Once I decided to return to self-publishing, I took a hard look at my book. There was a lot that needed to be changed. I wish I had done everything more correctly the first time, but that’s the nature of self-publishing. When you are trying to figure everything out yourself, you are bound to make mistakes. However, you can always fix those mistakes and improve.
I sought out more resources to learn from than I did before. I already saw a few videos from authors on YouTube, and I watched more of them. The videos really changed the game for me. I had read articles about self-publishing before, but I didn’t always understand them that well. I am a visual learner, so watching an actual person talk about and show different aspects of self-publishing helped immensely.
The first decision I made was to re-edit the book and change whatever I needed or wanted to. Hardly anyone read the first edition, so I didn’t see any harm in re-writing sections. Some details were changed, others were expanded, and a few were cut out completely. The basic story is still all there. By this time, I had spent more time in my world, and I came up with new ideas. I wanted to make this edition something I could finally build the rest of the series on.
Certain names changed slightly because I wanted them to be as unique as possible. This wasn’t always easy. I looked at a map that I had drawn for an old story to see what I could use. I also put sounds together until something sounded like a name. I had used this process for the other editions. Then when I thought I had something, I would look it up, and it was a character from World of Warcraft, or a real place, or a real name. Sometimes I was really attached to a name, so I just changed the spelling until it didn’t pull up any results on Google. That’s why some of them have strange spellings.
I also changed the series name to something that hadn’t been used before. I realized that Rise had been used by both books and a television series, so I wanted a name that would just show my stuff when people looked it up.
When I was editing, one book that really helped was Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. It taught me how to set up and write my book in a more professional way. I highly recommend reading it. I had planned to go through the book and do a quick edit before I sent it to the editor. I only had a couple of weeks and ended up catching a cold that hit me hard. Somehow, I still got everything done despite having horrible fatigue for over a week.
Another book that really helped me was The Emotion Thesaurus. I struggle with trying to think of ways to show how a character is feeling. I know what emotion they have, and I want to use a physical response, but I don’t always know what the response should be. I was even trying to research body language, but I couldn’t find the information I was looking for. The Emotion Thesaurus is an index of emotions and what types of responses a person would have so you can get ideas for how you want your character to show their emotion. I will sometimes even come up with a response by myself and curiously check to see if it is on the list.
I also have a textbook that I got in college called The Bedford Handbook. This book covers basic and formal writing rules. Although its main purpose is to help you learn how to write essays and research papers, I found that it is also a great resource for writing fiction, as well. I took it for granted at first, but when I actually read through it, I learned so much. My writing became instantly better.
Hiring an editor was scary. I finally decided to do it after watching a panel about editing on the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) YouTube channel. I wasn’t sure if the editor would say that my writing sucked or that the story wasn’t good enough. My experience with my editor, Kathy Bosman, went very well. My story actually sounded like a book at the end of the process. When you are self-publishing, definitely hire an editor or editors. You would be surprised how many mistakes you miss when you try to do all of the editing yourself. And remember, their job is to help you make your book the best it can be. The process can be nerve-wracking, especially if you are new to publishing, but it is worth it.
The next step was re-doing the cover. I researched a lot of places and decided on MiblArt because they offered affordable prices, and their portfolio looked great. Once again, the experience was fantastic. I didn’t really know what I wanted for the cover, yet they were able to take my vague concept and create a beautiful design that matches the theme of the book perfectly. For more about this, check out the How I Got My Book Cover Designed post.
I didn’t know if I would include a map in the book. I love fantasy maps. The first ones I saw were Tolkien’s maps of Middle-earth, and I fell in love with them. I forgot about it when I published the first edition. I knew I wanted one this time, but I’m not an artist or a cartographer. I wasn’t sure if I could even draw a map that would at least be good enough for an artist to make pretty. I also wasn’t sure if I could afford it or who to work with.
I asked my cover designer. They said they could do the illustration, and it was for a lot cheaper than I was expecting. The very few other mapmakers I found were more expensive, and I wasn’t sure about some of them. It is nice to keep all the art in one place anyway. So, I decided to go ahead with it. I sat down and drew a very rough version. It’s not perfect. Lythannen is off scale to the rest of the map. That’s what happens when an author tries to be a cartographer. MiblArt made it into a professional-looking map, and I love that I made the decision to include it. More locations will be added to the map as I come up with them in future books. I cover this more in the How I Made the Map for My Book post.
I thought I did a good job with formatting the first time, but I wanted to re-work it. The first step was actually putting the series name on the title pages, so I was happy for that to be there. I would have loved the half title and the title page to match the text on the cover, but it didn’t work out. I researched margins since KDP’s recommendation did not work out, so I got that set up better.
I decided on a simple and clean format. In Microsoft Word, the more things you mess with in the document, the more chances it has to glitch, which means you may have to copy and paste everything as just text into a new document and re-do the formatting. I had to do that a few times, and yes, it’s annoying. I followed the KDP formatting guide for the most part. Flip through a few books and you’ll find many variations, so you can decide what works best for you.
I formatted the Kindle book in Kindle Create, a free program offered by Amazon to format eBooks, paperbacks, comics, and more. The program works really well and gives you a lot of customization options. I wish I could use it to format EPUBs. I was able to match all my formatting to what the paperback looked like.
If you use Kindle Create, the uploading and saving process has changed. You can only upload files from and save projects to the folders the program shows. When you upload your manuscript, you need to temporarily save it in, for example, the downloads folder. The same goes for images. Take note where your project is ultimately saved. You can move the final kpf file if you want to.
I set up a website. I went with WordPress through Bluehost. I have a better understanding of how it works now, but it was very confusing at first and left me wanting to cry. I found out later that Bluehost has a series of manuals called The Blueprint Series. Look that up if you are getting started with WordPress through them. I don’t know if the information would also help with using WordPress on other sites. I kept the design of the website simple and easy to navigate. I would love to have it professionally designed in the future, but for now, I’m happy with it.
Through all the learning I was doing, I set up a few accounts that made my life easier. Linktree allows me to display all my links on one professional page. Books2Read provides universal book links for eBooks, and Booklinker provides universal Amazon links that I am using for paperback versions. You can also get a universal link for your Amazon Author pages at Booklinker. Canva and Book Brush help tremendously to create graphics.
Now that I could create graphics, I could finally post the kind of stuff that I wanted to on my social media accounts, especially Instagram. And I had a professionally made banner from MiblArt. I was able to cut out pieces of it to use for profile pictures. My social media was finally what I wanted it to be.
When I released the second edition of “Reawakened Flames” this time, I felt a lot better about it. I still hold the book and can’t believe that it’s mine. I keep thinking it must be someone else’s. Is it perfect? No. But it’s still mine. My dream since junior high of publishing a book finally came true. I’m excited to finally have the foundation set to build the rest of the Sparks Shall Rise series on and to keep improving myself as a self-published author…