I’m classified in the project management world as a “Director.” That means I like checklists, I like seeing things get marked as complete on that checklist, and I am okay with incomplete work that I can fix later if it means we keep making progress. These are good qualities sometimes. Not so good at other times. Publishing a book is one of those times.

Plan Ahead

For example, these are not good qualities when you are at the last step of submitting a manuscript to the publishing company that is going to produce the eBook and the print-on-demand paper books of your first ever finished book. That is not a good time to start reading about “what is a long description” of a book…which is what I just did for the past three hours. I got it done, though, but it’s probably not as good as it could have been.

I spent about a week getting feedback from goodreads.com on my “blurb” (the little summary on the back of books that tells you all about what you’re going to read). That was very helpful. I got no feedback on my long description. I tried to include keywords, but then it felt awkward, so I took them out. That is bad marketing, by the way. The keywords are how people find books. We’ll see what happens with that. I think I can change long descriptions later on if I want (I think…but that’s the Director part of me talking, fix it later if we can keep going now).

Anyway, today was stressful for me. I am using bookbaby as my indie publishing helper. They do a bunch of stuff (for a fee, of course, but seriously, I don’t have the ability to design a book cover, so I need help), but not everything that I hoped. I really wanted someone that would give me feedback on what I am asking for, like my cover design and my short description, and so on. They don’t do that. I guess there’s probably liability in there, and potentially contention with the authors who think they know everything.

Here’s what I’m excited about, even though I have a headache now, my book is going to be published. That is crazy.