Self-publishing is a journey—a never-ending adventure of learning. Just when I think I have everything figured out, I discover another way to market my book, another vendor where I could sell or promote my book, another tool I could use to proof-read or edit my book and help make it the best it can be. There’s always something new to learn about the publishing platform, metadata, keywords, categories, and options like author bios, editorial reviews and selling strategies.
In the scheme of things, the time I spend actually writing is small compared to everything else I have to do to sell my book. I could hire a team of editors, proof-readers, researchers, agents and marketing specialists and still not have enough people to do everything I’d like to get done to make my book perfect and easy to find and buy. But I'm just one person.
I will talk more about the challenges of self-publishing in future blogs. Right now, the lesson is patience. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I’m still waiting on the copyright office to complete the process of officially filing my new book, MYND Control, into their database. But I realized the other day that while I’m waiting, there’s no reason I can’t be productive. So I decided to make a few needed changes to my first book, The RH Factor.
In case you’ve already read it, don’t worry. The changes weren’t major. I just corrected a few grammatical errors that were missed the first time around, cleaned up a few clunky sentences (caught by my new proof-reading software), and made some minor changes that, hopefully, improved the cover.
I also bought some ISBNs—International Standard Book Numbers. These numbers are used to uniquely identify a book from every other one in the universe. They also indicate whether the book format is a paperback, hardback, audio or ebook.
With these new ISBNs in hand, I applied them to the ebook and paperback versions of The RH Factor. Making this change will eventually allow me to sell the book on platforms other than Amazon. Now I can make it available to brick & mortar bookstores, libraries all over the country, and other ebook readers, like Nook and Kobo. Even if your local bookstore doesn’t have it on their shelves, you’ll be able to request that they order it for you. Yay!
None of the changes I made affect the story—it's exactly the same. But assigning a new ISBN meant the book had to go through Amazon’s approval process all over again. That took almost a week and during that time, sadly, my book was not available for purchase.
But the wait is over, and The RH Factor is up for sale again on Amazon in both ebook and paperback format!
There’s a lot to learn about self-publishing, and even though it’s been two years since I put my first novel up for sale on Amazon, I’m still learning. And as the marketplaces and opportunities change, I’m sure I will continue to learn. One of the most important things I’m learning is patience. And that while I’m waiting, there’s always something else that needs to be done. And that is probably something everyone can relate to.
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