SCREAMING INTO THE VOID

 AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Photo by Gabriela Cheloni

So my self-publishing journey begins in earnest. I'll go into detail in later posts, but I've already figured out a release/marketing schedule. Now, whether my marketing plan amounts to nothing more than screaming into the void remains to be seen, but I am, as always, optimistic. 

WHAT IS THE NOVEL ABOUT?

Seems only sensible I actually talk about the novel, right? It's called A WRETCHED PLACE and is influenced by Jeff VanderMeer and the Theban Plays by Sophocles, which I bet isn't two things you expected to see joined together like that.

I'm calling it a "cosmic horror road trip" as it has Lovecraftian aspects (as in 'unspeakable horrors that can't fully be comprehended') mixed in with, yes, a road trip narrative. It also involves a lot of quantum mechanics, to present (I hope) an unusual slant on time travel, or something like it. 

It'll be made available as an e-book and a print version!

E-BOOKS!!!

Right now, I'm putting the finishing touches to the e-book version, which has been an eye-opener in a few ways. Least of all, I didn't even consider that a typical e-book has reflowable text, ie. it's not fixed format, so half my original formatting simply does not work. 

Also, e-books HAVE to have a table of contents, but only the back half of my book has typical chapters AND only half of them are numbered (it makes sense with regards to the novel itself, I promise), so I've yet to see if this causes an issue somewhere down the line eg. "You have to have a normal TOC or your book won't be sold/reviewed on this site."

EDIT LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT

Let me tell you, I was pretty happy with the editing job I did on my novel the last time I touched it. But when I revisited it to re-format it and tidy it up to publish as an e-book, I found a few things I missed last time around. Not so much grammar and spelling, but more internal consistency. 

In my day job I'm the lead editor in a content writing agency, so my day-to-day work involves editing a variety of work to a professional standard. I've been doing this for almost four years, which is about the time I last touched my novel. Suffice to say, all this editing work has paid of as I'm now 99% confident the novel is super duper polished. 

I've given it maybe three full passes already but I'm about to give it one more before I consider it 100% done. I know that a poorly-edited manuscript is one of the worst possible things anyone could publish so I'm also kind of staking my professional reputation on this novel.

NEXT STEPS

So that's where I'm at right now. Next post, I'll go through my research into actual publishing avenues, including aggregators and associated royalties/costs. I've also been looking into book review sites, as in 'sites that help you get book reviews' which I honestly didn't know existed until last night. 

I used to be involved in the publishing world about ten years ago, so quite a lot has changed since then. Join me as I (re)discover what's what, and maybe even give you some useful info if you're on a self-publishing journey too. 

CHAO FOR NOW.