When I was younger, and only a little bit more stupid than I am now (trust me, only a little bit….), I once took off to go climb a 14-er on my own.  I took off in the afternoon, not really calculating how long it would take to get there or how dark it would be; I brought a sleeping bag, but didn’t really think through all the other sorts of shelter I should have; I brought water, but not a means to filter or obtain new. In other words, I kinda set out lookin’ for disaster, not having any idea how much I didn’t know.

That’s a little what this week felt like with the self-publishing business.

No, there are not disasters in the offing, and I certainly don’t anticipate being woken up at night by bears because of the book. But the amount of stuff that I’m learning I don’t know is, frankly, disturbing.

For instance, many of my target audience, it turns out, really really like having a hard copy of books. So, publishing strictly e-book format is really limiting my market penetration (yeah, I had to look that term up–another thing I didn’t know!).

Taking a thing from word document or even e-book format to print-ready format is challenging–the two aren’t the same thing, it turns out.

A cover which works well for e-book needs trimming and edging and a variety of other little ‘tweaks’ to become print ready, it turns out.

The back cover, it turns out, needs its own little bit of artwork (not so much artwork, in the sense of an accomplished artist like Michael K. Ikeya, as just something that looks like it belongs and allows me to put out more information about the book . . . but I digress), and that also needs trimming and edging and tweaking.

Oh, and, yeah, if I intend to get serious about marketing and trying to expand my reach beyond a tiny little sliver of my circle of influence, I need marketing materials like business cards and stuff. At least, that’s what my wife tells me, and she’s a lot smarter than I am, it turns out.

So, yeah, the big update for this week is that I’ve been spending WAY more time being a designer this week than a writer. I didn’t know that was going to be a part of this.

The upside, of course, is that soon I will have hard copies of “The Accidental Christmas” available (have to up the price for these, just slightly: $5), and I also have in hand nifty little business cards and advertising leaflets.

It’s almost like I’m getting serious about this whole thing.