So… Hart & Cole Book 1.

It’s officially out. It’s published.

It’s available. ANYONE can get it, ANYWHERE in the world. On ebook or paperback. It’s OUT THERE.

I’m excited. I’m thrilled. But more than anything, I am, in a word… TERRIFIED.

I’m fortunate to be able to say I’ve accomplished a lot of great things in my life, but still — just being able to push that “Publish” button, and open the whole wide world to a piece of my mind… it’s one of the scariest things I’ve ever had to do.

I’m not kidding when I say I’ve been sitting on this book for over a decade and a half. It’s the first book I wrote for adults — and I began writing it when I was just at the cusp of being one myself, in 2002! I finished it somewhere around 2003-2004 or so, and then… I sat on it.

Well, I shared it with a few friends and family via email or hard copy, and I shared excerpts at Writers’ Guild at my uni, Lancaster University. And, that was it.

It just sat there.

Half a dozen times, I looked into publishing — more specifically, self-publishing — but I didn’t follow through. Back then, self-publishing was practically unheard of.

By 2011-2012, e-readers became ubiquitous. I regained interest in self-publishing, and fine-tuned the blurb.

It took awhile to cut it down to something that could easily capture what the book is about, without giving too much away.

Then… I sat on it some more.

The Perfect Cover

Around 2015, I felt the urge again to get back on this project, so I looked into getting a cover done.

I asked two graphic designer friends who, separately, took forever to produce nothing.

I love them still, though… and as one of them (who hadn’t read the book) scolded me:

“This is YOURS. You can’t leave it up to me to create your cover. YOU know what it needs to look like.”

Damn right.

I found this to be even truer and more relevant, when I found a professional (read: “a stranger, with a deadline, who was actually getting paid“) to do the cover, via the freelancer site Fiverr. Her first draft was awful.

I can’t blame her for that though — she didn’t know me, or my characters. But once I gave her some guidance, she delivered.

I had to find the photos myself — which took eons to stumble upon the main “perfect” one, and the others from which to sample.

Then, I told her how I wanted it edited — mainly, my character needed more hair. Lots of it: curly, wild, crazy hair.

I know graphics… so I know you need to be talented to be able to work with human hair! I love the final product, and I’ve used the same designer again for my Book 2 cover.

But I knew, while I was fretting and taking — quite literally — years to do a book cover!… I knew that my first book cover, my first foray into the Hart & Cole series, my Book 1 covergirl, my “Nicole” (and you get this sense of entitlement, of protective ownership about “your” characters) is mixed-race, sexy, and vulnerable.

The cover has to say all of that.

Hopefully, it did.

Getting the cover done was a huge step that propelled me the rest of the way.

I made it the screensaver/background on my phone, so that I looked at it every day — constantly, until it pissed me off that I kept seeing it and hadn’t published it yet!

Where & How to Self-Publish

Then, I did my research.

Amazon is a great publishing platform. There are LOADS of others. I chose Amazon because of its popularity. There are drawbacks, but nothing that was a dealbreaker for me.

The one thing I did find in my research worth mentioning (which many, many, many people stand by, if you are serious about being a writer) is that you should get your own ISBN.

It took me quite a bit of running around to figure this one out, and after contacting international and then regional agencies, I found out Trinidad & Tobago has our own ISBN agency in the National Public Library.

So, ISBN purchased, I had no excuse now.

All that was holding me back was myself.

I proofed my book again several times on-screen — adding comments to its PDF version with Adobe Acrobat Reader, then making the edits in Microsoft Word, and then again while I was creating the e-book version through Kindle Create.

Then, I printed hard-copy proof copies through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing and when they arrived in the mail, I proofed those several times yet again.

I chose between a range of template sizes for the book; here are some awesome tools to get what you need: KDP Manuscript Templates and KDP Cover Templates.  I played around with glossy and matte covers, and white and cream paper.

Tip: White paper is a little thinner, so the cover template will be off-balance if you sized it for cream paper! (I learned this the hard way!)

I eventually settled on a glossy cover, with cream interior paper.

And, each time I printed it, I proofed it for errors yet again.

I’m sure if I proof it another time, I’ll still find things I want to change.

But…

At some point, you need to let go.

You need to let go of your characters, so that you can share them with others.

And, most importantly: you need to let go of that fear of failure.

Publishing — overcoming that fear to hit that “Publish” button — is still just only one tiny step to becoming a writer.

Next comes… Marketing. Eek.