I have dipped my toes into the water and I like it.

At heart, I am doer who likes to learn things hands-on. So I decided to start small with a collection of poetry I had composed thirty years ago in my teens that I stumbled across during a fall cleaning. It was a pleasant surprise to find my compositions were well done – remember I was teen when I wrote them. After pondering for a bit, I figured why not. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

It gave me the opportunity to learn the basics of Scrivener. From setting up my template to formatting and then exporting to epub format. The next step was registering for the dreaded ISBN. It wasn’t as difficult as I had thought and the staff at Library and Archives Canada were very helpful. Then I had to compose a unique but relevant title and finally, design a book cover (see below) to compliment the collection.

After a few missteps, I had created an epub file that worked. In the end, this was the easy part. The hard part was actually publishing what I had created – putting it out in the public domain.

The next step was where to publish it. There are many options depending on what you want. For the newbies, me being one of them it can be a bit overwhelming. As well, you receive a lot of advice and feedback from others that can compound the conundrum. A good friend and fellow writer mentioned Draft2Digital, which I had not heard of. I checked out D2D’s website and was intrigued. Creating an account gave me an opportunity to look around some more.

Wow, what a great experience it was. The site is fresh, clean looking and has user-friendly instructions. The whole process was quite easy. I owe my friend a bottle of wine for that genius. D2D even gave me the option of downloading a mobi file. This worked out great, as I was able to upload it to Amazon.

My first experience in self-publishing went well. It makes me much more confident that when I go to publish my first novella I will have worked out most the kinks.

To close, a great big thanks to all the wonderful ladies in my local association who constantly share their expertise and experience with the group at large. Those tidbits and tips helped a lot.

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