Books have birthdays...who knew?
So in the publishing world, book birthdays are a thing. I’ve never really paid attention to publishing dates (other than the year to know just how late to the party I am). My book’s official birthday is August 19, 2019. Crazy that it was a whole year ago when I closed my eyes, held my breath, and hit publish on the KDP site. BUT…I think of Ready, Regan? as a bit of a preemie since she didn’t really launch until November due to a series of snafus on Amazon’s part that could be considered publication malpractice. Seriously, it took the equivalent of 48 hours of labor and an emergency C-section to get my author’s copies delivered to me. To give you just a taste of the lunacy, I ordered 100 copies which they immediately split into two orders of 1 and 99. The 1 arrived. The 99 did not although the site said they were in transit for many weeks. When I finally spoke to a rep, she told me repeatedly that the books were out of stock and had to be sourced from a distribution center further away. After several attempts to explain the concept of print on demand, I gave up and cancelled the order. The second order went similarly, but after two months I finally had 99 copies (not 100) in my happy little hands.
Since I didn’t want to announce the book until it quietly landed, unannounced and unsuspected, in the mailboxes of supportive friends and family, it really was November before I made any noise about it. But hey, any excuse for a party so let’s celebrate the day it was available to the world even if no one else knew about it.
The date is completely accidental but it falls exactly halfway between my husband Brian’s birthday and mine. For two whole weeks his age is higher than mine and I usually like to lord it over him, but I’ve been kinder during the pandemic and just grateful that we both get to keep having birthdays. Our anniversary also falls in August so it’s just a month long celebration anyway. So what am I celebrating? That’s a loaded question. But the answers include:
finishing the book and shepherding it through the indie publishing maze
actually selling almost as many copies as I gave away for free
figuring out a plan for companion pieces that really build on the tools and several sequel ideas, two of which are in the early draft stages
dabbling in the world of marketing and sales. Ironically, I always said I should have been a marketing major in college and it turns out I don’t actually like marketing. I think it’s because I’m marketing me and I’m not my best advocate. I’d do better with snack foods or naming nail polish colors probably.
flattening the learning curve on a variety of fronts (in keeping with the main goal of 2020). To be clear, there’s still a climb on every front but I learn a little bit more every day.
So happy birthday, Ready, Regan? I think we’ve learned to crawl a bit in this first year, and now we’re ready to run!
Cake picture attribution: http://www.wonderfulweddingcakes.com/occasions-cakes/baby-kids-religious-cakes.html