52 New Things -- Week 28 -- Publish!!

Did you know you can publish anything on Amazon? You can. Well, unless it's a terrorist manifesto. They don't like that. But anything else you've written they will happily turn into a book for you.

It's kind of a lot of work, though. And you're pretty much on your own. I mean, when I was writing the book and wasn't sure where to put a comma or how to spell something, I just thought, "No biggie . . . an editor will fix that." Nope. When you self-publish, you're on your own. (Well, for a few hundred, Amazon will take care of that for you . . . or design a cover for a few more hundred . . . they'll do about anything for a big chunk of money.)

But when you're only going to make $2 per copy and you add up how many friends you have who want to read this book, you realize dropping a few hundred here and a few hundred there would make this a losing venture real fast . . . so you do it yourself.

I still think it's better than the old way of doing it though -- I was afraid I'd have to pay someone thousands of dollars and then have boxes upon boxes of books in my garage, collecting dust. Mailing individual books to a hundred people? That does not sound like a fun venture. I'm glad Amazon does the print-on-demand thing and all the shipping for me.

Another perk about the print-on-demand system? If you see a mistake, you can tell me, I can change it, and the next book that gets printed is error-free. So yeah, if you see a whoopsie in there somewhere, let me know!

I thought I'd get to set a release date . . . maybe come up with a marketing plan of some sort . . . but all the sudden, there it was, live and ready to order! So my week has kind of been a mess . . . I had to write seven papers and send a portfolio by four today to finish up my ELL endorsement, so that's kind of a mess and not exactly my best work . . . I'm leaving for a week of camp on Friday, so my guest bedroom is a mess, covered in everything I want to pack . . . I'm three weeks behind on my blog and trying to catch up on that while doing a hundred other things . . . I'm trying to put together a flier for some book signings I'm going to be doing, which I hope will be less of a mess, since other people will have a hand in it . . . and I'm generally ignoring the poor man I searched through all fifty states for. Luckily he still loves me . . . primarily because he hopes I'm going to make us rich with my $2/book profits! (I did cook for him several times this week and leave leftovers individually packed in the fridge so he won't starve while I'm gone, so I'm trying, friends.)

I had to laugh Tuesday night when the book became available on Amazon . . . I posted it on Facebook, and all of you lovely people blew up my comments and likes and made me feel so loved. And then I made dinner. And emptied the dishwasher. And reloaded the dishwasher. And cleaned the kitchen. So yeah, that "oh my gosh -- I just published a book and people are buying it!" glow lasted for approximately seven minutes before reality sucked me back. :)

Anyway . . . thanks friends, for making me feel loved. It was an amazing time of my life, and I'm excited for you to read about it. Some parts are depressing, since I was pretty bummed for a while, but mostly it's pretty humorous. I'd hop in the car and do in all again . . . minus the dating . . . because this time, the hubs would be in the passenger seat . . . sound asleep and snoring. We live a pretty exciting life. :)

(Just in case you missed it, you can click here to order!)