7 Things No One Told Me About Self-Publishing (Part 2)
This is Part 2 of a post sharing what I’ve learned from self-publishing my book The Artist’s Suitcase: 26 Essentials for the Creative Journey.
In Part 1, I shared three important lessons about self-publishing. These lessons are:
1. Give yourself at least twice as much time as you think you’ll need.
2. Don’t try to produce an e-book, print, and audio versions at the same time.
3. Set aside some funds for cover design and editing.
Now let’s take a look at four more lessons.
4. Editing takes a lot longer than you think.
In Part 1, I mentioned that Jim Woods provided edits quickly, which is true. However, he focused on developmental editing, not proofreading. Those are two different things. (I had a few other people helping with proofreading.) Developmental editing is concerned with the content, while proofreading is concerned with spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Here’s what really surprised me: A total of six people (including me) read the entire manuscript, looking for errors. I consider myself a competent writer, so I was shocked at how many mistakes we spotted. Not just a few, but dozens and dozens. Everyone who read the manuscript found mistakes that others did not. This proved to me the value of having multiple editors.
As you can imagine, going through a book (even a short one like The Artist’s Suitcase) and doing a line edit is a tedious process. Doing it several more times is even more tedious. When I finished the first complete pass, I ordered a print proof from CreateSpace, thinking I would get the book, read through it once, discover that it was now error-free, and declare it ready for publication. Wrong! It took several more tries to weed out as many errors as I could.
5. A finished book is only the starting point.
When you have a book that’s completed and available for sale, it feels like you’ve finally reached the end of a road you’ve been traveling for a long time. But it would be a huge mistake to assume that it’s time to move on to something else. Getting the book finished is not the end of a journey. It’s only the first leg of the journey.
I didn’t know up front how long it would take to get the book finished in all its forms (print, e-book, and audio), so I guessed at a launch date. I was focused on just getting the book done and didn’t think much about the book launch and the other marketing aspects. The launch would have had more impact if I would have given myself more time to work on marketing.
I once heard a popular author say that it takes a full year to properly launch a book. I initially thought that was ridiculous, but that was before trying to finish and launch The Artist’s Suitcase all within a narrow window. Now I understand what they were saying and am inclined to agree with them.
6. At some point, you have to let go.
It’s hard to let go of something you’ve created when you’re a perfectionist (as I am). You want it be the very best it can be before you release it to the world. Yet at some point you have to recognize that there will always be things you can improve, and you just have to do your best in the time you have.
George Lucas expressed a similar sentiment in a 2004 interview when the Star Wars movies were first released on DVD:
Anybody that makes films knows the film is never finished. It’s abandoned or it’s ripped out of your hands, and it’s thrown into the marketplace, never finished. It’s a very rare experience where you find a filmmaker who says, “That’s exactly what I wanted. I got everything I needed. I made it just perfect. I’m going to put it out there.” And even most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work now. They’ve got a new perspective on it, they’ve got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done.
There are still some mistakes in my book. It’s tempting to go back and fix them, but I’ve decided to leave them in there out of the principle that only God is perfect, and even our best efforts will always come up short.
7. Writing and publishing a book is more like a marathon than a sprint.
The process of taking a book from your mind to a printed page is kind of exhausting. And unless it’s a very, very short book, it’s not going to happen in a day. You have to take the long view and realize that you’ll have to put in a little work each day to make it happen.
But isn’t that how success usually happens anyway? Like the tortoise in Aesop’s fable The Tortoise and the Hare, we must realize that slow, consistent effort will beat a periodic sprint every time.
John Maxwell once said, “The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda.” You have to take the long view when writing a book. At times it will feel like you’re walking through peanut butter carrying a hundred pounds of gear. But other times it feels like you have all the energy and stamina in the world.
In the end, it’s the work that truly matters. Day in and day out, you have to show up and just do the work.
What is the hardest part of the writing process for you?
