The idea of writing a book sounds daunting. The idea of self-publishing an e-book sounds so much simpler. Right? That’s what I thought. Spending hours and hours, days, months, even years writing every thought down imaginable and jumping head first into writing a novel — now that’s work! I figured putting it altogether into an e-book would be the simple part.

Ha, there’s no denying thing that if you want to do it right, then throwing together an e-book is far from fast and easy. First, you have to pick out a cover, then you have formatting and making sure that your document fits into your e-book. Neither of these are fast, but are time consuming and tedious.

You made it that far? Great! Time for deciding if you’re going to get your work copyrighted. In reality, your work is copyrighted all ready because it’s your own words. However, the sad truth is that that probably wouldn’t hold up in court if you ever had to prove that your work was yours. Better to play it safe and have the documentation proving it’s yours. You better have your work up to standard, then send it in. This does cost money, and isn’t free. If you submit it via online submission then you could have your copyright certificate in a number of months. Or, you could send in the written manuscript and wait about a year to get that certificate. It’s an interesting concept and definitely a relief to have the documents, but man is it a painstakingly long wait.

Got your copyright certificate? Awesome! That’s huge! Congratulations! Now comes the fun part. You get to make your own copyright page for you book — oh, the joy! Not. Chances are you don’t have the right software to make up this page. Let’s be honest, we’re not exactly a publishing company with this type of thing. It’s okay. We’ll get through this. It’s time to improvise. I ended up finding different examples that could be used (I LOVE Google!), and mimicked what was done for mine.

You get through all of this and you throw the final touches to your book in. You finish all the random paperwork on Amazon and you launch your e-book and quite possibly your paperback.

Of course, you can’t launch your paperback book without an ISBN number. Thankfully, Amazon offers a free one. However, if you want to have this book anywhere else or through other companies, then you’re going to have to buy an ISBN number. Quite lovely, isn’t it?

Okay you have your launch and you figured out the price that you think is fair. Perfect! You’re doing good. You’ve made it this far. That alone is a huge accomplishment to be proud of. Take your time and pat yourself on the back. You’ve made it to the day that you’ve been working hard for. Pour yourself a glass of wine, make a steak, celebrate! You’ve earned it! You can worry about selling your book and throwing together the advertising another day. It’s time to relax and take a breather. Congratulations!