I made it! My new horror novel Nanobite is now available on Amazon for Kindle. I was thinking about the process, so here's a few thoughts on it.
Writing the novel is the easy part - especially with this one. From the initial concept to the finished first draft took about three months altogether. The story seemed to flow really well, although the finished draft was somewhat different to the first ideas.
As an example, when I wrote the first few pages, I envisaged a story about the whole world being overrun by vampires, with just a few bands of survivors fighting them. About twenty pages in, I realised that what I really wanted to do was focus in on a small group of people and examine how they dealt with the situation they found themselves in. For me, this made the novel better (as attested to by the beta readers who kindly read and commented on the manuscript).
After the writing though, the hard work started. Re-read, edit, rewrite. Repeat. Consider all the beta readers' comments and incorporate those that I felt fitted the story or improved it in some way. I didn't keep track, but I reckon that almost three quarters of all the comments and suggestions received had some value and were used - some as they were, some were modified to better fit my vision of the story. (After all, it's my story and I'm in charge, right?)
Each round of editing caught less and less - the first read-through caught numerous typos and grammatical errors; by the final round of editing I only caught a few. Hopefully I caught them all.
So, write, edit, rewrite - this novel went through five rounds of editing and rewriting. Formatting came next - I did this in an evening using Amazon's excellent 'Building Your Book for Kindle' eBook. No major issues here, it's a simple process to follow.
I designed the cover myself - having taught Graphic Design for three years I was confident in my ability to realise the vision I had for the cover myself. This took a couple of evenings; it helps to have a firm idea of what you want the finished cover to look like.
Finally, uploading to the Kindle store. Again, a fairly straightforward process. Took me about an hour all told, taking it nice and steady. This is where the feelings of dread start to kick in - it's like your kid's first ever day at school - you nurture them until it's time to send them out into the big wide world on their own.
Once uploaded and published, it's time to think about kicking the marketing up a gear. I started marketing Nanobite from the minute I knew it was a viable concept; now it's released, I can concentrate on promoting it.
Except I've now got the beginnings of a plot for my next novel. Need to find time for that as well. Oh well, a writer's life is never dull.
