Take Heart, Authors…Publishing DOES Get Easier

For all the blood, sweat and tears that go into the actual writing process, I always dread the publishing process more.

Why? Because it gets really technical and there will inevitably be annoying little formatting changes that trip you up.

For my first book, the Kindle version was relatively easy to set up. (For some reason, Amazon Kindle makes setting up an ebook 1000x easier than any other format offered.) But when it came to tackling a paperback, I felt like I was going through a hedge maze with a grudge.

To be fair, a lot of my problems were my own fault and derived from me being a first-time author with no clue about trim size and margins.

My cover issues were the worst. I paid for someone to create my cover but I neglected to tell them the correct dimensions to match my manuscript’s text size. What does that mean? It means that I had to adjust, myself, the cover using Adobe and other programs to try to get my cover file fixed without becoming blurry or bad quality.

BUT. I am here to share the good news: It gets much easier with time and experience.

My second time around with my latest book went so much more smoothly. The Kindle went by in a flash and the paperback went off without many issues. My only hiccups concerned in-manuscript errors that resulted from weird Microsoft Word things, and those were easily fixed.

Honestly, a large part of everything going smoothly this time was because I designed my own cover this time, which means I had access to all my original design files…which is crucial if you need to make edits.

Well, you live and learn, I guess.

So if you’re a first-time self-publisher and things are rough right now, take it easy and don’t get down. It’s normal to struggle the first time or so, and it gets easier, I promise.