Published?

Yesterday I pressed the scariest button I’ve ever pressed in my life. The “Publish” button. That’s right, Magic High is now available as an ebook. It’s not in most stores yet, and it will probably take a couple of weeks for that to happen, however it is available for purchase in most formats from Smashwords. 

The paper copy is still going to take some time. There’s a potential postal strike in Canada which could push that release back even more. Hopefully I’ll be able to give an official release date soon.

The final couple of days before I pressed that button were a rollercoaster. I’d been having a lot of troubles creating a proper file of the book so that it would look right no matter what screen it was viewed on. When I started looking into publishing with Smashwords, I quickly realised I had been taking the wrong approach. Smashwords requires you to create the file as a word .doc where I had been creating an .epub in InDesign.

What did I learn from this experience so far? No matter how much you think you know about creating files, you still need to do a whole lot of research with each publisher you’re thinking about working with. For the first time since starting this venture, I was very close to giving up on creating an ebook. I was so frustrated with how much time I had spent on formatting only to realise it was all a waste of time that I nearly decided it wasn’t worth putting any more time or effort into the book. 

I’m very glad that I buckled down and finished this up. Once I knew what I was doing, creating the file wasn’t as hard as I had been making it. A simple word file with text defined by consistent styles and the file was ready to be distributed. There were a couple of mistakes in the formatting that I had to fix, but I hope that everything is good now.

Time to do a happy dance, quickly followed by nervous huddling in a corner.