As I mentioned in my prior post, being booked as a guest on the Katie Couric Show provided the impetus to finalize the book for publication in time for the show’s airing – a few weeks away. At the time that I was booked as a guest, my book was undergoing final revisions for submission to Create Space editors. I contacted the editors immediately and was dismayed to find out that Create Space’s turnaround time for editing my book was a month. That was a deal breaker for me and I had to resort to my own resources. Reminiscent of my days as an intern, I stayed up until 4 AM for four days in a row rewriting/editing not to mention numerous days proofreading the final version of the book and then having it proofread by a third party. While that was going on and for the week following, my book cover designer/self-publishing consultant designed and finalized the book cover spread, formatted the print and ebook versions (kindle & epub) and dealt with book submission administration. We had countless progress meetings and other administrative tasks that included creating a publishing company (the recommended option for self-publishing authors) and submitting a copyrighted version to the Library of Congress. On the web end, my web consultant updated my website and create a new website for my publishing company http://re-spinpublishing.com. My website updates were particularly important given that Katie’s staff agreed to provide a link to my site and display a graphic of my book cover during the show.
In retrospect, my book’s publication amounted to four years of working erratically and 10 days of intense focus. The deadline made all the difference. I was exhausted in the end but very content. My deadline was met and I had accomplished my goal.