Cover design: Fantasia Frog

For too long I’ve been quiet but nevertheless I’ve been busy. After overcoming some last minute technical hitches, I finally published my novel, The Reluctant Hero, on both the Kindle and Kobo reading platforms a few days ago.

Countless revisions and umpteen readthroughs, but I finally got there with a huge sense of relief though I know that in some senses, the hard work starts now: that of trying to market and promote the book. Plus I have further learning curves to work out how to get it onto other platforms and produce a paperback.

I think I have overcome some technical hitches I experienced a couple of days ago with the distribution platform, Draft2Digital. Possibly it is easier if you just upload a Word file to them and let them handle all the formatting, but having used my own epub file for generating the Kindle version and to upload to Kobo, I wanted to maintain consistency, especially since I have used one of my recently purchased ISBN numbers for the epub version. A workround recommended for the Kindle caused an issue where D2D could not see my final chapter, so I have had to tweak it a little and I will need to incorporate those tweaks into the standard file so that it is also the same on Kobo.

I’ve also had a quick look at the paperback setup in KDP, since CreateSpace has now been pensioned off and all printed versions must be made through KDP. There is some complexity to overcome, mainly to do with how big the book turns out to be when laid out in a KDP template, as until I know I can’t have the wraparound cover made – the book cover template screen requires the book size before it will let you download a template for that.

Exciting times – I have created an author thread on the Goodreads UK group where I am active, posted about the book on my Facebook author page and told a few friends who have kindly put out links for me. I now need to ramp up the publicity for the book. Blowing my own trumpet doesn’t come naturally, as with a lot of writers, but it needs to be done.

And I now need to get back to one of my other almost-ready-to-go books and start the process again, which should be a lot quicker since both of those books are a fraction of the length of The Reluctant Hero and have a much simpler linear plotline with far few characters.

To summarise the last lot of goals and progress (those with no annotation are not yet commenced):

1. Complete the latest read through so that am happy to do final upload to KDP and finalise the book, e.g. pricing info etc. – done
2. Publish on KDP (Kindle version) – done.
3. Investigate what is needed to publish on Kobo and Draft2Digital to cover the other platforms. – done, and published on Kobo, part way through process on D2D
4. Investigate print process – CreateSpace still? Seems as if everything is now moving towards KDP – done, it must be KDP
5. Get some ISBNs – done
6. Publish the print version

Those nice people at ROW80 are now posting updates on the Facebook group here.