Carpe Diem Scroto The Book blog

 

It is with tears in my eyes that I am writing this. The book is 97% complete and is almost ready to be published.

These last few months have been some of the most difficult and stressful. I honestly understand why "professional" authors hire Literary Agents and Traditional Publishing companies. The amount of red tape and hoops that an independent author has to jump through is enough to make you go absolutely insane!

Also no one ever really talks about the out-of-pocket costs of writing a book. You have to take care of every little thing yourself. Thankfully I already had some experience with doing gig jobs and have a background in marketing, and doing product reviews and things like that, so I wasn't completely blindsided when it came to who to turn to in order to get some things done. Other things, like ISBN numbers and other book related things have all been new learning experiences and will help me in the future should I go through with publishing other books. But I really do believe that IF there is a next time that I will seek out more traditional methods of publishing.

The issues that I am facing right now with the book is getting the eBook fixed so that it will render properly across all the eBook devices and that it will render on mobile phones. But I have sent the information of to my editor and should have it taken care of soon (fingers crossed.)

 If it's not one thing its 60 others. So due to the editor taking time that we didn't have, the PR team and I decided to push back the release date until 12/8/24.

This is not a decision that I am taking lightly and am actually rather upset at the fact that it has to be done, but there are too many pieces of the puzzle and with some people who have said that they will do XYZ and then not following through, it has caused a lot of stress and anger. So, without throwing people under the bus, Im just going to say that things haven't lined up properly. 

But I have to have faith that everything happens for a reason and whatever this "reason" is, it must be something good right? If I were a more superstitious person, I would almost think that this endeavor was cursed lol. 

I can now understand how important it is to have a literary agent, because they are the ones that take care of all of this. Maybe that is where my focus for the next book is going to be. Getting it done, and then getting an agent to take care of making sure all of the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted.

So for right now this is how its playing out. 

Well, I still have yet to get the edited book back from the Editor. He sent me a message asking to extend the deadline by 3 days, so I agreed to extend it. It was supposed to be back to me by 10/16 and I agreed to extend it to 10/20, so we'll see what is going to happen from there.

Also, I have been working on the webpage for the book www.cdsthebook.com and finishing up the ordering page, and it looks like I am going to be able to offer the book on Apple Books, Google Books, Kobo, Barns & Noble, and Amazon. Barns and Noble and Amazon will have both the eBook and the paperback, the others will only have eBook. The amount of hoop jumping I'm having to do in order to get these services setup has been interesting and can see why people suggest having a Literary Agent. But I am a hands-on type of person, and I like to figure things out the best I can, without having to pay out of pocket. That's why I use free services like Weebly, Square, Talkatone, and other such services. One, it helps me keep costs down, and two, I get to learn how to do things on my own. I can do basic HTML coding from scratch and type out the programing that I need, but when it comes to adding JAVA, CSS, and other programming languages, I rather use a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) so that way it looks more professional and not a website designed in 1996.

So, with everything else going on in my personal day to day, it's kind of nice to let things get worked on in the background so that I can focus on other projects.

Well, I just at this very moment submitted the manuscript to the editor and everything is now under review, and he will begin working on it right away.

I am so flipping excited and nervous. My whole body is buzzing right now, and I think that it's just the adrenaline of pulling the trigger and making such a large investment in myself.

Now I've got to purchase my ISBN number and get everything submitted to KDP and Barns and Noble. 

Well I've been stressing about my book as per usual and a venue for the book launch party. Well I was given a rental space for 3hrs at a local community center. 

 Well by this time I would have liked to announce that the book was submitted for its final editing and formatting. However, as luck would have it, I got a message from the illustrator that they had some technical difficulties, and needed another week or so past the deadline that I originally gave them. So, of course the final editor has been blowing up my inbox wondering where everything is, because he has other projects on his desk. So I have a meeting this coming Tuesday with the artist and we are going to discuss the new deadline and hopefully have everything turned into the editor by 10/10 and he'll hopefully have it back to me by 10/20 for the publication date of 11/15 This is why I always give myself an extra few weeks on any project that I do, especially if I'm including other people.

That aside, I have been working on getting other projects up and going, and working on promotional materials and trying to get a venue set up for the book launch party. I have a lot of money going out and not that much coming in at the moment, but hey they say "you have to spend money to make money" right? I'm just so thankful for all the help, support, and well wishes that have come along the way. And I will be making my final adjustments to the Thank You section of the book before I submit it to the editor. 

I don't think that I've been so nervous in a long time. I just hope that it all goes according to plan. 

Well, it is officially September, and the book is scheduled to be published in November. I'm sitting here going over the logistics of everything and trying to figure out what needs to be done and what needs my attention right now, and what I can put off for another week or so. I'm not typically one for procrastination, but with other people's hands in the pot, I have to await to see the final results to go from there. 

I still have tremendous faith that this is going to all somehow work itself out. I cannot allow the stress to get to me and to stop with the finish line so close at hand.