Hey guess what? The first ebook I plan to self-publish? I already finished it! Completely! Written, edited, formatted, it's all set to go!
The text, anyway.
At Smashwords.com, there's a policy that if your ebook satisfies certain conditions, it will be put on a so-called "Premium catalog." When this happens, your ebook will not only be available for sale at Smashwords, but on other websites that sell ebooks, such as Amazon, iKindle, Barnes & Noble, Sony Reader, and so on. As a soon-to-be marketer, I can tell you that having your products for sale in multiple markets is good for business, especially a business like this.
One of the conditions you need to satisfy is your book needs a cover. You can upload an ebook without a cover, but you won't go premium, and in the site founder's words, it also looks unprofessional. So I'm now working on a cover for my first ebook.
Too bad I can't draw worth shit.
Most ebook writers commission other people to draw covers. Smashwords does have people dedicated to this, and they charge pretty good prices. I imagine for my later books, I will pay an artist to draw the covers for me. However, I wanna get this product out as soon as I set up my Smashwords profile . . . which I will gladly do after I set up my new Blogspot with Google ads . . . and my Youtube . . . and my Facebook . . . and my Twitter . . . and whatever else I need to do behind the scenes before I get started.
But my cover man . . . it'll probably just be text on a blank background, but it's still a while before October, so maybe I'll have something not too unbearable by then. However, I will warn you right now, my first cover will be the most indie book cover ever. Not the worst, but definitely the biggest indicator that I'm a one-man writer, publisher, and editor that you can conceive of. I'm gonna do book one Robert Rodriguez style. And even after I start hiring people to draw covers, everything else about my stories will still be done entirely by me: no agents to impress, no publishers to persuade that my manuscript will be the next Harry Potter, no editors to attempt to censor me, no release delays for marketing and printing of books (Ebooks are eco-friendly!). I figure if people like my fanfics, imagine how much they'll like my original stories, where I don't have to worry about canonicity and OOC, since I invented the canon and characters.
Wave of the future, Dude! One hundred percent electronic!
