Self-Publishing in a nutshell

My last post was clearly way optimistic about the time it would take me to do a final edit for my novel, Eternal Moments. However, I have finally finished tweaking ET and am ready to begin my 16th self-publishing journey.

The journey begins with opening my Kindle Direct Publishing account and answering a myriad of questions about the nature of my novel. You might think that by this time that I'd be pretty good at filling in the blanks by now, but it's a little more complicated than that. The most challenging part is having to put 97,500 words into the KDP book format. I always end up with the text wandering all over the place and sometimes disappearing into a void for no reason that I can fathom. Then, after I struggle to make everything look right on the computer screen, my printed preview copy always looks like it was designed by a two-year-old. Actually I have a two-year-old grandson, and I'm sure he could do a better job of formatting than KDP. Of course, it doesn't help that my technical skills are quite limited, but still, it shouldn't be this hard.

On the bright side, the best part of the KDP process is the blurb that I get to write. It summarizes the novel in a short paragraph and serves as a promotional element every place the book is listed, including my own website. Currently, it reads as follows:

"In the tenth novel of his timely series, Bryant Wieneke has written a fast-paced political thriller set against the backdrop of a fractious Washington D.C. and the mysterious Sahara Desert. Eternal Moments combines old-fashioned story-telling with dialogue reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing to explore the spiritual nature of the universe, as evident in the latest scientific revelations, stirring memories of Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge and Peter Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard."