Several people (well, at least two) have asked me to keep them abreast of my self-publishing adventure so here goes.

All weekend long I told myself Monday was the day I would finally do something about republishing. I planned to log into my account on CreateSpace and download one of their templates so that I could format my manuscript for print.  If you’ve ever used a template you know they can be tricky. The easiest way is a Select All > Copy and Paste from your doc into the template.  But it certainly isn’t without risks. I was looking at least a couple of days of insuring that the formatting held.

Then I had an email from my buddy Cinda MacKinnon who successfully self-published her award-winning debut novel (A Place in the World) a few years back.  She invited me to her house for tea and advice and said she had a couple of great books on the subject of self-publishing. Always a believer that you can never have enough knowledge about a subject, I quickly accepted and I’m glad I did.

I won’t go into the subject of our chit-chat as it involved grandchildren and elderly parents, a common theme for those of us in the “sandwich generation.” Eventually we did get around to self-publishing. This is a book she highly recommended:

Boy was she right. The author rates a bevy of publishers in the “self-pub” market by the following criteria:

• Shenanigans lurking in legal contracts that could bite you in the butt (this alone would be worth the price of the book)
• Royalty schemes designed to make publishers more money and you less
• The quality of books published (as expected, you get what you pay for)

Example of a royalty scheme to be avoided.

According to the author, CreateSpace is in the “Pretty Good” category.

Oh no!!!  Panic struck. Was I about to make the mistake of a life time?  (okay I already made that mistake)

No one wants to settle for Pretty Good when Outstanding might be possible, right?  Only as expected the Outstanding were full service companies, prepared to take your book from editing to print, even throwing in some marketing assistance. My books have already been edited at least three times. All I needed was print and publish, right? (here that pernicious worm creeps to ear and whispers:”maybe not.”)

The other book Cinda recommended, The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published, covers “How to Write It, Sell It and Market It . . . Successfully.”  I’ll read it tonight and report any interesting insights tomorrow.

So much for day one.  I have to remind myself of this fact: I’m not Methuselah, even though I might feel like him.  Eventually I better get to it – I can see they’re loading up the Ark already.