I had no idea how confusing it would be to create a cover. Okay, I am, how shall we put it… older. Maybe that’s the reason I found it so confusing. In theory it sounded so simple: download a template, place your image, your text, and then get rid of the template layer. Yeah, so those layer things completely threw me off. I did find a work-around but the process took days. After I uploaded the cover and ordered the proof, I saw that the image didn’t quite make it to the edges of the book so it was back to the drawing board. Thankfully, I got it on the second try.

Instead of using Amazon’s ISBNs, I used my own. That seemed pretty straightforward. I knew I’d have to enter some basic information into Bowker (the company that handles ISBN sales in the USA) – things like the title and author, make sure the ISBN was assigned correctly. What I didn’t know is they would ask for some of the same information I entered on Amazon like genre, publication date. Some of what they asked required searching to understand exactly what they were looking for. None of that was a big deal but I wasn’t prepared.

Then there were the fonts. I had to pick one for the text of the book and the cover. There are about 295,582 different types of fonts. How would I settle on one? My dad and grandfather were both printers. This would have been a great question to ask them, if only they were around to ask. And it wasn’t only the particular font, but the size. That took a bit of testing by printing out pages with various fonts in different sized and comparing them to books I have on hand. My readers will be glad to know I did not go with a tiny font that would require a magnifying glass to read.

The publication date was another thing I knew nothing about. I had the brilliant idea of releasing the book on a particular date, associated with a Marian feast day. It turns out, if one is using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, you don’t have control over the exact publication date. You can approximate the date, but once you decide to go live, it can take anywhere from 2 to 5 days for them to approve the book. Whatever date the book is approved is the publication date. Yet another idea dashed.

Did someone mention proofreading? Four pairs of eyes on the completed manuscript and I still found things that were missed. I’m so paranoid about mistakes once the book is released that I had a nightmare about it – I had my copy of the newly released book, opened it to the first page, and right there was a huge, glaring mistake that no one caught. I expect there will be no getting around a missing comma or quotation mark somewhere within the 75,000 words. I’ll just have to learn to live with imperfection.