventually lead to some good work.  I'll get it finished eventually, and then Book 3 will be next.  One word at a time, I'll get the story out there.