Saturday 20 October 2012

Overwhelmed!!

My introduction to the Kindle Direct Publishing program came in a roundabout way.  I was reading up on the background to the 50 SHADES phenomenon and before I knew it, one thing led to another and there I was on Amazon's site, reading up on the KDP program, open to everyone who writes or aspires to write.  I immediately knew this was something I had to try.  It was certainly one of those defining "Aahh!!" moments in my life.

The first step was a no-brainer.  Open an account with Amazon.  I managed that step, no problem.

Then I quickly scanned the other stuff about uploading your formatted manuscript and cover design, filling in the price and other info and then with a couple of clicks of the old mouseroo, voila!, you're a published Kindle author!  I kept coming back to the phrase about becoming a published Kindle author over and over again...Then commonsense prevailed and I forced myself to carefully re-read all of the information about preparing and formatting the manuscript, preparing the cover design.  I re-read those parts again, several times.  Those words were totally foreign to a NCSC ("Non-Computer-Savvy Chick") like me.  With growing trepidation, I quickly scrolled to the tutorials on formatting your manuscript and designing your cover and then went over to the Kindleboards and read all the comments there.  Two vital points became abundantly clear to me:  (i) even authors with computer savvy had their challenges getting the formatting and cover design right; and (ii) in order to publish with Kindle, I needed help.  While there was a slim possibility - and I do mean "slim" - that I could figure out the formatting, there was no way in my natural lifetime I could even begin to contemplate doing my own cover design.

The funny thing was that while I was reading up on the tutorials and the message boards, the words of the Michael Jackson song "You are not alone..." kept running through my head.  That's because I figured there had to be other authors out there exactly like me who wanted to publish to Kindle but were overwhelmed by the challenges that the process entailed.  Hence the idea for this blog...I could document my challenges, solutions, successes and failures - not unlike Amy Adams' character, Julie Powell, in the 2009 movie Julie & Julia, which also starred the brilliant Meryl Streep as Julia Child.  In the movie, Julie Powell aspired to cook over 500 recipes from Julia Childs' cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in 365 days while documenting her experiences in her blog, The Julie/Julia Project.  Although my endeavor has a shorter timeline - I hope - it's certainly no less ambitious.  The only difference is, I'm replacing the challenges of making a Duck L'Orange with mastering editing, publishing and becoming my own publicist.

So, given my inspiration from Julie & Julia, I felt it only fitting to call my blog The Marta/Kindle Project...

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