Self-pubbing a gritty fantasy romance

... and here's how this thread is different: I'm starting it much earlier in the process.

I committed to this in a blog post in May. I wanted a freelance editor, a proofreader, a professional cover artist, and online promotions.

I ran a Kickstarter project in July. It came thisclose to not working -- to be honest, I wouldn't recommend Kickstarter unless you already have "a following" -- whatever that is. But I have the money I need to produce this.

I sent my manuscript to my freelance editor this past Monday, along with the money.

Then I found out the cover artist I wanted was booked through the end of the year. I went to deviantART.com's forums (and wondered why it had to be Google who told me that deviantART has forums) and posted a job offer with a brief description of the book, a link to the sample on my blog, and my budget.

I spent the afternoon trying to keep up! And surprisingly, got a lot of hits on my blog page.

I had my pick. The rates were such that I could also pick up some more art that I can use for promotional materials. I insisted on a contract with each of the artists -- only one was pro enough to send me their own. That's something to bear in mind.

My arbitrary publication date for Disciple, Part I: For Want of a Piglet is November 15, 2012. Stay tuned to see if that moves...and what other developments emerge...

Update

I've gotten my feedback from my freelance editor -- the wonderful Dr. Debra Doyle -- which included a line edit (everybody needs a good line edit) and structural critique. My brain is burbling about how I want to apply her advice.

Of my three artists, one has turned in a final file (I love it) and the other two have sent preliminary sketches (they look great.) They need more time, but that's okay because there's still plenty of time in the budget.

I've been reading about using InDesign to generate both print and e-book layouts. I've been reading about the underlying HTML markup in e-books too -- I was kinda surprised to find out that e-books are not as complicated as you might think. No worse than building a web page from scratch.

And I've been following this forum. It's been making me wonder if I should slide Smashwords down my priority list and go to B&N, Sony, etc. individually -- I'm not relishing the idea of hashing my layout through Word (okay, a bit of graphic designer snobbery there) just for the easy distribution. Any thoughts on that?

InDesign vs. hand-coding HTML: we have a winner. Blog post here.

Short version: HTML kicked InDesign's ass. Shame on Adobe.

I'm a contributor at Unicorn Bell, and this week I'll be talking about self-publishing. First post is here.

I will also have an index of posts at my blog, if you're reading this sometime in the future...

My cover art is in! If you haven't already seen it, you can trace the evolution of my cover over in the Art & Design forum.

Cover reveal will be on my blog this weekend. I'm going to be brave and try my first giveaway, too.

I'm probably the last person to figure this out, but I'm really impressed by how easy Rafflecopter.com is to set up a giveaway.

I did it. My files were deemed good to go by Createspace's software, so I clicked Publish. KDP gave me the thumbs up so I clicked Publish there too.

Now I'm in the lag time countdown. Time to start deploying to other platforms: B&N, Kobo, etc.

I've sent out some ebooks to reviewers and to fulfill Kickstarter obligations, and I've been told the ebook looks good. I'm wondering whether conversion is a service I could offer. Would $50 be reasonable to convert a novel-sized text file to MOBI, EPUB, etc?

I ended up using jEdit (freeware) to mark up the text file with HTML -- basically a lot of search and replace -- and build a simple CSS, and then Calibre handled the metadata, conversion, created the TOC, etc.

I'm happy with how the appendix turned out, especially.

Guido's how-to pages were very clear and helpful.

It's not difficult if HTML doesn't scare you. But some people aren't up for that.

Those little boogers over at Amazon didn't tell me my paperback sales page is up! Got to keep on top of these guys.

I made my big announcement over at the book blog, so we'll see what happens next. Good thing I'm busy enough that I don't have time to hit refresh constantly

Time for an update...

• The Amazon ebook page went live on Monday the 15th.
• I've spent a week and a half arguing with B&N's verification system, and gave up trying to link any income that might happen there to my business tax number. I'll just have to have it reported under my SSN.
• Kobo put me up just fine.
• Wrestling with Apple's iBooks verification system.
• Sony and Diesel can only be reached through Smashwords, so they're not a priority right now.
• Which leaves Drive Thru Fiction and All Romance as potential venues to explore.

I've done very little promotion -- basically just posting on my blog -- and Amazon's sold six ebooks (one returned).

AND (sorry, hit post by accident)

I set up a Goodreads giveaway which has been a nice source of ego strokes. It went live on Monday and I've racked up 298 entries so far. I know people use their To Read list just to keep track of things that looked vaguely interesting, but it's nice to see that number climbing too.

We'll see what happens when my blog tour goes down in November. I'm starting to plan one for January, too, because I'll need to run another Kickstarter campaign to fund the editing and such for Disciple, Part II.