Yesterday I spent most of the day, well from 2pm until 11pm, publishing my latest book. Its First Encounters Volume II under my other pen name Olivia Purley.
Have you ever lusted after someone, dreaming of your first night of passion? First Encounters tells short stories of men and women finally getting together with the one they have wanted.
First Encounters are steamy erotic stories with a peppering of humour
It got me thinking that there wasn’t a list of what I should be doing when I think I am ready to publish, I have put my crib sheet together over the last eighteen months. I have pressed publish sixteen times and I still have to refer to my scribbled list in my journal. Here is the list, I hope it helps you if you are going to publish, or have published and there is another thing you can do, here goes:
- I write my story.
- I let it fester, if it’s a short story, minimum of a week, I write something else and come back to it.
- I read through and check grammar, re word sentences to remove as much as possible, repetitive words.
- I read through again, checking continuity.
- I read through again, checking the flow. With this one I convert it to a .MOBI file and read I read it in massive font, turn on scroll and read it a different way. I spot more stuff.
- I send it out to my lovely betas and get their feedback, make further changes and leave it for a full twenty four hours.
- Then the editor gets a go.
- More changes.
- I upload to Amazon, GooglePlay and Smashwords, three different formatting, so I make three different versions and label them so. I have a folder for each book with all the final versions in their formats. All other versions are archived.
- Formatting is simple, download the formatting how to books from Smashwords and Amazon and follow them to the letter. I promise you that if you don’t format them to their specifications your book will ruin any hard work on cover and grammar and promotion. Take the time to learn.
- So once I have formatted them, I send them to my kindle app and iBooks app and see what they look like just in case. If there are any rogue empty pages or squished paragraphs and so on.
- Once I am happy, I upload the word document and cover.
Smashwords
You’ll need title, blurb (long and short version), decide on the price and whether you want to do a pre sale or not, Smashwords needs a date 10 tens hence. Word document .doc not docx and cover.
Smashwords will immediately publish to their site so be sure you’re ready.
They will send it off to the relevant outlets you have chosen and it takes time, be prepared to wait and wait and wait, especially if you write about sex.
Amazon
Same as Smashwords except, Amazon need four days hence for pre sale. They tend to publish within twenty four hours, make sure you are ready as you cannot change anything until its published.
Lulu
Similar to the others but be careful with the cover, you have to unpick their default cover, it is very easy not to spot the tiny font over your own cover.
GooglePlay
They want a PDF as a manuscript and will publish instantly. they have some quirky things like not sending you any email confirmations at all, you just have to keep checking to see if its there, there is no preview either. - From edited document to uploading to all sites takes about an hour and a half.
- Once uploaded, then I go to goodreads and add the book to my shelf, adding in all the exact same blurb as the other sites. Make sure it is exact, uniformity is important.
- I change the banners on social media, go to Amazon central add the book to my shelf, so readers can click on my name and link to my other books.
- Off I go to social media and tell everyone about it. I also gifted this book to a fan who reads and reviews all my books.
- I then upload all my other books again with the back page now referring to this book.Now, there are different approaches marketing, mine is to carry on writing, yours maybe different.
If you need any advice, help, detail, drop me a line, via social media or my email, I’m happy to help.
email: authorgraceharper@gmail.com
Thanks for reading
Grace
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Harper’s Motto: You will not be everybody’s favourite flavour, but that’s ok, because they will not always be your favourite flavour. Be who you want to be and you will attract the people who will support you no matter what.
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Grace Harper Books 