Yup… I wrote a book, but alas… I am lazy… and cheap. So that’s a catch 22. I tried for a bit trying to get an agent interested in taking me on, but none of them really seemed interested in me. Then I decided to try and maneuver through the arcane steps involved with submitting manuscripts to publishers… but that’s hard. Every one of them has a different set of rules for submitting. So being lazy I decided to self publish through Lulu.com. It was a pretty simple process, change your document to the right size, submit, design a simple cover and hit the publish button.
Then… The what do I do next thing… Well, being cheap (and necessarily so, I’m currently unemployed and my wife is a student…) I couldn’t afford to buy any of the premium services available at Lulu. So I have a cover that looks like a ten year old did it and I edited the book myself. Now I’ve come to the realization that people are actually buying this and it’s not that great. I don’t like to disappoint people so now I’m going to have to get the book edited (a friend has volunteered) and redesign the cover as well as go through all the steps to make sure the ebook will get published on Amazon. Fun stuff…
The sad part is, I don’t care if it sells, but I do. I don’t know how to describe what I’m feeling but I’m pretty sure the Germans have a word for it. Not expecting much, but also hoping for some kind of affirmation from a complete stranger. Kind of a way of saying your hundreds of hours of work weren’t for nothing.
But truthfully, when you get right down to it, I just wanted to tell a story, and I did, and if anyone wants to take part in it they can…
So I’ve come to the realization that if I actually want to sell any books then I’ll have to learn a little about self marketing… more work. Gahhh… Harvey was right.