Self-Publishing?

Well, sort of. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I get 5 free paperback copies from Createspace just for having done NaNoWriMo. It took some doing, but I added just enough scenes to tie the plot together a little more and satisfy myself. Then I finally decided to get to work on the process of getting my copies printed.

It's a good thing I did. A paperback novel is very different from a Courier New manuscript, and making it look like a professional book is actually pretty difficult. It took me a day just to make the preliminary pages that come before the actual chapters. The Table of Contents was a headache of its own, and that was without the page numbers, which could only be determined after hours of formatting each and every chapter of my manuscript.

Not only that, but I have to come up with a cover. Now I've been drawing characters from this since I came up with the story early in high school, but since I haven't really taken any art classes or anything, I definitely don't trust myself to do this so easily. This is the first time I'm even going to draw more than one draft of the same drawing, and it'll probably take at least a couple of weeks just to get that part right. Then I have to scan it, add color as well as I can, and then add all the elements that make it a book cover.

Doing all of this makes me realize that what I'm doing is completely different from simply printing out the pages. I may only be making 5 copies, but all of this amounts to self-publishing. I'm learning all the elements of creating a book from scratch, and all Createspace is doing is printing copies for me. That's pretty exciting, and it's hard to believe that soon enough I'm going to be holding a professional-looking copy of my book, 100% made by me.

With lots of homework, the constant job search, and some other projects taking up my time, I can't believe that I even had a free moment to make this blog entry. Life is getting surprisingly busy.