Book Baby-ing It – Part One

Over the weekend, I decided to take the plunge. After months (years) of writing, re-writing, editing, thirteen beta readers, online classes, queries galore, a cover design, and critiques up the wazoo, I have decided to finally *sigh* give birth to one of my written creations.

That’s right, Virtually Yours is virtually going live. I’m going to e-pub it as soon as I can.

As we all know, I am not a computer-internet geek-head, much as you might want to think so considering the setting in Virtually Yours (the internet). I only recently learned I was setting up my Word documents incorrectly for publishing. When did the world decide two spaces between sentences was one too many? Or that you should never, ever tab to indent?

I have suffered headaches just casually glancing at Smashwords’ user guide. To be quite fair to Smashwords, perhaps the guide is easy for those whose right brains are near normal. My brain, left or right, is not anywhere close to that level. Even with this online guru’s massive blog about self-e-pubbing printed and by my side, I still couldn’t figure out the conversion.

I don’t have a lot of time. If I did, I wouldn’t play on the internet more. I’d write more.

So…I have decided to enlist the services of Book Baby. For a nominal fee, they will convert your text, assign your book an ISBN, and release it into markets including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Possible headache averted.

I decided to go for the premium service, which is $100 more. For that fee, a proof will be provided. I’ve proofed my novel at least ten times in the last month; I still miss the typos.

The site is easy to use. You upload your book and your cover, and voila! You’re on your way. While the process is relatively painless, there are a few quirks that caused me to pause before the final click.

One is that you’re warned about not being able to proof or that changes will cost more money. Wait a minute, I thought. I thought I paid for premium? Don’t I get a proof? I then used the “Contact Us” info to contact them. I wanted to be sure before I plunked down my cash for this service. Contact is made by email. There are phone numbers, but I was working on a weekend. I figured email would be faster.

If you’re wondering if it was faster, all I can say is that my email was sent Friday night. I’m still waiting for a reply.

After two days of waiting, I decided to forge ahead and worry about my dissatisfaction later. At the point of payment, the reassuring mention of proof was included. Ah… And then the standard blah-blah-blah about how long it might take (two weeks) but it also might take less than that.

I have no idea what is going on.

As soon as I find out what happens next, I’ll let you know. Also when the book is truly launched. And then my friends who have pledged to buy a copy (leaving me with enough for a Starbucks, I hope) will hopefully whip out their credit cards and PayPal accounts and get busy.

🙂