First Day as an Indie Author

Last night the clock ran out on the last agent with my manuscript. This morning I woke up to the beginning of my official career as an Indie Author.

There were over thirty emails in my inbox that are just related to this new decision. Forty by the end of the day. For day one, that’s not too shabby.

When I first started researching indie publishing it seemed pretty easy. Write a book. Business plan. Market plan. Go.

But the more I researched, the more I realized my learning curve was so steep – it looked more like a brick wall. I couldn’t actually see the top of the curve from the bottom of the process.

So I doubled my efforts to learn and it’s still only a fraction of what I need to know.

I’ve been learning stuff about rights and royalties I never even dreamed. Printing paper quality. Formatting. Industry standard book sizes, weights, margins and ink. Distribution routes. Printing. Storage. Print on demand to avoid storage. Then skipping print on demand for the crazy politics of boycotting certain indie authors and Amazon. Back to small press. ISBN registrations. Library of Congress. Royalties. Cover design formats. Purchase rights. Subsidiary rights. Trademark. Copyright. Editors. Formatters. Video production. Fund raising. Music rights. Market trends. Market niches. Marketing technique. Publicity. Reviews. Pre-launch buzz.

I could go on for another half page or so.

The weirdest part is, I’m really loving this steep climb. The challenge has actually been very exhilarating. There’s a lot of creativity involved in this kind of planning as well.

So far, my days are booked from top to bottom. Business taking up about half and editing and writing taking up the other half. I rarely shower anymore. Gross, but true. It took almost two hours to answer emails this morning while I was still in my pajamas. But I had a stupid-happy grin on my face the whole time.

Things are suddenly moving so fast, I feel like I’m having to run to keep up. The book is taking on a life of its own. Growing up. Going off to college. Like it doesn’t need me anymore.

People have been tremendously generous with their time, energy, advice and encouragement. I feel truly blessed to know so many talented and giving folk! Many of whom I’ll be able to plug soon and post links to their work.

And although today was only day one as an indie author – I was about to crawl in to bed exhausted, beat. One last time I checked my email, and there was a set of sketches from the artist who is doing my cover. Her concept designs just blew my mind and I saw the main character of my book through the eyes of another person for the first time.  

I started smiling, and thought, this crazy plan might actually work.