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Reflections After 2 Weeks of Publishing My eBook

Time to reflect after two weeks of publishing Postmortem of a Failed Startup: Lessons for Success.
  • It’s been a great journey, but it’s really just the beginning. Now comes the hardest part – promoting the book. Just like any startup, it’s about execution now.
  • If you publish on Amazon’s Kindle platform, be careful when you say, “available on Kindle”. Most people don’t know Kindle is just the platform, and there’s a Kindle app available for any device – many think it’s just Kindle e-reader.
  • Editors made my book way better. The first version of the book took < 10 days. It was full of content, but lacked cohesion and vision. The first round of edits immediately made the book 10X better. The more critical, the better. Three formal rounds of edits later (+ several personal ones)… book was in shape for publishing!
  • It’s very easy to self-publish a book, and doesn’t cost much money. Friends as Editors = $0. Cover photo = $12. Cover self-editing = $0. Copyright registration = $55. International Standards Book Number (ISBN) 10-Pack = $295. Website template = $48. Website self-edit = $0. GoDaddy domain registration= $11.34. For everything else = priceless (err, “free”).
  • Microsoft Word is great to write the book, track changes, and initially convert the book ready for mobile format. Beyond, know some HTML to make finer adjustments like formatting lists, pictures, etc.
  • Everyone is impressed that I’ve written a book more so than I thought. I think it’s a goal or at least an achievement most people don’t ever think about. The moment I mention it, everyone is inspired and curious. It’s going to be great for branding.
  • Writing the book wasn’t that hard. It was just sitting down and tackling it. I didn’t think about length or format at first. Instead, I made a rough outline of the topics, and made a goal to write two chapters a day. From there, it was easy to produce content. Then, editing made the book from stream of consciousness to coherent vision.

There are many more thoughts, but these just came to me. I’ve been busy the last couple weeks, though, so I’m interested to see what happens in the next month when I reach a homeostasis and start promoting the book.

    What questions do you have about publishing a book? If you could write about anything, what would that be?

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