Second Chance is on Diesel!

Second Chance is now available for purchase on Diesel eBook Store.

The Mistakes I’ve Made

And The Things I've Learned

On my journey to becoming a romance novelist, I’ve made some mistakes along the way, but I’ve also learned a lot. Here are some mistakes that I can clearly remember and some things I’ve learned that hopefully will make my next project less stressful (hopefully yours as well):

1.     Spell check, spell check, spell check! If you are querying, don’t misspell words. If you are rolling your eyes and mentally saying, “duh”, I agree. You will see this advice in books, hear it from agents, publishing houses, everywhere. It’s so obvious; I had to add it here. The very first letter I sent to an agent, I wrote “docter” instead of "doctor" in my email. Oops.

2.     Back to that pesky grammars thing. In my eagerness to publish, I overlooked some things. Though I've spent months editing, there were still errors that are so obvious, I still ask myself how I didn’t spot them. 

3.    Be prepare to read your manuscript until you are so tired of it, you wonder why you stayed up till three in the morning working on something that might not even see the light of publishing. That was where the discouragement came from. That was where some of my frustrations came from. What I learned from this was that when you are ready to publish, whether through the traditional route or through self-publishing, you will have a satisfying manuscript.

4.      If you decide to self-publish, you’ll need a cover. I started with looking for an illustrator and a graphic designer. I searched online, posted my project online, used resources available to me and I ended up spending precious time and money looking for something that some websites like theauthorsredroom.com can offer for a fraction of what a graphic designer will charge all together. Some graphic designers were asking between $300 and $500. After a couple of weeks and $50 already spent on an illustration I couldn’t use without a graphic designer, I found my cover for $80. If you are willing to settle for premade covers, it will be even cheaper. If you can do it yourself, kudos to you. 

5.      Editors. Will you need one? Do you want one? Chances are, you will need one. Most book editors will charge by the word count, i.e. ±$0.075 per word (just throwing a number in here). If you have a full-length manuscript, your manuscript will be more than 50-thousand words. You do the math. So far, the cheapest I've found online is theauthorsredroom.com. They charge by the page instead of by word. And once you have your edited manuscript, it doesn't hurt to read it through again. This was another one of my oops.

6.      Publishing. Be careful. There are several self-publishing outlets and most will charge you money. If you have the funds, you can use services like CreateSpace by Amazon. They can put your whole project together, including making your book available for print-on-demand (POD) with a customize cover for a fee. Do some research and do some comparison. The cheapest package offered me was through Amazon.

      There are great resources at the library as well so check your local libraries for Literary Market Place and such books. If you have some advice for me, please do comment. I'm always searching for ways to make this journey a little less hectic.

   Just a reminder: Second Chance is available as an e-book through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks and Smashwords. Check it out.