SquarePeg Books

As I’ve prattled on about before, I am trying to get myself set up to self-publish my own work.

Every single step of this process creates an anxiety response in me.

I’ll get my head wrapped around something, like buying an actual domain name, then loose my mind for a week or so. I’ll read and research and find out about ISBN’s, copyright, trademark, LLC, NDA’s and all that. I got it. I got my head around it.

Then I’ll read an article about uploading a book, and run across at least two terms I know nothing about – ePub formatting, or BISAC codes, for example – and loose my damned mind because I thought I’d researched everything I needed to know to self-publish, do some digging, open three more cans of worms, discover that I don’t have a lot of options because I’m Linux based, or still not certain about BISAC codes, or where/how one sources a barcode, and oh, I made three rookie mistakes along the way in my .odt file that I’ll have to correct to move it along to the next stage, while I’m researching programs that can cleanly transfer a .odt file to ePub without a lot of grossness.

Turns out that last one is a pain in the ass. Not the fixing the rookie mistakes, part–that’s just an aesthetics mistake with fonts for chapter headers. It’s the other part–.odt to ePub without a lot of yuck.

Understand, formatting to ePub is not insurmountable. Absolutely doable. I just don’t wanna. But it is necessary, so I’ve been tinkering with it, and I don’t like it. It’s been a long time since I had to address anything on the code side. The last time I did anything like that was in the 1990’s, when I learned to hand-jam html code. Back then it was kind of interesting. Now it’s just gross.

Now I’m looking at services and programs and what works with Linux and what doesn’t; does the moon need to be full when I format, or is it just a basic rubber chicken sacrifice; should I get one of my kids to help me (I don’t like to think of myself as a “1200 flasher”, but I am getting to that age…)

“What is .odt?” you may ask. It’s the Linux answer to .doc or .docx. Why do I use Linux? Because it’s free, and I have two kids in orthodontic braces right now (which is definitely not free), amongst other necessary expenses.

And no, just uploading to Amazon is not the answer I’m going for. I want a wider distribution than just the ‘Zon (and they don’t support .odt, so I’d have to export it into another format, anyway).

Found the utility that could possibly work–It’s web-based, I have to buy an account, I have to look into a few other things, blahblahblah. More research. More reviewing T&C policies.

I’m glad I learned about it all now, though, instead of 5 minutes before I intend to push out the first manuscript for public consumption. Now, I have time to panic, spin down into a spiral of despair because *reasons*, slowly climb out of the oubliette, re-assess the order of research I have to deal with (once again, all those marketing books are pushed to the back of the line), have a small breakdown over absolutely nothing for no damned real reason, find a decidedly not-writing related project to focus exclusively on for a bit, then pull my shit together to get the thing done.

Before I run across another unknown rock in the road, and bark and whine at it incessantly.

Again.