Indie publishing ain't for sleepyheads

I published my fifth Sgt. Dunn novel, Capture, last Monday to Kindle. I clicked the "Publish" button about 4:45 p.m. CDT. So what happens after that? Amazon states that the book will go live some time within 12 hours in the U.S., longer elsewhere.

Naturally, I clicked the refresh button about every half hour looking for "LIVE" until bed time, when I gave up and went to sleep. I woke up without the alarm at 5:00 a.m. Believe me, this is not my usual time! I grabbed my laptop and refreshed the page. Yay! It's LIVE. So I send out emails to my Advance Publication list (newsletter) by 5:20 a.m. 

Indie, or self, publishing is hard work. The author is responsible for everything from the editing to getting the cover designed, marketing, and all the other small details that publishing a book entails. If you don't do it, or have someone on your team who does it for you, it will not get done.

I worked on preparing the file for CreateSpace, which we use to publish the paperback. You upload the file and can build your front and back cover using their tool. After the automated system checks your book, you can use a digital proof tool to view your book. It's really nice and it looks like you are flipping paper pages as you go. Everything was looking good until I got to a point half way through. One sentence toward the bottom of the page looked weird. In the paperback I use the Justified setting for the nice straight edges on both sides of the text. Here's what the sentence looked like, including the one previous.

‘don’t we have any armor to take care of  them?’ 
” 
Note the double quote on the second line. I use the convention of adding a space between a single and double quote at the end of a sentence for reading clarity. It should have been like this:

‘don’t we have any armor to take care of them?’ ” 

However, the Justify setting couldn't make room for that other space and pushed the double quote down a line. To fix it, I added a space in front of "them." This forced "them?' " to the next line and all is good.

‘don’t we have any armor to take care of  
them?’ ” 

My point? I could have missed it, but didn't. So make sure you're really focused on what you're doing. No one else will find until a reader sees it. 

Many thanks to my readers for supporting and reading the Sgt. Dunn novels. I'm working on number 6 now.

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