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2 minute read - Dear Evil Tester Self Publishing

Behind the scenes of Dear Evil Tester : Hitting Publish

Mar 17, 2016

Today became “Dear Evil Tester” launch day.

Surprise!

I suspect ‘professionals’ create a plan and stick to it. I’m more of a kanban, ship it when it is ready, kind of guy.

On the 16th March, I received a final proof copy, and I reviewed that. Then on the 17th I hit publish.

I found the free pdf comparison tool “diff-pdf” very useful for final leanpub print ready pdf comparison during my final proof phase.

The launch process proceeded as follows:

  • start at leanpub
  • check the book details
  • realise you haven’t added a price
  • add price (make it slightly cheaper than amazon kindle because of the difference in royalty rates)
  • click publish
  • check the page looks OK in incognito mode
  • tweet
  • tweet that a sample is available now so people can try before they buy
  • move on to createspace
  • click publish
  • stare at the message that says “this might take 3-4 days” and wonder how people manage to create a co-ordinated launch across all platforms
  • move on to kdp (kindle direct publishing)
  • click publish
  • again stare aghast at the “this might take 3-4 days” message
  • be amazed as you start responding to peeps tweets about buying the book. Thank you all.
  • see that Amazon.co.uk have listed the book for sale
  • tweet that
  • start editing all your web pages
  • notice that the feedjs server you were relying on for your rss feeds has stopped responding, so create a new endpoint for your existing rss caching to work on different sites
  • notice that the kindle version has been published
  • tweet that
  • respond to more peeps tweets. Thank you all again.
  • Write a promotional blog post

I still have more to do in the launch.

  • make sure Amazon notice that the paperback and kindle book are actually the same book and are listed together
  • create a leanpub promo video
  • amend the sales pages

But overall, the ‘publish’ part of ‘self publishing’ has become quite smooth.
Thank you for your support.


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