Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Well, that two week’s vacation went by in a blitz. It was very productive, with the last two books of the Fallen Cloud Saga hitting the streets, but boy, could I have used another week…or month.

Now that the hardcopies are available, I realize I have made a classic mistake. It’s all part-and-parcel of the difficulty in switching from my author hat to my publisher hat. The author in me just wants to get the book out there and get it into reader’s hands. The publisher (an admittedly weaker part of me) wants to get the best release, the best buzz, and the best notice which helps get the book into more readers’ hands.

So, this classic mistake is to rush “to print” at the detriment of any sort of planning and release strategy.

But all is not lost.

I had thought that my next step would be to prepare the e-book versions for Kindle e-readers. In preparing for this, I purchased a book to help me with some of the marketing side of things. I haven’t finished reading it, yet, so I’ll save my review of it, but in short, it has alerted me to some aspects of the hardcopy release that were not well thought out.

I spent a great deal of time with my publisher hat on, concentrating on the book itself, but there’s another area I glossed over: marketing. Now, this being a re-release of four books (along with the debut of the fifth book), I never expected it to be a big money-maker. However, what I’ve been learning is that with a little work, I might be able to increase the attention my books get, and more attention is always good. Luckily, some of these items can be fixed after-the-fact, which I will now be doing.

So, while I go through this process, I’ll post on my experience and (eventually) on the results, but for now, I just want to alert any would-be self-publishing authors to this pitfall.

This month, next month, won’t make a whole lot of difference in the long run. Think of all aspects of your book: Content, Product, Marketing, Release. You want quality in all of these areas, to the best of your ability.

Take a breath. Take your time. Do it right.

k