Sydney Landon | My lessons learned from Self-Publishing

One of the most frequent questions that I have been asked since signing with Penguin Publishing is what is it like to go from being a self-published author to a published author?  When you self-publish, you are in charge of everything.  I would have never thought it possible to write, design, format and completely build a book by myself.  I have learned more about formatting and design than I ever wanted to know! 

Probably one of the first things that an aspiring author does is open up a word
processing program and start writing.  That is exactly what I did.  Only later
did I figure out that I should be formatting the text a certain way for a book
in e-book form.  Also, when I first started writing, I didn't worry a lot about
the grammar or the spelling.  Hey, I figured you could always go back and fix
those things later.  What you don't think about at that point is how hard that
will be when you have written several hundred pages.  It soon becomes apparent
as you attempt the editing process that you will need some serious help because
you will never be able to do it on your own.  I hired several different people
to edit my books and each seemed to find something that the other had missed.  I
spent so much time and money on editing.  That was the single hardest thing
about self-publishing. 

When you finally have a manuscript you are comfortable with, you start thinking
of designing a cover for your book.  I must have looked at thousands of
pictures.  To me, the cover is so important, especially to a new author.  You
want people to be attracted to your cover enough to give your book a second
glance.  There are people out there who design e-book covers, but for your first
book, most try to spare the expense and do it themselves as I did. 

When I signed with Penguin, I was amazed at how streamlined the above processes
were.  To have a team of editors going over your books is just amazing.  They
took books that I was already proud of and turned them into something so very
special. 

The most important thing that I have gained has been the support system.  Now
when I have a question, my editor is there to answer it.  It reminds me of the
saying "it takes a village."  Sometimes to fully realize a dream, it does indeed
take a village.