Going it Mostly Alone: the Publishing Path of A Perfect Blindness
Starting in March , the month before the launch, I’d begun writing a long essay, describing all the steps I’ve taken with A Perfect Blindness from my initial decision to self-publish, through getting onto the Traditional Publishing Path, each round of editing and all secondary paths and distractions along the way to getting the Rising Star designation and then a few tentative paragraphs about the Star designation, including various misunderstandings, issues, bumps and ego strokes. But, I included some factual items that I only surmised, so I was able to convince my Rising Star contact to look it over to answer the questions I had about how iUniverse worked, such as the percentage of people who get whatever level of designation. While she looked over what was to become the main thrust of this blog, I went back over my own route to make sure I didn’t miss anything along the way to include later in the blog.
During this review, I found I’d completely forgotten purchasing a publicity package. Then, I noticed the price tag—it was double the simple publishing package sans all the editing and polishing.
Huh? What’s this?
Frankly, I didn’t remember buying this, though I see the emails where I said yes, and further, can’t recall, why I was willing to pay for this package, other than my wife and I had the money, and because I work as a freelancer, I was able to use it to reduce our taxes. In our particular situation that did make a significant difference the next April. So, the actual number of dollars that left our collective pocket was half the price tag I gaped at once the larger tax refund was factored in.
Still, knowing what I know now about marketing, I’m not sure I would have sprung for this. And if our finances weren’t solid, I absolutely wouldn’t have.
Now, in defense against my criticism and doubt, it does include items an author flying solo might not have access to, the most important of which are three professional reviews (Clarion Forward Reviews, Kirkus Reviews, & Blue Ink) and a dedicated publicist who creates a plan for social and traditional media both. This I need, but possibly could have done on my own, yet I was so rudderless then, and even until quite recently, I might never have acted on what I knew needed to be done. This was, in a sense, paying someone to organize me, and what themes I was to post about what week and where online in coordination with possible traditional media exposure.
On this, I must wait for them to wrap up their work.
Still, when I first discovered this purchase, I had no idea what it was, what I needed to do to make it work, with whom I would be working. This all kicked in the holy-sh*t! overdrive, which sent me scrambling to my email archive and onto the iUniverse site to find out what I get for what I spent, and then to several emails fired off to anyone I could think of.
Had I remembered this, I’m sure I should have had all this done in January. Now it’s already April.
More and more I felt as if I were getting caught with my pants down.
Frustrating, panic inducing and tremendously disappointing. I shook my head at myself.
I mean really? Forget about something this big? What gives?
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