So, here we are. The first book is released into the world. Huh, that was both easier and more difficult than I imagined.
That's a crappy thing to say, wishy-washy if you will. Accurate though.
The hardest part is undoubtedly the writing of the thing. I keep pretty detailed logs of my writing time so I know exactly how many hours it took to write. I don't keep any logs of my editing time, but I reckon it took about the same amount of time. Going over it, having it read and critiqued, fixing annoying missing words (why, oh why, do I sometimes just skip random words?) and other typos.
But writing is fun. Writing is what I do and what I have been doing for quite some time now. Publishing, while objectively far easier, was the hard part.
Getting a cover: I have no idea what makes a good cover. None. I spent ages examining the books I enjoy and trying to work out if their covers were in some way special. I came to the conclusion that I hadn't actually looked at their covers before buying the book, so why should I care?
I should care, it seems, because that's what everyone else does. We judge books by their cover, so the cover better be damn good. I like the cover for Clearly I Remember, but we'll see if it is successful in its job.
Distribution: You will notice, at the bottom of the product page for the book on this site, that there are direct links to the pages where you can buy the book. At time of this writing there are only two, because the other two I plan on including aren't done reviewing it yet. This was unexpected to me, and has caused me some completely pointless angst. I will continue clicking the update button on those sites relentlessly, until they publish the damn book. Why won't they publish it now? Why?
There is (at time of writing) no print book. This will happen as well, though it'll take a week or two. There are reasons, which I might get into at some point.
Marketing: You're looking at it. I think my time is better spent writing than messing around with things I don't understand. I have a publishing plan for the coming year and I'm going to stick to it. There will be books released regularly, and they will be more and more awesome as we go. When I'm done with that I'll look into marketing. We'll see how it goes.
All of the above, and a bunch of other things that escape me on a Sunday night when I should be writing, took ages to work out. Getting the formatting right for the print and ebook by itself took as long as writing the first half the novella I will be releasing next month. That's an insane amount of time to spend not writing. If you factor in all the other research I did when coming up for a plan for this year, I could have written another book.
Here's how I justify it, and why I didn't just hire someone to do it all for me: These are things I can learn, and should. I will never know how to make a cover, and I have no interest in learning. But working out the formatting and getting the tricks and traps sorted (headers and footers, for reasons I still cannot fathom, despise me and want to ruin my life) means I don't have to do it next time. I have templates I know work, and as long as I use them I never have to think about it ever again.
Distribution wasn't really that hard, I guess, though I made a pretty solid cock-up of part of it. This was me being stupid, but now I know and I won't do it again. I now have a template for my actions when setting that up, so it'll all go smoothly next time.
I only sacrificed one goat to the gods, but I'm looking for a slow take-off here. Nothing too special. Once I've got the series out I'll buy a herd of goats and get my sacrificing knife warmed up. I will carve my way to the top, but I want to be ready. Besides, the blood of a sacrificed goat, if you do the ritual properly, is acidic. I only just got these jeans and I didn't want to ruin them.
The idea for the Isaac's Story: London series is to present a small slice of time in my future London. It will be filled with well meaning people doing and running away from bad things, bad people doing worse things, conspiracies, betrayal, and of course, cyborgs. The city will change over the course of the five books, and at the end it will be completely transformed. Each book, starting with Clearly I Remember, will feature different characters going through their own thriller-y lives, though there will be some constant characters popping up along the way. I have these planned and they will all get released this year. Because I hate it when someone starts a series and I have to wait years to get the next one. I won't do that.
This series will be followed by another five book series - Isaac's Story: Hong Kong. There's one more after that to close out the complete Isaac's Story series, but I'll discuss both of these later.
So check out the product page, and if it tickles your fancy give it a read. I enjoyed writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it.
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