Remember, it’s supposed to be fun!

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have spotted that I have altered the publication date of “Plank 2” from 20 October to 31 October.  (Apologies if you had already planned your diary around it…!)  I’m not used to adjusting deadlines, but then nor do I like missing them, so when I was in a lather with my diary yesterday, my ultra-logical husband suggested that I simply change the date to one that suits me better.

The problem was this.  I think I can get the text finalised by mid-October at the latest.  The cover designer is working to that date too.  And I know from “Fatal Forgery” that it takes only about three or four days from publication (i.e. uploading of files) for CreateSpace to have the book listed on Amazon.  But I am going away on holiday in mid-October and – although I had originally thought that it would be good to publish the book and then have the holiday immediately afterwards – I suddenly thought that it would be a shame to miss the fun part of publishing, which (for me at least) is telling everyone that the book is out, and then manically checking the CreateSpace sales page every three minutes until I see the first copy sold.  And I’m not sure husband’s patience would extend to manic checking while on holiday,  Plus I’ll want to take early copies round to the three bookshops that are stocking “Fatal Forgery”, and see if I can get another appearance on the local radio station (do you “appear” on the radio, or just “sound”?), and organise a giveaway on Goodreads, and send emails to kind people who have done reviews in the past, and all the other fun promotional stuff.

So I have (belatedly) remembered the two key features of self-publishing – that is is under my control, and that it’s supposed to be fun.  And I have solved my diary dilemma by simply changing my own, self-imposed publication date to one that suits me better: 31 October 2014.  Which still leaves plenty of time for the bookshops to order the dozens, nay, hundreds of copies that they will be selling in the Christmas rush…  (The third key feature of self-publishing may be over-optimistic self-delusion, but I’ll write about that another day.)