I tried. It was not pretty.

 Book Design! 

The next step - after copy editing and cover design - was book design.

Do not attempt to do this at home.

Let me qualify the above statement. I should not have attempted to do this at home. 

At this point, I have my edited manuscript and cover art. Why not, I asked myself, see what I can do on my own? At least for the e-book. 

So, I spent some hours doing an extremely basic design that I intended to export as a PDF when finished. I never got that far, because one: I could never quite get the chapter headings to situate themselves identically for each chapter, and two: I was underwhelmed by the appearance of what I had so far.

Another very valid reason is that I simply, at this point, do not want to expend the time and mental energy required to learn additional software programs. Outside of writing - a fair amount of which I still do with handwritten notes - I have no desire to spend time on screens at all. Before I became a librarian, I worked in corporate cubical Purgatory, tied to screens all day, and I have no desire to relive the experience.

So, I hired a book designer. 

Again, I returned to Reedsy.com, but before I solicited quotes, I sent in a question about exactly what it was I needed. They replied within a day, explaining that since I already had the front cover art, I should start with interior book designers, and let them know that I wanted interior design, a wrap around cover for the paperback, and files ready to upload to both KDP and IngramSparks.

So that is what I did, and I'll have the results by August 24th.

I'll let you know how it goes.

In the meantime...

As I wrote in an earlier post, there is an absolute tsunami of information out there on self-publishing, and much of it is excellent. After some looking around, I recently joined The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and I highly recommend that you check it out. In addition to well-organized information and resources, it also offers discounts for various self-publishing services. 

Since my next step will be joining and uploading my book to KDP and IngramSpark, I've been reading up on the process, as well as availing myself to YouTube videos - there are many, and can vary in quality - but on the whole, again, very helpful.

Actually, my next step is to finish filling out the ISBNs for my paperback and e-book versions. It will be interesting.