When I wrote my first novel, I followed the traditional path of finding an agent to represent me, submitting the manuscript (typed, double-spaced) and hoped for a blockbuster bestseller. The agent did her job, and I actually got a few very lovely rejection letters. Then the agent suffered a serious illness and I put away the manuscripts – there were three by then – and concentrated on showing my dogs, pursuing my career, and collecting more stories along the way.

A little over ten years ago, a well-known fantasy author was our house guest, and during the after-dinner conversation I brought up the subject of my own books. By then she had been self-publishing electronically. She suggested I try that route and gave me the contact information for her own e-editor. So I tried it.

The books came back to me formatted for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK. (I soon dropped B & N, as NOOK was overshadowed by Kindle.) There was a steep learning curve in uploading the books, including figuring out the pricing. Amazon publishes books for no initial fee. However, when a copy is sold, they take their cut from the top. On my first attempt I kept getting an error message and finally reached out to Amazon for help. Their answer was laughable – my price point was too low to allow for Amazon’s share, publishing costs, and then my royalties. I raised the price by a dollar and solved the problem.

Those first three books were well-received by my friends in the world of show dogs, so I wrote my fourth book using a background story that had intrigued me for years. I was having a wonderful time and kept writing. One thing about many years of showing dogs and serving in clubs, and also a long and rewarding career, is that there are true stories to draw from. In other words: Baby, I know where the bodies are buried.

As I wrote and tried e-publishing, I kept hearing people say, “I’d love to read your books, if only they were real books.” If there’s a downside to e-books, it’s that they’re ‘one-and-done.’ I think it may be possible for the initial book buyer to loan it once to a friend, but then it sits, forgotten, in your Kindle archives. A paperback, on the other hand, can be read and then passed along from hand to hand indefinitely. We can give them as gifts or donate them as trophies or raffle prizes, or to libraries, and they keep on giving pleasure to readers. Amazon offered a paperback option, so I tried it.

Talk about a learning curve! It’s one thing to upload a perfect e-file. It’s another to try to format your manuscript yourself... I’m talking about fixing margins that are too close to the centerfold or “gutter,” so the first letters aren’t gulped down and swallowed. The Book Creator app asks, “Do you have a cover”? Yes, a beautifully designed cover by a talented graphic artist. Oops, no, it’s not quite a cover until you run it through the Cover Creator app to format the front, with the title on the spine and the back, a photo of the author, and the book’s descriptive ‘blurb’. Oh, and then there’s that tricky pricing decision again. It can take several attempts before you get it right. Then, if you’re wise, you won’t impatiently hit Publish and order your first box of author’s copies. If you’re wise, you’ll order a single proof copy to review, rather than throw away a whole box of author’s copies with typefaces too small to read and with part of your text in the gutter.

Proofreading: Self-publishing means there is no editor to catch your mistakes. After writing 23 novels I’ve decided that it’s easier to write a book than to proofread it. If a word or a phrase looked right to you when you typed it the first time, it’s going to look just as correct the third or fourth time. The same is true of punctuation, especially if Artificial Intelligence is giving less than helpful advice. For some reason, my newest version of MS Word wants to occasionally remove the quotation marks from the end of a quote. ‘Only one punctuation mark is necessary here.’

You’ll need at least two proofreaders, and unless you’ve actually written a runaway best seller, they should be friends who’ll do the work for small gifts or homemade preserves. But they should also believe you when you ask for a harsh critique: “Tell me what’s wrong before my readers do!” I call it, “finding the horses in the helicopter,” after a truly forgettable movie we watched ages ago in which a pair of rangers on horseback were suddenly summoned by radio to the site of a distant emergency. A helicopter was sent for them, and soon we saw them at the new site—on the same horses!

I think my own worst turn of phrase was, ‘the packet of registration certificates for the litter of puppies that I last saw on the dinette table.’ My sharp-eyed best friend asked how the puppies got onto the table.

Proofreading doesn’t stop after the first time you and your proofreaders go through the manuscript. It takes three and sometimes four times to catch almost all the errors, but there’s always one that eludes all eyes. I know. I’m lucky to have two very good friends with sharp eyes, and one of them admitted to getting involved in the story sometimes and not watching for punctuation errors.

When you’re ready to publish, there are a couple of little chores you must do to plan in advance. First is the category: Where would you locate this book on a library shelf? Is it fiction? Okay, what kind? Mystery, Romance, Young Adult? Next is the sub-category: Mystery—Cozy? Hard-boiled? After that you need up to seven keywords, words to steer a search engine to your title. Mine might be Cardigan Welsh Corgis, dog shows, canine scent work, etc.

The pricing structure for an Amazon paperback is 40% for Amazon, 21% to 30% printing costs, and the remainder is the author’s royalties. I don’t make enough to quit my day job, but luckily, I’m retired. It does give us a nice amount to spend on eating out.

I’ve just finished the 23rd book in my series. My proofreaders have been through it two and three times, I’ve done it four times, not including correcting the nasty little errors my friends have found. Now it’s time to start putting it in shape for publication.