D.I.Y.

If you don’t know, DIY means, “Do It Yourself.” Well, that is was I like to do. I like to garden and grow my own food. I like to make my own bread, peanut butter and jelly. I like to make my own pickles, and so on. I also like to do my own home repairs, change my own car oil, and so on. (You get the picture, right?)

I tried to DIY my book and well, found out that it takes a team to put out a book. My editor, Jamie Aughenbaugh, and the artist that created the front and back cover, Faera Lane, are both amazing and talented people that helped me bring this book to life.

I should have learned from playing sports all my life that one man or woman does not make a team. I know that some of you are thinking, “what about tennis, or wrestling, or…” Those individuals have many coaches, family members, and teammates, all helping them to achieve their goals.

So, here I sit, vibrating with anticipation about publishing my book, again. But, wait, there’s more. I want to print my book and hand them out to family members, Jamie, Faera, and have enough left over for book signings at the local Barnes & Noble and smaller, independent book stores.

Again, I decided to go the DYI route. You all know, it’s like being kicked in the head and then asking for another kick.

I asked my wonderful and all knowing editor (yes, I’m buttering her up, so leave me alone!) about it. She sent me several article’s about authors who self printed and the do’s and don’ts of self printing. I also started to do my own research about self printing a book and quickly, my head started to spin, my eyes glazed over and I was lost.

When printing a book, you need to know about different sizes of books. This I knew, because I love books and have many books in verity of sizes on my shelf. When I was asked by Faera about what size she has to make the cover, I did not know. So, I grabbed a book off my self, K.M. Weiland’s, Structuring Your Novel, and measured it, 5.5 x 8.5. Okay, I like it, not to small, not to big, just right. (I channeled by inner Three Bears for that.)

Then I went to the Amazon KDP page and started to read it until the site went down for maintenance! I practiced slow, calming breathing for ten minutes.

Now I’m reading then page after it came back up and my eyes automatically catch something called “bleed!?” What. The. Frick! They want my blood to print out my book! (I’ve always been suspicious about Amazon’s motives!) After calming down and putting away my cross, (You know, vampires and blood. You can never be too safe.) I read that “Bleed” is a term referring to printed objects on a page, like background colors, pictures and so on. I don’t have any pictures in my book so Amazon can get my blood some other way!

Next came “margins”. Well, that’s easy enough. The margins are set for most types of printed book on Amazon. I also checked with other small printing sites and, yes, margins are standardized throughout the printing process unless you want something special, and I don’t.

That seems easy, right?

Well, not so fast. So now that I have a game plan, I need to get my team involved (which they already are in sending my articles and creating the art for the back cover and my logo.) Also, I very positive that the Amazon page was made my a number of people involving experts from the printing industry. So, there we have it, right?

Nope, I have work to do to get my book printed.

I need:

To format my book

Create an author page

Add numbers to the pages

Headers (Not the soccer (futball) kind either)

Applying Drop Caps! (Sound cool. “I’m gonna drop caps!”)

Turning on paragraph marks.

And so on.

I got most of this information from the Amazon KDP printing page.

I still don’t know if I can only print out 25 books or if I have to have a set number of books, but I do have a dream of having my own book on my bookshelf.

Thank you for reading this,

J.W.