Marketing and promotion

When I decided to self-publish, I knew it wasn't going to be easy, and I knew I wasn't going to be an overnight bestseller (or even ever a bestseller, unless I was incredibly lucky). And I knew that my biggest struggle was going to be promoting and marketing myself. Despite minoring in Marketing in college, it's not my forte. I think that's due to my introverted nature: I'm not good at asking people to buy my book.

An example: I was at dinner with my parents a week or so ago, and our waitress caught sight of the book I was reading on my phone (the Kindle app was on the cover image at the time) and got all excited because she recognized it: it was written by her aunt, Jeaniene Frost. Small world, huh? After that, my parents urged me to tell her about my book the next time she came back to the table. I felt uncomfortable doing so, partly because she said she doesn't usually read books. But even if she was a big reader, I'd have felt awkward pushing my book on her. I don't like when people hard sell to me, so I'm overly sensitive to doing it with others. In the end, my father did it for me, and she acted like she was interested in checking it out, though I really doubt she remembered my name five minutes later.

Promoting online is a little easier, but I find it difficult to find places to do so. The big places are too expensive, and many of the others are booked solid far in advance. I have one small promotion set to go at the beginning of February, so I hope that generates some interest, and I've done a few giveaways. I know some authors are having success with Amazon's KDP Select program, but I don't like the exclusivity requirement, and since Destined is my only book right now, it wouldn't benefit me in terms of generating interest in backlist. I had an ad on GoodReads that didn't really do much, and ads on Facebook that I turn on and off occasionally. They get me a lot of likes on my Facebook page, and seem to generate a few sales, but in the end, the cost of the ad ends up more than the royalties I get from the sales. Still, it's books I might not have sold otherwise, so I'll take what I can get. I have a bunch of requests out for book blog reviews, and while many said they were interested, only a few have read it yet. Those that have gave it 4-5 stars, so I keep hoping more will get to it soon. Reviews are key, and the more I can get, the better. I only wish more people would review on Amazon. I get a lot of ratings and reviews on GoodReads, but only have 8 on Amazon.

I know the best promotion is publishing more books, so that's what I'm trying to work on. I have one with a beta reader right now, another that's on hold so I can get some distance from it before editing some more, and a third I've recently dusted off. It still needs an ending, but it has one thing going for it the other two don't: it has a TITLE. (For me, this is a big thing. Titles stump me like nobody's business.) It's also kind of a dystopia, which is big right now, so I feel like it would be smart to take advantage of the trend while it's hot. I would never write specifically to fit a current trend, but since the book is already (mostly) written, I might as well make the most of it, right?

I just wish there was some magical, easy way to get people to see my book. But there isn't, so I will continue to slog on, and try to find more time to get a second book out there. If only I didn't need my day job, then I'd have all the time in the world.

Any other authors out there with advice on promotion that worked for them? Or readers who'd like to share how they find books? I know personally, most of my book discoveries come from GoodReads, with the occasional suggestion from Amazon's "also bought" lists or book blogs For those of you on GoodReads, how do you feel when an author sends you a message promoting his/her book? I'm leery of doing that, but it's an option I consider now and then.

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Fun with Genealogy

Before I get to the post, some news: if you’d like a chance to win a copy of Destined, check out this great giveaway being hosted at Starcrossed Reviews. The lucky winners will not only get a copy of Destined (paperback for US winners, ebook for International), but a whole lot of other great books (about 20 in total). Contest rules and details are at the link above. Starcrossed gave Destined a fantastic 5-star review not too long ago, in case you missed it.

Also, it looks like the ebook for Destined has finally been sent to Kobo, for those who were waiting for it to be available for that reader. I’m still waiting for it to show up in their catalog, but am hoping it won’t be much longer. I will post to Facebook/Twitter when it finally becomes available there. I apologize again for the delay. Apparently Kobo was seriously backlogged.

Now that the news and promos are out of the way, I can get on to the actual post. Which I am now writing about an hour after the first part, due to discovering that my scanner no longer works on my new computer. (Apparently Canon couldn’t bother themselves to make Windows 7 drivers for it.) So now I either need to buy a new scanner or a new printer that has a scanner included. The last time I bought a new printer, I intentionally didn’t get the all-in-one kind because I already had a perfectly good flatbed scanner. It seemed like overkill (and a waste of money) to buy one with a scanner when I didn’t need that feature. Now I feel like it’s silently taunting me.

So what was all the scanning fuss about? I got a card this week from a cousin I reconnected with a few years back while doing genealogy research on my dad’s side of the family. She sent along some old photos another cousin found that included my great grandmother, and while it was neat to see some new (to me) photos of her, it reminded me just how important it is to label your family photos. The few that were written on were mostly just names, and I suspect those were written recently rather than at the time they were developed. The caption on this one? “Sylvia & Indian.” I have no Native American blood in my family (that I know of), except for way, way, way back on my mother’s side. I have ancestors there who, in 1704, were attacked by a tribe of Caughnawagas (a branch of the Mohawks, I believe) and had four of their sons captured and taken to Canada. One son was later bought back by the family, while the other 3 were left behind and grew up with the Indians, eventually assimilating into the tribe. One was even adopted as the chief’s son, if the stories are correct. But anyway, that’s not my dad’s side of the family, so I can only imagine the photo here was taken on some kind of vacation. There’s another photo of her and the older Indian, without the younger boy, one of her with two of her cousins in front of the same store, and another of her by herself in what appears to be the same outfit, standing at a wooden railing overlooking some kind of gorge or waterfall. No sign of her husband or son around, even though she’s old enough that they’d both be in the picture (no pun intended).

I can’t help wondering, who were the Indians? Did she know them, or were they just hanging around the store, posing for photos with strangers, the way Egyptians do? (Photo to the right is from a trip I took to Egypt in 2005. I have no idea who these two men are. They posed for my father while we were touring an old site and soon as he took the photo, they demanded a tip.) I can’t help wondering what my descendants will think 60-70 years or so from now when they look at my photos? I suspect they’ll be seriously confused, since I hate to be photographed, and the few photos I am in tend to include minor celebrities (I went through a big soap opera phase a while back and have stacks of pictures of myself with actors from General Hospital.). The photos I’ll be passing down will be mostly scenery from vacations and cats. And none are labeled, either.

I think part of the reason I got so interested in genealogy was because I’m a writer. I love uncovering stories about people I never knew existed, or learning new things about the people I did know. A perfect example is a story I learned about my great grandmother (the one posing with the Indians). While researching her family, I came across a census record that showed a child in the household named Georgiana. I had never heard of my great grandmother having a sister: just two brothers. I asked my father, who also hadn’t heard of her, which made it even stranger as he was very close to that side of his family. Georgiana wasn’t on the next census with her family, but she would have been 21 that year, so it was possible she’d married. Still, it was strange that she vanished so completely, and the online marriage records for Chicago end in 1920, so I couldn’t find anything there. There were no death records matching her maiden name, so if she had died young, I found no proof. She just disappeared! Or so it seemed. And then I found this photo in my grandparents’ things:

The only writing on it was Sylvia’s father’s name and address on the back. It wasn’t Sylvia’s wedding: we knew what she looked like. It also didn’t look like her brother, Anton, or youngest brother, John. We had no clue who this was. The style of clothing was very 20s, but Georgiana was a teenager in the 20s, and I didn’t think it could be her. Sadly, my grandparents had already passed away by the time I started my research, so I couldn’t ask my grandfather. My father and aunt had vague memories of a story that went around about a family member who was killed, but weren’t sure what the details were. Eventually, between them searching their memories and reconnecting with the previously-mentioned cousin (who is the daughter of one of Sylvia’s brothers, and knew the true story from her father), we found out what happened. Georgiana was indeed their sister. She married young (that was her wedding photo after all) and had a son in 1927 at the age of 18 (perhaps that was why she married so young?). She and her husband later became separated, and she was preparing to divorce him, but he didn’t take too well to the idea and one day showed up at her house and shot her, their 2-year-old son and then himself. Her brother Anton was living in the apartment one floor above her and heard the shots. He left his own baby daughter (my cousin, who later told us the story) and his wife upstairs to go see what was happening, and found the bodies. Georgiana died on the way to the hospital. One of the family rumors says that her husband, Joe, had a priest in his family and confessed to him that he was going to kill his wife before going to her house. Back then, there were no laws requiring priests to go to the police with such confessions, so he wasn’t able to warn anyone. It makes for a good twist to the story, but I never found anyone in Joe’s immediate family that was a priest, so it may not have been true.Then again, he’s buried in a Catholic cemetery (Resurrection Cemetery, famous for Resurrection Mary), which strikes me as odd given that he was a suicide. Signs of a family connection to the Church, perhaps?

As for poor Georgiana, she’s buried in Chicago’s largest Bohemian cemetery (that side of my family is from Czechoslovakia), all by herself. The rest of the family is in a different cemetery, closer to where they later lived. It’s almost like her death was so traumatic, they tried to forget about her completely. I guess back then people didn’t talk about unhappy subjects, and this kind of family tragedy was kept secret. The only mention I ever found of her, other than a newspaper article about her murder (where all the names were misspelled, so it took some serious Google-fu to unearth!), was in one of her mother’s obituaries. Everywhere else, in obituaries of her siblings, father and others of her mother, she’s never mentioned. It’s kind of sad to think she was so close to being forgotten. And after learning her story, I can’t deny a part of me wants to write a book inspired by it. It would make for a good ghost story, don’t you think? The house is still there: when we visited Chicago last year, we found it and the paranormal-obsessed side of me couldn’t help jumping to the conclusion of “ooh, maybe it’s haunted!” It had a For Rent sign in the window, though, so no one was home. Not that I’d have the guts to knock on the door and ask.

Here’s a photo of Georgiana’s grave in the Bohemian cemetery. Jirinka is the Czech spelling of her name. The line at the bottom loosely translates to “here also rests my son,” so I can only assumed Joe Jr. was buried with her. Sad that he didn’t get his name on the headstone. Even sadder that the photo on the stone is the only one we have of him, and the only non-wedding photo we have of her.

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Titanic Tuesdays: Second Class

I was thinking this weekend that I need to come up with some sort of regular blog thing that will keep people not only interested in my blog, but maybe gain new reader interest in Destined. I’ve been getting some really good feedback on the “Research Notes” section at the end of the book, where I go into more detail about the historical figures featured in the story, so I thought why not make it a weekly blog feature as well?

So, I introduce: Titanic Tuesdays!

Unless I note it in the subject line, there will be no spoilers in these posts, so those who haven’t yet read Destined won’t have to worry about it being ruined. (Aside from the major and obvious spoiler that the ship sinks. I think everyone pretty much knows that part by now, right?) So while I might choose to highlight a particular passenger that gets mentioned in the book, I will be careful not to spoil their ultimate fate, and won’t include anything about the fictional characters unless it’s a passing mention that won’t tell anything important. I hate to be spoiled myself, so I’m going to be extra careful not to do so here.

One of the aspects of Destined that I feel is unique to most Titanic-set novels is that I chose to put my characters, for the most part, in Second Class. I’ve always been fascinated with this often-ignored section of the ship. So much attention is put on the rich and glamorous First Class, and the less-fortune Third Class. Even the 1997 movie only showed the First and Third classes. I’ll admit, they’re more dramatic, but what of the Second Class? These were the people who today might be considered the middle class: regular people who are neither rich nor poor. But they were still people, with lives and personalities and stories of their own. I wanted to tell some of those stories.

It’s mentioned in many a book about the ship that the Second Class areas of Titanic were nearly equal in luxury and appointments to the First Class areas of many other ships. The cost of a Second Class ticket for Titanic averaged about £13 per person. In today’s currency, that would be about £1158.05, or $1814.20!  And while that seems shocking at first, think about how much a transatlantic cruise would cost today. For a mid-range cabin, you’d probably pay about the same, though I suspect today’s ocean liners have better amenities. ;)

In 1912, however, the amenities of the Titanic, in all classes, were second to none. The White Star Line pulled out all the stops. Still, the Second Class held relatively little space on the grand ship. Their cabins took up a small section of D, E and F decks (with a section of G Deck set aside as optional 2nd or 3rd class). They had dedicated promenade space at the end of the Boat Deck and B Deck (First Class had all of A Deck to themselves) and a covered/enclosed promenade space near the end of C Deck. They had a library/lounge, smoking room (used by the men only), dining room and a barber shop. You can get an idea from the photo below how the ship was divided up, class-wise. First Class got the majority of the space (in fact, on decks B-D, their area extended even farther forward). You might also notice how the very front of the ship is designated to officers and crew. That famous “king of the world” scene? Wouldn’t have happened. Passengers weren’t allowed on the forecastle deck, or even the front-most portion of the Boat Deck. Those areas were officers only. But sometimes dramatic license needs to be taken. Heck, I did it myself in Destined, when I let some of my characters go up to the Officers’ Promenade on the Boat Deck. The beauty of fiction, folks. I tried to be as historically accurate as possible, but there are times when breaking those rules a little makes for a more interesting story.

Life in Second Class was still pretty good, despite having such a small area to call their own. The few common areas they had were nicely-appointed and, as mentioned before, on par with the First Class rooms on other ships. On B Deck, they had a Smoking Room where the men would gather after dinner for drinks and cards and other manly pursuits. It was very masculine, with oak paneling on the walls and oak furniture upholstered with dark green Moroccan leather. The floors were tiled in patterned linoleum.

Since the Smoking Room was a "men only" area, that left only the Library/Lounge for the women, located just below it on C Deck. Both men and women congregated here daily to relax, write letters, play cards and watch the 2nd class children play on the covered promenade outside the windows. This large room was lighter than the Smoking Room, paneled in sycamore with mahogany furniture. The chairs were upholstered in a (possibly green) tapestry, the floors were were covered in a rich Wilton (possibly brown) carpet, green silk curtains framed the windows, and there was a large, glass-fronted bookcase at one end of the room containing what was described as an impressive collection of books.

The other major area for Second Class passengers was the dining room. It spanned the entire width of the ship near the aft end of D Deck. Furniture was mahogany, with long tables and swivel chairs upholstered in red leather, both bolted to the floor in case of bad weather. Walls were paneled in carved oak, the floor was tiled in patterned linoleum, and there was a sideboard at one end with a piano. On Sunday, April 14th, church services were held here in the morning, and after dinner, passengers gathered around the piano for a hymn sing. Second Class meals were prepared in the same kitchens (galleys) that prepared those for the First Class, and reports are that they ate nearly as well.

While First Class had 3 elevators at their disposal, Second Class only had one (Third Class had none), so the stairs were most likely their main method of access. Railings were light oak, carpet was red, and each landing held some seating for those who wished to rest. There were two sets of these staircases. The forward stairs, in the front portion of the Second Class section of the ship, ran from the Boat Deck down to F Deck, and had the elevator between the two flights. The aft stairs, set at the back end of the Second Class section of the ship, didn't start until B Deck and went down to G Deck.

Outdoor space for the Second Class was plentiful, more than they would have had on other ships. In addition to the Boat Deck and B Deck promenades, they also had a covered/enclosed space outside the library on C Deck. If the weather was good, passengers would gather out on these promenades and chat, play games, or people watch. They could have drinks brought out to them here as well, since their class didn't have a café. (Delivery could also be made to the library if they so chose.)

The cabins in Second Class ranged in luxury, some being almost as nice as First Class, others being nearly as stripped down as Third. But most seem to fall into the range of the cabin I assigned Noelle and Henriette. The photo to the left, most likely taken on her sister ship, Olympic, is the closest to what I imagine cabin E-103 would be. Like the library, furniture was mahogany. Each room had a fold-down wash basin with running water: both fresh and salt. Floors were usually tiled in linoleum, and each had an electric bell to ring the steward and heaters for cold nights. Cabin walls were enameled in white, and many of the surviving passengers would note that they could still smell the fresh paint. Below is an illustration of what a Second Class cabin might look like, taken from a postcard of the time. Just take out the lady and her little girl and put Noelle in her place, and you have the opening scene of Chapter 3. :)

There are some lovely, detailed deck plans on the Discovery Channel website by Bruce Beveridge, that were an invaluable resource to me when I was editing the book. The segment below is a close-up of the section of E Deck where Noelle's cabin is located. It gives a good idea of how her particular room (E-103) would have been laid out, and gives an idea of where some other things are located: the stairs, the ladies bathrooms, the room where the musicians stayed, etc. Also notice cabins E-100 and E-101, across the hall. One of these was where Edwina Troutt, Susan Webber and Nora Keane stayed. Most accounts say their cabin was E-101, but there is a story told that when Edwina was trying to hurry her roommates along in getting dressed, she got frustrated when Nora was taking too much time trying to puton her corset. In one version of the story, it is said that she grabbed the corset and threw it down the narrow passageway leading to their porthole. Other accounts say she threw it out the door. If the porthole version is correct, then their room would have to have been either E-103 or E-100, not E-101.

That’s about it for the Second Class portion of Titanic. Some of these areas figure more prominently in Destined than others, and while I do try to describe them in the book, it’s never the same as seeing an actual photo. Most of the images used here are photos taken on the Olympic, since very few photographs were taken of the Titanic. The two ships were nearly identical, however, so they can be considered relatively accurate. My various research sources can be found on my online bibliography. Some photos can also be credited to the Ulser Folk & Transport Museum.

As usual, I seem to have gotten a little long-winded. I promise to try to keep future Titanic Tuesdays more concise. :)

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What next?

Long time, no blog. Last week was hell at the day job, so I didn’t have as much free time to blog or do much of anything else online. We had a nasty lightning strike at work (the joy of living in Florida) that fried our phone lines, killed our network server and generally wreaked havoc with everything else. As the closest thing to an IT person they have, it somehow landed on me to oversee a lot of the repairs, and as such I was stuck at the office more than usual. Good for the paycheck, bad for the writing career. But it seems to finally be winding down now, so I’m trying to get back in the groove of things.

Now that Destined has been out for a little over a month, I’m starting to think about what book to work on next. I know I still need to keep up with the marketing and promotion, because let’s face it, sales aren’t stellar yet. I get a couple a week on Kindle, a couple a month in paperback and Nook, and have no idea yet what my sales via Smashwords (iBooks, Sony, etc.) are. It’s still not on Kobo because of some backlog they have, which means anyone with a Kobo reader is stuck either waiting indefinitely or buying the ePub directly from Smashwords and uploading it manually to their reader. Not optimal, but I guess it’s better than not being able to get the book at all?

Anyway, I realize that sales take time. Getting the word out about a new book without a marketing department backing you up is tough. I don’t have the budget for splashy ads everywhere, so I’m relying mostly on reviews, which are good so far, but not yet plentiful. I can be patient, though, and wait. My Facebook page, which was stuck at 24 likes a few weeks ago, has now jumped to 186 and counting, thanks to an ad I placed there. Now if only likes would translate to sales, I’d be a happy girl. Patience…

So, while I work on my patience (never my strong suit, sadly), I’m turning my thoughts to the next best marketing tool: releasing more books. I have two completed novels still unreleased, one that’s almost completed, and a couple that are barely started. (One of which is a sequel to a completed book.) One of the completed books is going to be next up, but I have yet to decide which.

The first, which I was originally sure was going to be Book #2 for me, is a light mystery: think Janet Evanovich meets Medium. It’s funny with a dash of romance, and may even become a series. I was nearly done with my first editing pass, however, when I decided I really wanted to add another character to it. The main character needed a best friend to talk to, and up until now all she’d had was her parents and sister. Adding a brand-new person into an already-finished book isn’t going to be a quick fix, so I think I got a little frustrated by that. Another issue I have with the book (still untitled because I suck at coming up with those) is that it’s too short. Though I suppose for a mystery, 65,000 words isn’t that short, but Destined was about 89,000, and anything shorter than that just doesn’t feel long enough to me. Adding in the new friend will give me extra words, so that should help some. We’ll see what happens.

Unfortunately, while I was starting the add-a-friend project, my attention began to wander from it to my other completed book, Bloodstone, which is the first in an Urban Fantasy series and has the opposite problem: it’s too freaking LONG. At one point, it was over 200,000 words. It’s actually my first novel, written about a year before Destined, which is probably why it’s so bloated. Years ago I managed to cut it down some, but it’s still over 170,000. It needs some serious hacking and slashing before it’s publishable (I’d like to get it down to 100k). The only thing that’s going to get it cut down to that degree is removing an entire storyline, and that’s not going to be easy. That said, right now it’s the book that I’m more excited about editing, so that’s where my attention has been focused. I was doing pretty good until I got to the first candidate for major cuttage: a love interest that could easily wait until a later book to be introduced, or never introduced at all. He’s not the main guy in the story, so his presence creates a kind of triangle, which is pretty overdone lately, so it might be best to chop him out for good. Logically, I know if I do this, I can shave down the word count significantly and possibly even make the story better. Problem is, writing isn’t always logical. You get attached, and I’m finding it hard to cut him out. For now, I’m going to read ahead and see if there’s anything else that could go instead, despite knowing deep down that he’s my best option. He isn’t central to this book’s plot, and in the end he might even be a detriment to it, adding one too many storylines for people to keep track of. Cutting him makes sense. I just wish it weren’t so hard.

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More promotion frustration

The good news first: I got my first book blogger review yesterday, and it was 5 stars! http://www.bittenbyparanormalromance.com/2011/09/review-destined-by-allison-kraft.html

I was very excited to read it, and the blog has a fairly large following, so I was anxious to see how the review impacted my sales. Unfortunately… not so much. I know it’s only the next day, but I only sold one Kindle book yesterday, and the Nook, Smashwords and paperback stats didn’t change. So that’s frustrating. Maybe I’m just too impatient, or maybe that blog wasn’t the right audience for Destined. (It’s a paranormal romance blog, but with emphasis on erotic romance. I submitted mine on the off chance they didn’t mind “clean” romance as well, and got lucky that a reviewer happened to be looking for something like that. She loved the book, but if the blog’s followers all prefer erotic romance, then that could be why no one’s buying.)

It’s frustrating to know you have a good product out there, yet can’t seem to get anyone to look at it. I’ve sent it to a bunch of reviewers, got some positive responses that sound like they’re going to read it eventually (many just haven’t responded at all, one way or the other) and joined a bunch of GoodReads groups and other reading-centric message boards. Problem is, in order for the latter to get you anywhere, you have to be an active member of the community, and that takes a lot of time. Time I don’t really have unless I stop working on my next book.

I’ve been getting such good feedback on the book so far. Granted, most of it is from friends and family, but even though they might be more prone to liking it because they know me, they’ve been very positive; more than they needed to be. Like staying up half the night to finish it because they couldn’t stop reading, or saying it made them cry. One lent it to a friend (who doesn’t know me), and that friend liked it enough that she went back and re-read the ending, and said that she was up late one night because she couldn’t stop thinking about parts of it. I love to hear these things, because it tells me that I wrote something that people are genuinely enjoying. I just wish I knew some magic promotion formula to get others to know it exists!

Well, enough whining. Time to go work on editing that second book. The sooner I can have it ready to publish, the better my chances of being noticed. They say the bet promotion is to have more than one book out for people to discover. Thank goodness I already have a few finished, because if I had to start writing the next one from scratch, who knows how long it would take me to finish at this rate!

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Self-promotion is hard

As I was getting ready to start this post, I spotted something pretty darn exciting: someone gave Destined 5 stars over on GoodReads!  What’s even more exciting is, it’s not a friend or family member!  Unfortunately, most people that see I have one 5 star rating will assume it’s a friend and disregard it, which sucks, but what can you do? Hopefully more ratings and reviews will start coming in as people have time to finish reading. I wish there was a way to mark the rating with a “I don’t know this person, I swear!” notation. ;)

Anyway, great rating aside, things are going pretty slowly so far. I had a bunch of sales right after I announced to my friends that I had published, then the sales stopped. I haven’t had a single sale yet in September, and it’s starting to bum me out a little. I knew this was going to be hard, so I expected things would be slow at first, but expecting it and actually experiencing it aren’t the same. Frankly, it sucks.

My problem, however, is that I’m terrible at self-promotion. I shouldn’t be: I minored in marketing in college and worked for a few years in the promotion department of a record label. I know how promotion works. I just can’t seem to do it when I’m promoting myself  I think I’m too self-conscious. I guess what I need to do is get online and start researching ways to get my book out there.

So far, I’ve promoted it to my friends, told my family (and by extension, some of those friends and family have told their friends, which was incredibly nice of them), bought an ad on GoodReads, started a GoodReads giveaway, signed up for a bunch of sites like authorsden.com and Shelfari, and put up a post on Absolute Write in their promotion thread. But that’s not very much, and I know I need to do more.

I think of all of those, I’m getting the most mileage from the giveaway. I already have over 300 people requesting it and 83 users adding it to their shelves. The problem with that is none of them are going to buy the book until the giveaway is over, if they ever buy it at all. I’m not complaining: I’ll take whatever exposure I can get! But more sales sure would be nice.

I need more reviews. That’s going to help the most, I’m sure. But I can’t ask people to review the book without feeling like an obnoxious nag. It also might help is people tag it on Amazon (there’s a section on each book listing where users can select tags that apply to the book. In my case, I have it tagged with variations of paranormal romance, time travel, vampires, etc.) I’ve read that more tags can equal more visibility when people are searching for something to read. But again, I can’t seem to bring myself to ask my friends to go do that. What I probably should do is find bloggers who do reviews and see if any are interested in reviewing mine. I can gift them a copy of the ebook pretty easily, either through Amazon or by emailing it directly.

I don’t want to pay for a lot of advertising: I don’t think it works as well, and it’s expensive. I only did it on GoodReads because I know at least there, everyone that sees the ads already love to read. I wish I could afford one of the bigger ads they have (the flash ones on the main pages), because those are the ads I personally notice and sometimes click on. I never click the smaller ads, so it doesn’t surprise me much that mine hasn’t gotten many clicks yet. *sigh* So frustrating!

Anyone out there have tips on promotions methods that have worked for you?

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The highs and lows of publishing

Destined has been officially released now for almost a week. It’s exciting. And scary. And just about everything in between. But overall, it’s a good feeling to finally have it out there, and have people interested in it. Granted, for now most of those people are friends and family, but everyone has to start somewhere, right?

First bit of news: I have a giveaway!  This one is on GoodReads, but I may consider doing one on my site/blog later on for those who aren’t members of GR. I can’t get their widget to show right due to my site formatting, so here’s the link: http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/14178-destined

It’s exciting to see the number of people requesting go up every day. And some of those people also add my book to their to-read list, which is even better. It means they were interested enough in it that, if they don’t win, they’re more likely to buy a copy. Pretty good publicity for something that is only going to cost me two books and postage! I also have a paid ad on the site, one of those pay-per-click ones. So far it’s only been clicked once, but it only started yesterday.

As for the lows, thankfully, there haven’t been many yet *knock on wood* That first night of sleeplessness once I’d announced the book publicly and was freaking out over it wasn’t fun, but I imagine it’s something every writer goes through. And it only lasted the one night, which was a relief. I also need to stop myself from compulsively checking sales stats every few hours. That is going to get annoying. I have a mildly obsessive personality, so that’s not helping matters. Again, probably something most new writers do, especially self-published ones. I’m sure I’m not alone in my neuroses.

Another bad thing: despite my numerous (and I do mean numerous) editing and proofing passes, I missed a typo. It’s on the first page of Chapter 8, some rogue T that ended up before the word relieved (so it says “trelieved”). That’s one downside to using InDesign for laying out the book: spell check isn’t automatic. You have to tell it when to run, and since I have each chapter as its own file, I would have had to run it on each file (there are over 20). I started to do that, but around Chapter 5 or 6, got tired of it finding nothing but words that weren’t actually wrong (names, places, foreign words, etc.), and gave up. I see now I should have stuck with it. My original draft was written in Works, which does check spelling as you go, but I think that was a part I changed after I’d started putting the book together, which is why it slipped past me. Ah well. I’m only human, right? And big-picture, it appears to be the only typo I missed, and is only in the paperback (ebooks are fine), so that’s good. Major publishers have typos, too, and usually more than just one. Still, lesson learned: definitely have another person read your book before you publish. It’s advice I read more times than I can count, but I ignored it because I know I’m a good proofreader, and thought that as long as I read it through multiple times, I’d find everything. Live and learn.

Yet another bad thing: I discovered last night that someone has taken one of my blog posts and copy/pasted it into their own blog. No link back to me, though my name is in the subject line. I think that’s because the RSS feed for my blog tacks the title of the blog at the start of every subject. Anyway, it’s annoying, but I’m working on dealing with it. It’s clearly a blog set up just to copy other blog posts that reference Kindle (it’s called Kindle Info 101) and other ereader-related news. What ticked me off is that they’ve made it nearly impossible to contact the blog owner. The contact form doesn’t work: you get a “failed to send” message when you try to submit. And while each post has a link to log in and leave a comment, the blog doesn’t have user registration enabled, so you really can’t leave a comment. In the end I had to do a WHOIS search on the domain name to get the email address for the site owner. Naturally, whoever’s behind the site doesn’t want to be found, so they used an identity protection service to register the domain. I sent an email anyway, asking that they remove my post, and if I don’t hear back (I don’t suspect I will), I’ll contact the identity protection site’s admin. They have a contact email to file copyright infringement claims. I hope I don’t have to take it that far, though. I’m not entirely sure it counts as infringement, since my name technically is on the post (in the title). It’s not explicitly credited to me, and the post doesn’t link to my original blog post, but that may only count as being rude, not illegal. I guess we’ll see what happens. It’s only one post, so it’s not that big a deal. It just irks me. I’ve been plagiarized in the past (someone took things I wrote online and posted them on another site as though they were the author), so I’m extra sensitive to it.

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It’s out!

Destined is finally available for sale!

Print: $9.99 at CreateSpace for now. It’s supposed to be on Amazon as well, but for some reason it hasn’t shown up there yet.

eBook: $2.99 for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble NOOK 

It’s also available for Kindle at Amazon UK and Amazon.de (in English)

I’m looking into getting a general ePub version available for those who have other types of readers.

 

*happy dance*

 

All in all, this was a relatively painless process.  Sure, formatting the books was time-consuming (I started seriously working on self-pubbing in late April), but it was fulfilling to see the finished product. My only complaint would be that once I finally hit that magic button to publish the book, the wait seemed to last forever. I think part of that was my own impatience, though.

The Kindle DTP site was fastest. Within less than 24 hours, the book was available on Amazon’s site for Kindle. It’s still a little weird to search for, though. It only seems to show up if you search for my name. When I do a search for “Destined,” I get a whole big list of books and mine is somewhere buried deep down in the list of results. I guess that’s what I get for using a single word as my title.

I uploaded my file to PubIt for Nook at the same time as the Kindle DTP file, but it only showed up on bn.com today. I was starting to wonder if it would ever show up there! So Nook took more like 72 hours. I don’t know if that’s the norm, or just my bad luck or what. But at least it’s there! I can’t say the same for CreateSpace. I published there on Wednesday as well (first thing in the morning, so sooner than the ebooks, which I did after work that afternoon), and while it’s available to purchase from CreateSpace directly, it has yet to show up on Amazon. From what I’ve been reading, it can take up to a week for that to happen, though most people seem to have seen theirs show up sooner than that. Again, my bad luck, probably.

Another tiny gripe with CreateSpace: they were always really quick to print and ship my proofs. Both times, it would ship less than 24 hours after I ordered it. But when I finally published, I ordered a small batch of books for myself (only 5 for now), and although I ordered it first thing Wednesday, they didn’t ship until today. So again with the waiting. IT’s not that big a deal, really. I guess I just got used to how quick they were with the proofs, and thought they’d be that fast all the time.

But like I said before, all in all, I’m happy with the publishing process. Now for the hard part: promotion. I’m still waiting for GoodReads to approve me as an author so I can set up a giveaway there. I’ll be sure to announce it here and on my website whenever that does happen. Everyone likes free books, right?

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The importance of the proof

When I submitted my files for the print edition of Destined, I was sure they were prefect, and that I wasn't going to have to make any corrections. Even better, CreateSpace was having a promotion where the first proof was free (plus shipping), so I thought I was going to get this done pretty cheaply. Ha.

Despite the numerous edits I've done (NUMEROUS), I still managed to miss things. There's something about reading on actual paper, I think, that makes it easier to spot errors. Up until now, I'd been proofing either on the computer, on my iPad, or on the Kindle/Nook. eInk is nearly as good as paper, but it's still not quite the same, because you're still reading on a device. Or maybe I just wasn't looking closely enough before, who knows. Point is, reading through that first print proof was good, because I caught more than I expected.

The weirdest mistake I hadn't noticed before (partly because it's only in the print version)? Backwards apostrophes!  Somehow, when I was writing the book in Microsoft Works, it auto-formatted some of the apostrophes wrong, and I never noticed. They're small, so unless you look closely, you can't really tell. But it's there, and now that I've spotted them, they're driving me nuts. Thank goodness for find/replace, because there's no way I would have caught them all with my naked eye!

My story's probably a good lesson in favor of hiring an outside editor, but I'm stubborn about editing my own stuff. Besides, all these editing passes I've done have turned up more than just mistakes: they've shown me parts of the book that can be improved, and I think the end result is much better for it. It was time-consuming, but worth it. Call me a control freak, but I still prefer to do everything myself.

Now all that's left is doing one last skim to make sure the changes I made don't have errors, and finally getting that author photo taken, so I can put it on the cover before I submit for the second proof. Then while I'm waiting for the proof to ship, I can go through the ebooks to make sure they're still okay. (A lot of the changes I made were more than formatting, so I had to change the Kindle and ePub as well.)

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It’s here!

The proof of my print edition arrived today! It's all shiny and pretty and I'm in love with it. I haven't had a chance to really go through it to look for errors, but the quick scan I did looks good, so I'm hopeful.

I'd prefer not to have to resubmit and buy another proof, but if I do find something inside that needs fixing, I may also tweak the cover a little. For one thing, it printed a tad bit darker than I intended. I find that problem crops up a lot with printing—something will look perfect on a monitor, but will print dark. Still, it's only a slight bit darker, and I doubt anyone but me would even notice. I also may change the description on the back. I used the one from my website, but have since edited it a little (nothing drastic, just a few words here and there), and now that I'm looking at the book, I'm wondering if it isn't too wordy. The font size is a little small due to the length, and a bit light as well (it's white on black). I could cut down the amount of text and therefore make the font bigger and/or bolder, without taking up more space. And if I'm going to be doing that, I really should get an author photo taken to add to the back cover. I don't have one right now, and I don't think it's too big a deal for it to not be there, but if I'm going to be resubmitting, might as well add it, right?

I have to say, I'm really impressed with the quality of the book. Coming from a POD, I was worried it was going to look "homemade," but it really doesn't. If I didn't know any better, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and a traditionally-published trade paperback! The one thing that glares at me right now is the lack of publisher name/logo on the spine. Every book has that, and since I chose not to start my own company right now, I don't have a publisher name to use there. Hm. Maybe I should come up with a logo for myself and put it there instead?

For those of you who are considering self-publishing and are wondering which POD to use, I highly recommend CreateSpace. Great quality product, quick and easy process, no complaints at all so far. And by buying the $39 pro plan, I'm able to keep the selling price under $10 and still make a small profit on each book I sell through Amazon.com. (I'd have to go up to $11 or more to profit on the extended distribution channels, but I have no plans to use those now, so it's not a concern to me.)

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Coming into the home stretch

First bit of happiness: my print proof shipped yesterday! Depending on how fast the shipping is, I may have it in my hands by the weekend. Patience is not my strongest suit, so this is just about killing me. Best thing about it, though, is that if all goes well, and I don’t have to make any major corrections, there’s a good chance I’ll be able to release in all formats before the end of the month. Which means my book will be out in time for my mother’s birthday on the 29th. I think that’s a birthday present she’ll really like, especially since she has NO clue I’m doing this yet. I’ve been very stealthy.

While I wait for the proof, I’ve firmed up the Kindle and ePub versions for Amazon and B&N. I think they’re both ready to go once my print version is proofed and approved. I’m waiting for more information from Kobo about publishing to their site, and am debating whether or not to publish to Google Books as well.  Sony and Apple, sadly, aren’t in the cards right now. Both are too difficult to get into without using an aggregator, and I have no interest in dealing with Smashwords. The only other option to get into the iBookstore is Lulu, but after researching that for a while yesterday, I’ve decided it doesn’t look as do-able as I’d originally thought. If I could just use them to publish to Apple and nothing else, I would. But it looks like if I used them, they’d want to handle other versions as well, and I don’t want that. I’ll keep checking it out, though. If I could afford it, I’d buy a Mac and upload it myself, but that’s not financially viable right now, and it seems to be the only way to publish directly to them. Too bad an iPad isn’t good enough: that I have!

So now that my formatting is all done and the print proof is ordered, I find myself turning my attention to the upcoming release and necessary promotion that goes along with it. I have to say, it’s a little daunting. Being an introvert, the idea of going out there and promoting myself to strangers is not as comfy as I’d like. But I know it needs to be done!

So far, I’ve got the Facebook and Twitter accounts set up, and have been trying to stay active on both. Today, I set up a GoodReads account (http://www.goodreads.com/AllisonKraft), which I will be converting into an author page once DESTINED is released. Sadly, it doesn’t look like you can set yourself up as an author until there’s a book to link to.  Same goes for setting up an Author Central page at Amazon.com. I’m also considering doing a giveaway at GoodReads, and possibly buying some ad space there. I know personally, as a frequent user of the site, I have clicked on many ads and ended up adding quite a few to my TBR list, so I’m hoping advertising there will be a good investment.

That’s the easy stuff, though, because it doesn’t require too much effort on my part. But in order to really get my name and book out there, I’m going to have to find more active ways to put my book in front of people. Which means being more social. Eek!

I also really need to take a good author photo to use on all of these websites. I hate being photographed, and I never like pictures of me when I do allow them to be taken. This isn’t going to be fun. Too bad I can’t use my high school senior photo. I think that’s the last one I actually liked. I have a nice DSLR camera (photography is a hobby), and have tried photographing myself a few times with a tripod/remote combo, but haven’t liked any of the results. Frustrating.

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Release Date. Sort of.

One of the downsides I've found with self-publishing is that you can't really set a firm release date. When you're done editing and formatting and are ready to go, you submit your files to the various sites (Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, CreateSpace, etc.) and then wait for them to approve and publish your book. There's no guarantee exactly when that will happen, and you can't tell them to wait until a specific date to do it (at least, not that I've seen). So I can't really say "DESTINED will be out August 29th!" because I can't know for sure that it will be out then.

What I can say is that, if all goes well, I believe the book will be available for sale in both print and ebook format by the end of August. Print will be available on Amazon.com and from CreateSpace's estore for $9.99. The ebook will be available for Kindle at Amazon, Nook at B&N (price TBD, though most likely either $2.99 or $3.99) and I'm still researching the other outlets. It looks like Kobo finally has a way for authors to self-publish, so I'll be looking into that. As for Sony and Apple, I haven't researched Sony yet, and it sounds like I'm out of luck with Apple unless I either get a Mac or use Smashwords, neither of which I'm keen to do right now. I have an iPad, but apparently that's not enough. It's a shame they make it so difficult, because I have the ePub all formatted and ready to go!

Once I get my print proof back and can look it over, I'll be all set. I want all the formats to release around the same time, so right now I'm held up on the print proof. I see that the review process is done and I can order a proof, but there's a warning about transparency in my cover PDF, so I have to check that out when I get home from work before I order the proof and waste any more time. It says the flattening created a color shift, which makes me nervous. I thought the flattening was already done when I originally saved the PDF in Illustrator!

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This is where I start to freak out

I did it. I finished the website and uploaded it to the server. It’s live, which means there’s no turning back now. The blurb for DESTINED is up, along with the first chapter (I plan to add the next two in the future), so I can’t chicken out and not publish now.

*deep breath*

I can do this. I believe in my book, and I believe there are others out there who will enjoy it as much as I do. My biggest concern is that people will read the blurb and think, “Vampires on the Titanic? What the hell?” DESTINED is really more a time travel romance set on the Titanic than a vampire book, but the vampires are there. Then again, vampires on the Titanic interests me, so I can’t be the only one out there!

Going live with the site also means I’ve settled on my cover, whether I knew it or not. Heh. I have a bad habit of tweaking things to death, so this is good for me.

So go check it out: AllisonKraft.com. And when you’re done with that, head over to my shiny new Facebook Fan Page and like me. (There is no way to say that without sounding needy, is there?)

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Happy Memorial Day

It's a holiday weekend, which means I have an extra day off and therefore should be getting all sorts of work done on my book, right?  Well... sort of. I did get some things done, mostly yesterday. I finished up some last-minute research (found a new book at the library I hadn't read yet, as well as a few on Google Books) and changed around a scene in the novel to better fit the timeline, am about 95% settled on a title (finally!), am about 75% settled on a cover design (found an awesome font yesterday that got the design geek in me all excited), and started creating my web site. I have everything done in the Kindle version except the copyright and "About the Author" sections (I never know what to say about myself), so I'll soon be able to do a final read-through of that for formatting quirks.

All in all, it hasn't been a complete waste of a weekend.  On the other hand, I've also spent way more time than I should playing Yahtzee on my iPad. (EA Games had a sale this weekend. It was only $0.99! How could I resist?)  I still have a day left, and my plan is to get the web site closer to finished, and maybe finally get that author section done so I can start that final Kindle pass. If neither of those are inspiring enough to get my butt in gear, I may skip them and start the print formatting in InDesign instead. I know that's going to take some time, so the sooner I get started, the better.

I wish I was 100% on more of these decisions, though. I'd feel much better if I was sure of the title and cover art, but I keep going back and forth on both. Where the cover is concerned, I have 2 versions: a light and a dark. The light version uses a photo of the Titanic as it sailed away from Ireland, and while it's pretty, I worry that it looks too much like a literary fiction cover and not a paranormal/time travel/romance cover.  And while the dark cover (featuring a dark sea and iceberg) probably fits the theme of the book better, it's very dark, and I worry it won't show up well in ereaders or in thumbnail form on sites like Amazon. *sigh* I'm torn. I'm tempted to scrap them both and start over, but... ugh. I don't want to start over! So, the debate continues.

Another dilemma I'm running into involves the web site. I have a design that I think I like, but the hardest part is going to be content. What do you put on an author website when you only have one book out? (Or one book that has yet to come out?) I already have a separate blog, which I'll obviously be linking into the site when the time comes, but then what? I need content for the home page as well as the "books" page that will one day list all of my novels. For now, with just the one book, it's going to look pretty sparse.  I know I'll have a synopsis and possibly a short excerpt, as well as links to all the places it can be purchased (my goal is to have it available for all the various ereaders, iBooks, and a print version from either CreateSpace or Lulu). If I'm feeling brave, I may even tease whichever novel I decide to release next, if I decide by the time the website goes live. Outside of that, what else is there to say? It's frustrating. Maybe I'll spend some time googling around and looking at sites of other new authors, see what they have. When all else fails, research!

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Happy Birthday to Me

Note: this post was supposed to have been published yesterday (May 12). I have no idea why it didn't. I guess Windows Live Writer wasn't playing nice.

 

Today is my 35th birthday. It still feels strange to say that number. I don't feel 35. Hell, half the time I don't even feel 25! I never got to the point where I felt like I was finally a grown-up. Maybe because I don't have kids of my own?

Anyway, years ago, I decided that my life's goal was to be a published novelist by the time I was 35. So here I am... 35. Not published yet. Maybe that's why I'm jumping on the self-pub train (I refuse to call it a bandwagon, because that implies that it's a fad or short-lived trend). Well, I may not have been published by the time I turned 35, but damn it, I'm going to be published WHILE I'm 35! So I say that's good enough.

While toying around with ideas the other day, I came up with what I thought was a good plan: set the release date for my book to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Titanic's launch. I knew the ship was launched from the builder in Belfast sometime in 1911, but wasn't sure of the exact date.  If the date hadn't passed yet, I thought how perfect!  Well... the ship launched May 31, 1911.  So I may be pushing it to aim for that date.  That would give me less than 20 days to finish my edit, get the Kindle formatting flawless, get a website designed and running, start possibly doing some promotion, and get a paper version ready to go. I could maybe get the Kindle version up by then, but the rest?  I don't know. It doesn't help that I have yet to settle on a title or come up with a cover design I like. Without any of that, I can't start the website. So May 31 is out.

I discovered something in my research of this possible release date thing: you can't set a future release date for a Kindle DTP book. That's a little upsetting, to be honest. I liked the idea of having a future release date I could announce, and having the book ready to go and up on the site so people could see that it was going to be available soon.  I wasn't looking to have it sit there for months before it was released, but a few days, sure. I don't even care about doing pre-orders (I know at first my sales will be limited to my friends and family), but it would have been nice to be able to see it go up on the site and have everything there (I hear the product description doesn't always show up right away) when it's officially released. Maybe it's something they're working on, but for now, it doesn't look like you can do it.  Oh well. At lest now I know.

I'm going to spend most of the weekend finishing my edit and getting it ready for Kindle. After that, maybe I'll start on formatting it for print in InDesign. (I'd like to be able to have both versions out at the same time, since the majority of my friends/family don't have ebook readers.) I'm still debating the pros and cons of CreateSpace vs. Lulu: more research is needed. After I get that going, I can then focus on the other ebook formats. I'm torn between using SmashWords and doing each platform individually, so that requires some more research, as does iBooks.  I hear it's hard to get a book in there, so I need to do some reading around on that. Good thing I like research! (Gee, how many times can I use the word "research" in one paragraph???)

On a side note: tomorrow would have been my grandmother's 86th birthday. She's the grandma I got my pen name from, so happy birthday Grandma, and thanks for the name! :)

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The Big Edit (the latest one, at least)

This falls under the "do as I say, not as I do" category. All the advice out there about not editing your own work, but rather having a third party (preferably a neutral one) edit for you, is good. Editing your own work, no matter how good you may be, isn't the best plan. You miss things because you read what you know it's supposed to say, rather than what it actually says. I know this because I've edited my novel about 5 times now and continue to find errors. But I'm stubborn, and cheap, so I'm ignoring all that good advice and doing my own edits. I feel like I've gone through it with a fine-toothed comb by now and there isn't anything left to find. I could be wrong, and if I am I'll be the first to admit it, but like I said, I'm stubborn. (I am a Taurus, after all.)

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Title Trouble

I'm terrible at titles. When I used to write more casually, I would use song titles because they were all I could ever come up with. Now, since I'm aiming to publish my book soon, a song title would be a bad idea. Not original, for one, but most likely copyright infringement as well. As I used to work in music copyright, I have a healthy respect for it and don't want to take any chances. Besides, I want my book's title to stand out, not get confused with a song.

Up until recently, the working title for my novel was Ship of Dreams. The bulk of the plot takes place on the Titanic, so it was a fitting name—until I did an Amazon search yesterday and found more than just a couple of books with the same name. So... back to the drawing board.

I'm not entirely upset by this. I knew all along that my title wasn't very good. It was bland and unoriginal, but it fit my book, so I thought that would be all right. In a way, I guess this is a blessing in disguise: the impetus for me to get off my lazy butt and come up with something better. I'm about 75% of the way through my latest edit (mainly for Kindle formatting errors, but also a general edit as I never seem to be happy with my work and am always making changes), so maybe some turn of phrase in that last 25% will jump out at me as a good title. One can only hope, because if it doesn't, I need to start brainstorming, and as mentioned at the start of this post, I'm awful at coming up with titles. I'm almost as bad at naming characters, but at least there are baby name books and sites out there to help with that task.

At least I learned something out of this. Before you get too set on a title, do an Amazon search. See if there are other books out there with it.  If there are, are there a lot? Are there any in the same genre as yours? It's not necessarily bad for more than one book to have the same title, especially if the title is simple, but only if the books are vastly different. Otherwise you risk confusion. The same principle works with pen names. If you find that there are other writers out there that share your name (or the name you want to use), it might not be a bad idea to find another one. I made sure to search around with Allison Kraft before I chose it. Not just on Amazon, but Google in general, as well as godaddy.com (had to make sure the domain name wasn't already taken). I was toying with another surname, but found the .com was already taken. So, decision made: Kraft it was.

For anyone wondering where I got Kraft in the first place, it's a family name. I've become very interested in genealogy in the last couple of years, and thought it would be a nice way to honor my roots. If I'm not going to use my real last name (it's hard to pronounce and spell for some), it seemed like I should at least stick with something in the family, rather than picking a random name out nowhere. My grandmother was a Kraft (sadly, no relation to the cheese), and the name is close in length and alphabet to my real name, so it felt right.

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And the journey begins...

Time to dust off the ol' blog. It's been almost a year since I was first trying to land a literary agent for one of my novels, and I'm a little embarrassed at how quickly I caved in and gave up the fight. I like to think I'm not a quitter, but in this case, I was discouraged early on after reading so many agent blogs about how sick they were of getting queries on vampire novels. Well, vampires is what I usually write about, and they're in the book I was shopping around, so I decided to quit querying for the time being and see if either I could polish up my non-vampire book and try it, or wait a while and see if the vampire craze died down enough that interest might be renewed.

Well, patience has never been my strong suit. It didn't help that my novel takes place in 2012 and is centered around the centennial of the Titanic disaster. When I originally wrote it, that milestone was still years away, but now here we are just past the disaster's 99th anniversary, and my little novel is getting dangerously close to being outdated. Given how long it takes for a traditional publisher to get a new book out, I realized that even if I were to start querying again, get lucky enough to land an agent, then get lucky enough to quickly land a publisher, it would probably be much more than a year before my book saw a bookshelf anywhere. So I started researching self-publishing.

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