About three years ago, I had an idea to write a supernatural-themed novel. I also wanted it to be an epic trilogy just because epic trilogies are cool. Two years ago, I came up with a really rough outline of how I wanted the story to progress and then finally a year and a half ago, I actually started scripting it.
The book is completed. I’m only going to be changing very minor things throughout. I have asked many people to read it to give me their (brutally) honest opinions and I’ve gotten some great feedback. So now I’m into post-production which is a term I stole from the film industry. Does it apply to books? Maybe. I don’t really know.
I’ve always heard authors say that you can spend forever re-writing your book and eventually it just has to be done. How true that is. I’m discovering things as I go through that sounded cool when I wrote them that now strike me as obscenely stupid, not to mention simple detail changes. Like, ‘should the soldier’s tracking chips be in their skin or in their shoes?’ and so on. Do these things add to the story? Probably not, but for me, if the book is going to be done it should be done right.
When I self-publish in a few months, I’m going to release it a few ways: a. Paperback, b. Kindle, c. Podiobooks.com. I wanted them all to be released simultaneously, but I don’t know if that’s really feasible, so I’ve been focusing on the podiobooks version. If you’re not familiar with podiobooks.com, it’s a site where indie authors can self-record their books and them post them in podcast format for free online (including iTunes) and readers/listeners can download them for free. As the word “FREE” indicates, you don’t make any money this way, but it gets you great exposure because podiobooks.com is becoming very popular and you can do things like advertise on the podcast, accept gifts and donations and direct subscribers to amazon to buy a hard copy of your book. Plus, a few authors have been discovered on podiobooks.com and now are NY Times bestsellers.
In a few months, I’ll be ready to publish a hard copy, and I’ll most likely be using amazon.com’s “CreateSpace” site. It’s cheap, there’s no overhead, and you get a page on amazon.com where you can be making at least a couple bucks per copy of your book. CreateSpace also does Kindle which is completely free.
I’ve also discovered that to have a successful grassroots marketing campaign, I’ll need a sweet website and blog. I’m feeling really uninspired with the website so I haven’t started it yet as of the writing of this blog but the page will eventually be: www.eternitybook.homestead.com. It’s a long name because all the good ones were already taken.
So now, I’m hoping that I’ll have the first episode of the podcast up in about three weeks (just before Thanksgiving 2010) and the paperback and kindle versions ready by Christmas, though that’s seeming more and more unlikely as I learn what all is involved. But we’ll see.
