How to Find Purpose and Peace: Why Am I Here?

CHAPTER TWELVE : How I'm Trying to Pursue My Dreams

Anyways, there was a lot of crap I had to learn before getting my first book out there. First off I had to brush up on copyright infringement law, citing sources, getting an ISBN number, the publishing alternatives (self-publishing, traditional, and vanity/scam publishing). Then I had to figure out how I was going to have it edited, get a book cover design and finally finish the damn thing. For facts and statistics you don't need approval to use you just need to cite where it came from. Be careful with song lyrics and poems and large sections that you quote from someone else's book because you have to get permission from them. Since it was a pain in the ass I limited external resources that I directly quoted or used.

This first part of the process is why it took me awhile to finish the first book since I kind of got overwhelmed and freaked out. Also watch out for scams!!! You should NEVER have to pay someone to publish your book for you! Real traditional publishing companies will pay YOU for your work. It's called Vanity Publishing when they want you to pay them to publish your book, and it can be several thousands of dollars. In my blissful ignorance and desperation to get published I almost fell into this trap. I even talked to them on the phone. If you really want to go this route it's up to you, but know what you are getting yourself into.

Sometimes they put the ISBN (number that identifies the book) under themselves and they take the money the book earns. At for realsies publishing places you can submit a query letter and a copy of your work to them, and if they like it they will publish it and take care of most things for you. It's really hard to get traditional publishing places to accept your work! But don't give up it is possible! Stephen King used to collect all his rejection letters and nail them to a single place on the wall. Eventually it got so thick he had to use a spike! But with perseverance you can have your work published with a traditional publishing house.

You can also self publish! That's what I did. And if you know the steps it can cost you next to nothing! Now I wasn't really rolling in the dough (now especially) so after being burned by my experience with vanity publishing and wary of my prospects with a traditional publishing house, I chose the self publishing route. I used Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to publish my two books. My process was surprisingly pretty simple. If you have any questions on writing and self publishing a book feel free to flag me down or message me and I'd be more than happy to help you out as best I can! First I cranked out a first draft on Google Docs. Then I went through and edited it.

You can also get a pro editor for a few hundred dollars. I used the Chicago Manual of Style and Google for editing help. As well as The Elements of Style and On Writing. Then I used Grammarly.com to catch more typos. That site has a free version. Then I took the edited draft and used Kindle Create to help make it look pretty and formatted well for Amazon, smartphones, computers, and tablets. Kindle Create is like the Amazon version of Microsoft Word but tailored so that you see what your book actually looks like on smartphone, kindle, and tablet: then I saved that. Then I used a graphic artist on Fiverr.com to make me a good book cover for thirty bucks. As the purchaser you now hold the intellectual property and rights to the final cover (they usually use royalty free stock photos). Finally I logged in and uploaded my book! You don't need to purchase an ISBN number (Kindle has its own version of the ISBN number). You don't really need to get an official copyright unless you plan on disputing someone stealing your book, the creation of the book by you automatically give you the intellectual property rights of it. On KDP you just enter a bunch of info. You enter stuff like the book title, author, upload the book and book cover, write a description, keywords, choose the genre, choose the pricing, and hit the enter button! Voila! You are now the proud author of a self-published book! Since you published if you own all the rights to it and can mostly do whatever you want with it! I fiddle with the price and keywords on mine all time. KDP also gives the option to sell printed versions of the book, they take care of everything and they just take a little bit out of the sales amount. Congrats! You are now a real writer and the author of your first published book! :)

Key Takeaways:

-You can become an author too!

-Self-publishing with KDP isn't too bad.