Indie publishing your book: It’s not so easy, but it works and it’s worth doing. That’s my message this month: that indie-publishing is a known pathway and you can do it.

Because I’ve just published a fourth book, the pain of publication is still fresh.

I’m not going to tell anyone it’s so easy you can do it from your phone on a bus.  Amazon plays very nicely with authors, even newbies. But Microsoft Word can be unforgiving, IngramSpark for indie publishers can be unforgiving, and you have to get your documents to jump through the right-shaped hoops, one, two, three on each site where you publish: Amazon’s KDP, IngramSpark, Kobo, Draft2Digital… Not exactly easy.

But the joy of having done it is immense. If you’re interested in the evidence (yes, it can be done) see Books on this site for The Emperor’s Golden Carp and Other Stories. It’s fun to see the new baby go into print.

And if you want a beginner’s User Manual for publishing your own things, Joanna Penn’s latest edition of her book Successful Self-Publishing (downloadable free at TheCreativePenn.com) is a great place to start.

There are some great articles online that you can use for the details. Send me an email if you’re interested and I’ll send you my short list of online time-saver guidelines.

For the trickier parts, one good idea is to listen in on FreeAdviceFridays with Keri Barnum (www.FreeAdviceFridays.com) where you can get your questions answered live on Friday mornings, U.S. Eastern Time.

Indie-publishing is a known pathway (well, mostly) and you can do it.