Taking the Plunge into Print – #SelfPublishing #Learning #NewRelease

During the past four or five years, I’ve transitioned almost exclusively to self-publishing. Everything new that I’ve written has been released via KDP and Smashwords. Meanwhile, I’ve gradually reclaimed the rights to almost all my earlier books and created new editions with improved editing and self-created covers.

My self-published backlist is now about sixty books long. I’m pretty proud of this. However, one benefit that I’ve been missing by taking charge of the publishing process is the permanence of print. Up until now, all my self-published books have been available in digital format only. Some have audio versions, produced by Wordwooze, but I haven’t published anything you can hold in your hand.

That just changed.

I’ve just self-published my first paperback at Amazon, a new edition of my taboo erotic romance Incognito.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D57SFNSF

 

 

In the next week or so, I’m hoping to create a Draft2Digital edition also, so I can get the book out to other, non-Amazon audiences.

The process of creating the print edition was not painless, but ultimately it took less time than I expected. Rather than purchasing and trying to learn a complex WYSIWYG tool like Vellum or Atticus, I did the layout and type-setting using a system called LaTeX, which is often used for academic and technical works.

LaTex is a “mark-up language”. You put commands into your text-based manuscript, then run the file through a processing program that interprets all the instructions and produces a finished PDF. While this geeky approach is probably not right for everyone, it worked pretty well for me. LaTeX knows “out of the box” how to handle things like left- and right-facing pages, headers and footers, table of contents, and so on. If you don’t like something—for instance, the margins or the font size—you can make a single parameter change and regenerate the PDF almost instantly.

The main advantage of LaTex for me, though, is that once you have a set of commands that produce output you like, it’s almost trivial to apply the same format to another book. Unlike using a WYSISYG program, you don’t have to select sections of text, apply styles, or do much else with the actual book text. Almost all the work is handled by the document class definition and parameters at the top of the LaTeX source file.

In the coming months, I plan to bring out paperback versions of all my novels. I’ve got about a dozen, depending on your definition of “novel”, so I want a method that’s fast and efficient.

Actually, the most difficult part of producing the book was doing the cover. It’s based on the ebook cover, so the art was not an issue. However, print publishing requires that the cover follow some very strict rules and have precisely calculated measurements. Amazon rejected my first cover. Fortunately I was able to fix the problems. I learned a lot in the process.

Anyway, I’m pretty excited about this news. And having create one paperback, I’m trying to decide which one to tackle next.

I could use your feedback. I’m considering the following:

Rajasthani Moon – Multi-genre paranormal menage erotic romance

(https://www.lisabetsarai.com/rajasthanimoonbook.html)

Exposure – Urban erotic noir

(https://www.lisabetsarai.com/exposurebook.html)

At the Margins of Madness – MM paranormal erotic romance

(https://www.lisabetsarai.com/marginsofmadnessbook.html)

The Gazillionaire and the Virgin – Contemporary BDSM romance

(https://www.lisabetsarai.com/gazillionairevirginbook.html)

Leave me a comment below, telling me which one you’d most like to see in print.

To thank you for your feedback, I’ll randomly select one person who responds and give away a $5 bookstore gift card. (So be sure to include a way for me to get in touch with you!)

And of course, if you’re the type of reader who enjoys having a physical book in your hands and turning real paper pages... you might want to check out Incognito. Hot off the press!