Hi, welcome back to the final blog of the debut mini blog series. If you read the last three blogs in the past few weeks and reached this far, thank you. It means a lot when you take a minute to read each one. If this is your first time reading this blog and didn’t read the others, I will leave them here. That way you click them and read it for yourself.
It started with Victoria Magazine
Why Constructive Feedback Matters?
Behind-the-Scene on Book Cover Process
Last week in the book cover blog, I mentioned I had self-published before A FOREVER SUMMER, and made many mistakes on the way. I decided to start from scratch. Do things right. What do I mean by that?
First off, I was a newbie and had little knowledge about self-publishing. I knew there was a way to self-publish books. For me, I didn’t want to sell books. If I did, then nobody would be interested in buying my books, so I went on Smashwords, a site where people published ebooks. Only ebooks, nothing else. Instead of charging money, I gave them away for free. I published three ebooks, and all of them were short. Less than 11k words. Two of them were fantasy and one historical. I was pretty proud of myself for being able to publish my works.
But as time goes on, the ebooks hasn't gone far. I mean gained new readers. And the worst part, I barely got reviews (I estimated around 3 or less on most platforms and most of them were 3 stars) I also mentioned in the previous blog about D.I.Y your own covers. One of the huge mistakes I did (though at the time I tried not spend any money other than hired ebook formatter on Fiverr) Not only that, I didn’t hire a professional editor. In 2020, I questioned myself about my writing and stories I’ve written. I ended up unpublished all the ebooks.
I stepped back from self-publishing and went the traditional publishing route. I spent a good chunk of first year querying agents, submitting one of my manuscripts (this is not A FOREVER SUMMER, a different story) to a couple small publishers. Nothing happened. Each one shut their door. Nobody wanted to publish my story. I felt disheartened and discouraged. Then my family encouraged me to try again on self-publish and maybe down the road I’ll try again on a traditional route.
By the end of Summer 2021, I announced I’m self-publishing A FOREVER SUMMER and nine months later it’s happening. A week from today, A Forever Summer will be out in the world.
Will I self-publish more books in the future? Yes, and no. Yes, I will self-publish some books, but I also like to see one of my stories being traditionally published. I don’t know when it will happen. Right now, I’m going to take one story at a time and trust God with the rest.
I can’t thank you enough for all of your support and continue being with me on this journey.