The Speedy (sort of) Process of Ebook Publishing

It’s Thanksgiving weekend, a few days after I thought I’d have my first ebook together and up on Amazon. Alas, it’s not there yet.

It took me a week or so to find someone who had time to proofread my short stories (I didn’t want to wait until Christmas or later) and would work for a price I could afford (I’m going to sell the ebook for 99 cents, so I can’t justify spending too much on the editing!).

I did get the edits back on Wednesday, and I’ve incorporated them. The writing is ready to go, and I’m just waiting on the cover art. I saw the black-and-white ink version of the cover today, so I’m hoping everything will come together in the next week.

Once I have shiny text and snazzy art, I’ll hand both over to Ted, the fellow who is formatting the ebook for me. I fiddled around, trying to format practice files on my own before deciding to hire someone to do it.

As a Mac user, I think I came up against a couple extra obstacles that I wouldn’t have if I’d had Windows (or maybe even bought Word for my Mac). For example, the indie ebook publisher Smashwords insists you upload a Word file and let its “meatgrinder” convert the file to epub, mobi, and various other e-reader friendly formats; unfortunately, it didn’t much care for the Word files I was able to create via the export command on Pages and Scrivener (my biggest issue was that it didn’t display the italics). Likewise, a popular program I found that converts Word files to Kindle files is only available for Windows. Next time I decide to tinker with this, I’m going to ignore the conversion programs and just create the html files from scratch, but, as I said, I ultimately decided to ask a pro to handle it for me this time around.

So, for editing, cover art, and formatting, it’s going to end up being at least a month from me deciding to turn some short stories into an ebook and having an actual ebook that people can purchase from Amazon, iBookstore, B&N, etc.

Compared to the traditional publishing world, this is quite speedy. Though I must admit it’s not as speedy as I thought it might be (newbie delusions!).

In the future, I’ll commission the artwork as soon as I’m solid on a title and have a decent middle draft done. Depending on how busy your chosen artist is, you might wait several weeks to have the cover image completed.

Editing, too, is another process that takes a couple weeks (maybe more if your piece needs a lot of work and/or you’re working with someone who has a number of other clients in the queue). My short story collection is less than 30,000 words total, and Faith of Have Faith Proofreading (cool name, huh?) got it back to me quickly.

A note on editing: this is the one place I recommend you don’t cheap out too much. I did on another project, and I’m going to have to have the manuscript proofread again. You don’t have to hire the most expensive editor out there, but get someone who does this for a living. You won’t regret it later. After I got my BA, I got the Certificate in Editing from the University of Washington (year-long course), and I still wouldn’t consider myself well-versed enough to do the kind of edit you need before publishing. You should spring for someone who has the style guides memorized because they do this work every day.

Well, there’s my status update for those (all two of you) who have been wondering. All in all, I’m enjoying the e-publishing process, despite various delays. There’s definitely a learning curve in this, and I’m sure future projects will run more smoothly. I’ll know what to expect at all the stages, too, so I won’t get antsy. Probably. Maybe.