If you think it’s crazy for me to publish my unfinished manuscript by the end of this month: you’d be spot on! This might be an arduous task, but based on my past experience with publishing, it’s not impossible.

Here’s my road to publishing this fun book, Welcome to Garden Valley, about Joanie’s adventure of moving to Garden Valley:

• Finish my line edit (shout out once again to Lindsay for her hard work on this)
• Throw my book in Grammarly.
  • If you’ve read my previous posts, you’ll remember how much I’ve whined about poor grammar, typos, and punctuation. This has been a humbling experience for this writer, who used to pride herself on being typo and error-free!
• Get going on the cover!
  • I’ve sent my wonderful cover artist some pics and a few ideas and have asked him to run with it. 
• Format the book!
  • Bethany Atazadah just came out with a formatting video on YouTube that I will check out. Is this perfect timing, or what? In the past, I’ve pieced together a formatting class with my own experience to format my books. I get to a finished product with my method, but not after hours of fighting with Word. Hopefully, Bethany’s video will help.
• Read my book out loud.
  • I haven’t followed through with this with my past books, but I know it’s necessary. Fingers crossed that I can stick with it this time!
• Marketing
  • Oh, the nagging task of marketing. I have been spending more time on this and have found it fun, yet when I have the choice between this and meeting my deadline, I’ll choose my book every time.
• So what is my marketing plan?
  • Posting teasers on Instagram
  • Posting more videos on Youtube, including shorts
  • Newsletters
  • PERHAPS RELEASING THE FIRST 2-3 CHAPTERS BEFORE THE BIG RELEASE!
  • Try for a BookBub deal
  • Try for a RobinReads deal
• Proofing the formatting
• Looking through after the formatting is done
  • I like to read my book several times after editing to make those final tweaks. Even before this step, however, I’ve learned that the formatting needs to get done. Without this, I can’t upload to Amazon and get my proof book. This proof book takes 2-3 weeks to be delivered to my door.
• When will this all happen?
  • It’s happening NOW! I’m almost done with the line edit, I have the blurb written, and I plan to click through Grammarly as quickly as possible. 

The excitement for publishing Welcome to Garden Valley gives me the energy to complete this long to-do list. I don’t have hundreds of readers yet. Still, this process has been a rewarding and fun experience that I hope my current readers will benefit from. 

I hope you will all enjoy reading this next book!