Here it is, my first teaser for my upcoming book, “May I Have Your Attention Please,” which will hopefully be available for sale in late March or early April. It all depends on when it gets back to me from the copy editor, and how many corrections need to be made! Then I have to fumble through the formatting for both e-book and paperback and hope it all turns out the way I want it! But at least, by the end of next week, you will all know what to look for as far as a cover when you are searching for my book on Amazon. Soon.
So not a long post today. I am busy writing away on book 6 in the series, and I also completed a 5035-word side story for book 5. It was fun! Now, I am concentrating on making videos for TikTok and posts on my face book author page, to promote the cover reveal. My designer made some nice graphics for me, and I look forward to sharing them. I am also spending an ungodly amount of time on TikTok and Facebook following people, so they follow me back. I am close to 500 followers on Facebook, which is hard to do, because Facebook puts restrictions on you when you try to follow pages too quickly. They think you’re a bot. I mean, it’s great that they check for these things, unless it’s happening to you. I get logged off of my page at least 20 times per day lately. Find followers, Facebook tells you. But don’t do it too fast, even though we didn’t tell you this before you started! TikTok limits how many people you can follow, but you can come back shortly after and follow more. I’m at about 2200 followers on TikTok. Please be one of them! Oh, also, I was restricted from Instagram, and I have no idea why, except for not using it for months. I had to send them a selfie of me holding a paper with numbers on it to prove I was actually me. Ugh, I hardly ever post anything on there anyway, but I thought it might be fun to put my cover reveal teasers there. Not so fun after all!
Don’t let the title fool you. I have no idea what I’m talking about. A little more than a year ago, if you told me I would be on a path to publishing my first novel in a series, I would have said you were crazy! But here I am, hopefully, about three months from completing the only real item I have ever had on my bucket list: publishing a book. Actually, it’s been a goal for me since way before bucket lists were even a thing!
So how does one even write a book? Well, that’s a silly question. One does one of several things: you can get a notebook and a pen, and do it the old-fashioned way, by giving yourself hand cramps by writing it in cursive. This has many advantages, since you can do it anywhere, even in the bathtub if you’re not overly splashy. But the cramp thing…and eventually you’ll have to type it all into the computer anyway, unless you find someone who can read your scrawl and do it for you. So doing on the computer seems to make more sense unless you are really, really old school. I opt for the computer. You can save stuff, you can delete instead of crossing out or erasing, and as long as you are using “the cloud,” you can pick up your writing anywhere at any computer. I’m on a laptop right now at a coffee shop, and you can’t do that with a PC. Oh, you can also record or use voice recognition software.
Next thing you need to do is write. And make sure it doesn’t suck too bad. This is the easy part for me. I just sit and let it all flow from my head to my fingers and to the keyboard. But say you don’t know how to write, or you don’t have ideas? I’d say take some classes and see if you even like to write. I love it, but some people love olives. Ew.
So, now you’ve written down everything. You’ve written a book! Congratulations! Now someone will just somehow knock on your door and tell you that they have magically heard of your brilliant manuscript, and they would like to publish it for the whole world to see! End of dream sequence, and back to reality! So, pretty much none of the writers I have gotten to know have any instinct for what to do next, and the information, although readily available if you’ve ever heard of Google, is overwhelming and confusing. There are so many choices of what to do next. Do you want to have your book published by a huge publishing house, become the biggest writer of all times, and make millions on your work? Of course you do! Until you learn that so do millions of other people, and there are only so many slots out there for new, famous authors. And if no one has heard of you, your chances are pretty slim. To get a publisher, you need an agent. To get an agent, you need to send out queries, lots and lots of queries. I mean, hundreds of them. And then you get the joy of receiving hundreds of rejection letters. I have a very fragile ego. I feel like it is a personal slight if my cat doesn’t come when I call him. Cat people, you understand. So, I decided to skip the queries. Actually, I sent exactly one. And never even heard back. And that’s when I heard there was another option.
Self-publishing. So, what was my first thought about self-publishing, besides the inevitable “only losers and bad writers self-publish?” It was “how do I self-publish???” Then, I felt helpless because I didn’t even know where to start. Time started to go by. People kept telling me that I should do something with my completed manuscript. So, what did I do? I wrote four more manuscripts! Now I have a series, sitting in files on my laptop. But then things started to get interesting. First, I met another author, and we exchanged stories to beta read. Ok, that was fun. Then, my brother got me a book by an author local to him about indie writing. Eh, okay, I don’t really like non-fiction, but I gave it a look. Then I took a nap. Then, I contacted my first cousin once removed to ask a question about sushi restaurants in the 80s in New York City and he told me about someone he knew that had self-published several books. He gave me her contact information, and that changed everything. This author was/is amazing! She has all versions of presence on social media, and I started to follow all of it. She had videos about how to self-publish. I ate them up! I ordered her book. It was beautiful! And it was good. And I wanted to be just like her. So, I started to do everything she was doing. I kind of want to be her. If she is reading this, just kidding.
So, here are some of the things I have learned about self-publishing:
Join an online group of people helping each other out with self-publishing, like the Self-Publishing Support Group on Facebook. It’s the best move I ever made around publishing
Read your work over and over and over again
Read your work again
get other people to read your work (alpha readers for the first draft, and beta readers for the almost-final draft)
make changes based on what people advised, but don’t compromise your integrity. Someone might hate something in your book, but that doesn’t mean you have to get rid of it. But sometimes, your readers have really great ideas!
This is where things get really tricky. There are lots of things to do after your words are the way you want them. First, it’s always a really good idea to look at other books in your genre and see how yours compares. You’ll want to make a lot of creative decisions about your book, so see what else is out there.
Get your book professionally edited. You can get an editor to review your content, another to check your spelling, grammar, and flow, and another as a proofreader. Beta readers can take care of some of this stuff, but it’s a good idea to get at least a copy editor, who can see things that everyone else misses. Editing will probably be the most expensive part of self-publishing. You pay per word. The longer your book, the more you pay.
Complete your cover art, or hire someone to do it for you. You can use original art, but you can also get a cover designer to complete the whole thing for you so you don’t have to worry about dimensions and all that. Just make sure the designer is very clear on what you want. What type of cover to you want? Check out other covers in your genre to see what sells!
Formatting is crucial to make your self-published book look professional. You can format yourself using any one of several programs. I’m just using Word right now, but there are some products that are much more sophisticated, so do your homework. There are lots of thing to format, including titles, subtitles, headers, subheaders, page numbers, footers, images, front matter, back matter, etc. There are tons of vidoes on You Tube to help you to figure out how to do these things on your own. If you don’t think you can do it yourself, hire someone who knows what they are doing, to do it for you.
If you don’t know someone personally who you can hire to do all of these great things for you, you can use some websites already set up for this purpose. I used Reedsy to find my editor, and there’s also Fiverr. The nice thing about these options is that the folks on the site have already been vetted, and you can see what work they have already produced along with their resumes. If you find someone by another means, be really careful, and make sure you have some sort of signed contract with the expectations of both parties clearly stated. It’s heartbreaking to get scammed at this part of your publishing journey.
When you have your cover image, editing is completed, and formatting is exactly how you want it, you can then load your PDFs to the publisher/distributor. Do TONS of homework about who you want to use and ask questions of your support group. The main ones I have seen being used are IngramSpark and KDP, but even they have tons of options. You want to look at your options for hardcover, paperback, digital, and possibly audio versions.
One thing that you might not expect (no one does) is that your book will not sell itself. It requires marketing, unless you are already the most popular bestselling author ever known to Earth, and even then, you have to market. You will need to start marketing long before your work is released. There are many ways to market. Some are free, and some will cost you some money. Social media is free. Make sure to start author pages on all the social media platforms that you can stand, and then post to them, a lot. It’s free. And it gets the word out. Pay attention to the audience you want to attract. You’ll find more seasoned adults on Facebook, but if you are trying to sell to teens and young adults, TikTok is the way to go. Get over your stage fright and make some catchy videos! They don’t all have to be about your book; they just have to be engaging and attract people to following you. Other free things you can do are newsletters, blogs, and podcasts.
If you have a marketing budget, you can run ads on Facebook, or Amazon, or whatever works for you. You can start a personal website with your own domain name. Some people like to sell their books off of their own site, or just use it for updates and information. When you know your book will become available, you can schedule book signings or release parties to get the ball rolling. Get some swag for giveaways or raffles. Get yourself some interviews. One good way to get publicity is to sign up for book awards. Think of how nice your book cover would look with an award on it!
What do you charge for your book? Again, turn to books in your own genre and find some that area a similar length. Then just charge whatever you want.
Get advance copies of your book when available and find readers to read them. Then have them leave reviews for the book on Goodreads and Amazon. Ask everyone you know to leave reviews. Reviews are free ads for your book.
Make your (Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, etc.) author page the most beautiful it can be. Look to see what is available for you to make it great. Amazon has A+ Content. Look it over and see if it’s for you.
Make sure the world is aware of your release date. they can’t buy if they don’t know it’s there. Make a lot of noise. Squeaky wheel, etc.
Revel in the fact that you are now a published author and try not to have imposter syndrome. You are a real, accomplished author. Congratulate yourself. You deserve it.
Now, write the next book in your series, and start it all again. Keep in mind, the more you publish, the more you sell. Series sell. You will have repeat buyers.
This is by no means an all-inclusive list. There are other things you can do, like get a logo, or a marketing package, or hire a public relations professional…but not everything is for everyone. But I wish I’d had a list of things to expect on the first day I started writing. It would have helped to move things along a lot faster. And if even one person sees this list and finds it helpful, it’s a big win. For all of us.
This is what I look like when I am writing in the coffee shop and I find out the wifi is down.
I love to write, but sometimes, writing doesn’t love me back. Take last week. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and of course things were a bit hectic. Then I had plans to go to a friend’s house for lunch on Saturday. I planned to spend my afternoon on Sunday writing at the local coffee shop (they have the best chia pudding, and music I like playing in the background), so I packed up my laptop, wrapped myself up in my warmest winter wraps, and headed out to the car. I waited in line for my chia pudding and herbal iced tea for about 10 minutes. Then I sat down, situated myself at the counter near the power outlet, and opened my computer. I clicked on my most recent work in progress (known in the author world at WIP), and waited for it to load. I got a message on my screen…”loading, loading, loading…” I took my first spoonful of chia pudding, savored its deliciousness, and waited. Then, much to my dismay, I overheard the barista speaking to a customer. “Our wifi is down,” they said, “and it’s not likely to come back up today.” So, my document would just continue to try to load indefinitely. I swore quietly into my hibiscus iced tea with one packet of stevia and fumed. I was going to write for an hour or so, then complete a blog entry. Grr. The best laid plans. So, what does one do when one cannot open one’s document in Google Documents? One reads their previous FINISHED stories on Word. What can I say? I’m the biggest fan of my old (read: written before last week and still unpublished) books (I think my fourth one is the best)!
When I bought my current laptop, I loaded all of my documents and files, which had been saved in a backup drive by the good folks at the Best Buy Geek Squad, into my new device. And I was very happy to see my first novel. Well, that’s if you don’t include the handwritten ones from junior high. Those still count, but those will just be for my own personal perusal, okay? So, I started to read the novel that I had started more than 18 years ago. And you know what? It was pretty good! I was surprised. All these years, I had thought I would have to go back and edit the living daylights out of it to make it halfway decent, but it wasn’t so bad. I mean, I’ve learned a lot in life since the days when I first started that novel, but the concept was still sound, and the dialog was compelling (at least I think so). I thought maybe I could change enough of it to make one of the characters become one of my McKinney High Class of 1986 grown-up kids, but as I went along, I learned that Maya and Tyler (I love those names) really needed to have their own, separate story. So, I decided that they would. It would be a stand-alone book and not part of my current series. Until, ugh, the worst thing happened. I tried to open the second half of the book so I could see how it ends (Ha, I knew how it ended…it actually needs one more chapter to wrap up), and all of the chapters were in Works. Or maybe Perfect Works (different from Word Perfect). So, I called for reinforcements: the family members who know computer stuff. I am not included in that group. And they offered to help. So, I sent them the files and they made assurances that they could figure out how to convert them to be read and edited in Word. Well, it turns out even they were stumped, and they do this crap for a living! So…either I find someone else who can do it (“Hello, Geek Squad?”) or I plan to rewrite half of the book that I mostly wrote over 18 years ago. So, for now, novel number one sits in virtual obscurity.
And you may ask why I never finished the story of Maya and Tyler. Good question. For anyone who has ever been pregnant, you may understand. Babies are born with brains. And somehow, they have to grow those brains in utero. So where do they get the material for their brains? You guessed it, from their gestational provider’s brain. In this case, me. My darling child sucked out every last bit of creativity I had, until I had to actually drop out of my writing group, because I had no capacity to bring in any new material from week to week. It all paid off, I guess, as my child is very smart and creative (we all know where she got those traits). But what was my excuse after my child was born? Uh, 18 years of raising a child. I don’t think I need to say anything further.
But then, one dreary night in mid-November, 2021, in the midst of the COVID Omicron variant outbreak, I had a dream. Yes, an actual dream. And the dream was compelling. It led me to think, “what if.” What if things had gone differently for me when I was a teenager? What if I had gone to this school instead of that school? What would my life be like? And then a floodgate came open, and I started writing about Sally. Soon after, I realized that Sally’s life was nothing like my life would have been in that situation, but so what? Then, James came into being. Then her friends captivated me, and I needed to tell their stories, too. So here we are one year later, floodgates still open wide, nearing the end of book number 5.
So, I guess I say all this to say, nothing can really stand in my way of writing. Let the wifi be down. Let my mind be decimated by growing a zombie brain-eater inside my own body. Let the computers crash and the sky fall down. But nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is going to get in the way of me completing my stories. So, I hope you enjoy them.
If you are interested in the best Chia Pudding in NE Portland, Oregon, leave me a comment and I’ll tell you where I get it. And let’s hope the wifi is back on tomorrow!
Coming up next: What it takes to get from start to finish: my experience so far of being an indie author
And coming soon, but I just don’t have the date yet: COVER REVEAL of “May I Have Your Attention Please.” (It’s really cool)
Squirrel! Just kidding. But no, seriously, a pretty butterfly!
That was my whole childhood experience, and to be honest, also my whole adult experience. It doesn’t have to be an animal, or something pretty flitting by. It can be a speck of dust floating in the air, or a scratch on a desktop. Don’t get me started about the music in my head. It draws my attention away from my task at hand.
I’m not alone in my dearth of attention. Many children and adults deal with similar challenges. For me, it started when I was in elementary school, or that was probably just when it became obvious. It was the late 1970s, and I was in fifth grade. I had broken my arm ice skating over winter break, and was pretty preoccupied by my limitations. Mr. K. was talking about geometrical shapes, specifically the octagon. I was re-wrapping my ace bandage around my splint. Mr. K. made a comment about there being an octagonal shaped church on the corner of Salsbury Street and Kadidawapa Way. He looked right at me and said, “right, Debby?” I looked up, baffled, and responded, “What? Oh, yeah.” The whole class laughed at me. There was no Kadidawapa Way in my city, and Mr. K. knew I wasn’t paying attention. Everyone laughed at me. That kind of hurt.
In sixth grade, I stopped doing Math homework, and only did other homework at the last minute. I still got A’s and B’s. In eighth grade, I finally got called on my behavior, and got an F in effort in Math class. I was mad, and I mouthed off to my teacher. But it was kind of a wakeup call. As we get older, our teachers start to pay more attention to our behavior. But I didn’t.
I squeaked through high school doing the bare minimum and relying on my procrastination and natural ability to retain information. I somehow made it through college. And grad school. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that a medical profession finally suggested that I might have ADHD.
What would have happened if I had been born in the 2000’s? I probably would have been evaluated at school, maybe by a developmental pediatrician, and diagnosed young. I probably would have been started on Ritalin, or some other stimulant medication. My teachers would have been made aware. They might have dealt with me differently. But as it was, I grew up in the 1970s and ’80s. The only kids that got attention for not paying attention were the ones that were disruptive. They were usually boys, and they were usually ridiculed by teachers and other students. We were told to pay no attention to them. They were just trying to get attention. Girls would just grow out of their daydreams and pull it all together someday.
One thing that I could concentrate on back then was writing. I loved to write. The ideas popped into my head unprovoked. Characters would develop in my subconscious and start dialogs in my brain. Some of them I wrote down. The stars of my stories were me as a Boston sportscaster, always married to a famous Boston professional athlete. Hey, I had a type! I found one of these “novels” not long ago. It wasn’t bad, for a twelve-year-old.
So, it makes sense that when I finally got serious about writing as an adult, I created a character who is a lot like me in some ways. A character that struggles with schoolwork and gets very scattered. She has no verbal filter, and sometimes her friends find her to be all over the place. Her story mimics my story in some ways, but she is not me. Her experiences are different. Isn’t that what we do when we write? We take our characters and put them in different situations and see what they would do. Sometimes, it’s different than what we would do ourselves, but it’s always a good story. Sally has some good times, and she has some struggles. But they are not my struggles. But we all have struggles, unique to ourselves.
My book, May I Have Your Attention Please obviously deals with attention, but we all know, there are many definitions of attention. And they all apply. Make up your own mind about what it means. Now you know what it means to me. I hope my story ends up meaning something to you, too.
Debby Meltzer Quick, Author 