I am immersed in getting a final copy of the Good Money manuscript on Amazon. It is doable, but this being my first excursion into self-publishing a novel, the learning curve is, of course, broad and long.
A little background for those who are thinking about self-publishing:
My original thought was to hire someone to prepare the manuscript. The best I found and hoped to use was BookBaby. My problem with BookBaby was #1 the entire fee was payable upfront. I have a real problem with paying anything upfront. #2 Although the quoted fee, $1785.00, was doable, my conversations with a friend who is having her manuscript prepared by a different company indicated that the final fee could and probably would grow to $3,000+. I thought, “Why not try it myself with KDP (Kindle Digital Publishing)?”
Step by step instructions and videos are available. I followed them explicitly in preparing the .docx. I saved the document as a .pdf as instructed and uploaded it. Thus began the journey. After upload, I am told of formatting errors that must be corrected. I correct and re-upload, repeatedly. Finding the correct margins became a time consuming and frustrating experience. However, eventually it was accepted. Actually, I found that acceptance came more quickly after I stopped uploading a .pdf file and switched to uploading my .docx file.
The book went immediately online. I ordered a copy, Prime delivery. Discovered errors. I republished six times before getting it to an acceptable level for myself. I have ordered yet another Prime copy for final check, but expect it to be O.K.
Update: No, it is not O.K. The problem is that the Title page, the Table of Contents page, and the Part One page are on back pages rather than facing pages. I corrected, uploaded, previewed, ordered new copy. The beginning pages are correctly placed; however, three end-of-book pages are now on back pages rather than facing pages. Corrected problem. Previewed. Reordered. Problem reverted to front pages improperly placed. Corrected . Previewed. Reordered. Same problem reverted to the end-of-book pages. I accepted the least grievous of the two problem areas and left the three end-of-book pages misplaced. If later I can find the correction, I will try again.
My summary thought is that the $3,000 total fee for someone else to do the finalized publishing chore is a fair price. However, I am happy to invest the $3,000 I saved into a stock purchase that will probably give a pay-back, and I know that my next self-publication through KDP will be more efficient in time and effort.
