I’d like to thank the Fantasy Writer for letting me add my thoughts to the blog first and foremost. Now, on to my first blog post about how my initial launch is going.
The Freakout
I have signed myself up to do something potentially stupid, which is to edit and publish my first ever completed book by Oct 31. If I had made this line in the sand back in January, that wouldn’t be so bad, but I”m trying to get it all done in 45 days. As of this post, it is 33 days from now.
There are a ton of things that I need to complete before I can release the book. Even more than I had realized, and as a part-time job right now I am finding setting up my author platform and getting ready for this release is a full-time gig. Intellectually I knew this but it’s amazing how badly I underestimated the effort necessary.
So raise your hand if you hate to show people your creative side until “it’s ready”. Well, no one can see your hand up but you’re not alone. My draft is a hot mess so I am freaking out about this self-imposed publishing deadline. But I refuse to change it unless I absolutely have to.
There is a lot that needs to be done before I am ready to hit that publish button and send my first work out into the wild all alone, but when I stop to breath there is a lot that I have accomplished.
What I have completed:
- A professional email and domain.
- I was going to use another one that I owned but my gut told me it wasn’t that professional. And it was a long name that while easy to remember, people like easy things and typing out a twenty-plus word long domain name is not easy.
- Facebook Author page is staged
- Book 1 cover is awesome!
- Some small things I’d change, maybe – but I am going to roll with it and see how it does.
- Did I mention that I picked up a cover that I love and received great feedback?
- Ready to upload and publish my preorder on Amazon.
- I have beta readers
- I finished my reader magnet
- I thought this list was longer.
The list of things I need to do is really too long to go into details so here are the things I need to get done this week.
- Finish editing my book so I can get it out to my beta readers. I am 50% done, so there are only 40k words or so left to go.
- Complete my facebook page.
- Setup my newsletter.
- Setup my website.
It’s a lengthy post already so I’ll end with this today. I’d like to say all the work I have done this point was been 100% focused on getting Book 1 out the door but it hasn’t. In late July, another opportunity writing presented itself and I have been working on that as well. It wasn’t until TFW (The Fantasy Writer) challenged me to release this book with theirs that I got serious about my own work. So I’m working double-time and I’ll be talking about how that has affected my release.