The Beginning

July 1st I woke up, finished, and submitted my 30th story in thirty days. Wow, thirty stories in thirty days! Now what? Immediately I knew that I was going to reach out to all of the authors that had also just completed the challenge to see if they wanted to come together and create an anthology that we could share a few of the short stories that we just wrote over the last thirty days with the world!

Thirteen Author’s

Although thirteen is sometimes referred to as an unlucky number, I am grateful for the other twelve author’s that span all around the globe who decided to join me on this adventure. They were all so helpful, encouraging, and most of all kept me motivated to keep pushing through all of the editing nightmares. And there were many.

Editing

Since I spearheaded this project it was my responsibility to do most of the editing. I did have an amazing team of five other authors that I turned to frequently for their input, editing suggestions, and most importantly friendship. Although, none of us have ever met in person I felt as if those two months of working closely together on a project brought us together not only as ‘coworkers’ but as friends. I was simply amazed by how all of the authors worked so well together submitting their stories by the deadlines that I had created and not breaking the ‘content rules’ too much!

I finally had all of the stories in hand, edited, formatted (so I thought), and ready to be put into one document to create: Thirty Stories, Thirty Days: An Anthology of Shorts.

Scrivener VS. Word VS.?

I chose to use Scrivener as my word processor for research purposes (mistake #1) All of the stories were currently in Google Dox for collaborating purposes and copying and pasting from Google Dox to Scrivener does not work. I ended up having to download the file into a Word.docx and then copying and pasting into Scrivener. This went on for about 20 stories and then I threw in the towel and made the decision to just use Word as my processor (mistake #2). All 8 parts, complete with 36 stories, 8 poems, contents, page numbers, etc were ready to be uploaded into KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) or so I thought.

KDP Creator.. What?

I created my KDP account, had it all set up and ready to go. This is going to be so easy! NOT! I upload the Word manuscript, upload the cover, set pricing, and then hit preview. So many errors, the page numbers don’t even show, there wasn’t an option to jump between chapters. Why? After Google searching, and asking some author friends I was now downloading the KDP Creator software, swearing a bit, and drinking some wine.

Word to KDP

KDP Creator does request that the document is preferably a Word.docx file. I am thinking they request this to make you swear and drink 😂 I get the Word.docx file imported into KDP Creator and it’s not even all there. Why isn’t the entire manuscript importing? Are there stories missing from the manuscript? Thankfully, there weren’t any stories missing from the original manuscript; however when importing into KDP ‘information was lost in translation.’

Now What?

After more research I found that I had to manually add the missing content into the KDP Creator to make it whole. From Word I needed to remove all page numbers from the contents section, along with the page numbers on the actual pages, and then resend it to KDP. (There were also a ton of annoying centering issues going on that needed fixed as well) At this point I was getting hangry and needed a break, so I put off the final steps for one more day!

Publishing Day!

Saturday morning, October 10th had arrived and I was ready to go all in and get my very first novel published. Hit tea was steeping, a glass of cold water, and it was go time. (I was so confident!) I opened up the KDP file and uploaded it, and hit preview. Ahhh. Formatting was still wrong. WHY? After 2 hours of screaming at myself in my head I had hit publish on my very first novel with the support of twelve other authors.

Paperback Please?

I was so elated with publishing the EPub version, felt motivated and confident that I could get the paperback copy published as well (see picture above…. Not ready) Alas, it was not a go and I was called into a cat rescuing situation (another story), so I closed my laptop and made the decision to save the paperback publishing for another day.

Proof Copy.

The following Wednesday I finally found the time to re-submit the cover art (Thank you, Samia for all of your hard work on the cover) and it worked. I have ordered a proof copy, which is set to arrive Monday, October 26th. After final edits to ensure all formatting and cover etc look okay I will be able to move forward with the paperback publication date.

Final Words

Writing and publishing a novel, an anthology, a novella or what have you is not for the faint of heart. You must be motivated to push through the struggles of writer’s block, fatigue, and frustration. It all seemed to be an uphill battle, but if you are motivated enough to achieve your goals then you can and will be able to achieve anything that you set forth to do.

Closing.

Thank you for reading this far and I hope that you can and will achieve all of your dreams and goals. Go for all of the. Never be afraid to do something new.

Any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Renee 😊