Last night, I live-streamed the moment Kingmaker was available as an eBook on WriterSanctuary’s YouTube channel. Today, I’m working on the print versions, which I am looking forward to shipping out to my BMC members. However, the fun is just beginning…

Now comes the marketing aspect of self-publishing. Well, technically, I’ve been marketing Kingmaker for a while now as I mention it as often as I can.

Nonetheless, I’ll still need to dive into doing what I can to get Kingmaker in front of as many people as possible. Because if no one knows your book is available, no one is going to read it.

In reality, there are a lot of things I could have done prior to the book launch. For instance, I could have had popups created and ready to go, or at least I could have promoted it more on social media.

In any case, you can expect quite a few marketing blog posts at WriterSanctuary.com in the coming months.

What is Kingmaker?

Kingmaker is the first in a planned series about the fantasy realms of Witcham, a port city in between two peaceful kingdoms. It’s the story of how a man overcomes his past to become more than he could possibly imagine.

Having to face nightmarish creatures, both living and dead, Diemos joins with a group of rangers to keep the lands from being swallowed by darkness.

Perhaps the most difficult part of publishing a book is coming up with a blurb that will attract a reader to buy it without giving away too much of the plot.

Anyway, Kingmaker is a bit of a dark fantasy and is easily my favorite story to date.

Setting Up the Page

The plan is to start working on the book page today. Unfortunately, I am dealing with severe back pain at the moment and find it incredibly difficult to focus on writing anything. I’ve already had to rewrite a lot of this post three times.

This is another element that should have been done weeks ago. That way, I could have just added the Amazon link and published the page on the blog.

That’s what happens when you are a procrastinator who lives in the shadow of chaos. You can’t bank on having tomorrow to do something. Life will easily hand you a ton of something else.

So, instead of having an awesome launch of my first completed fiction novel, I am tearing up sitting at my desk trying to get a few things done before popping some more painkillers.

I’m living the dream.

Still, it’s not like I view any of this as stressful work. Truth be told, I’m having an awesome time, outside of back issues. I’m super-stoked about having Kingmaker published and look forward to learning some new things about self-publishing and marketing.

Anywho, the page will be up for Kingmaker shortly. Hopefully.

Working on the Printed Copies

Again, I am at the mercy of Amazon’s Cover Creator in KDP. It’s a bit of a pain to get images to line up just as I want them, but I only have myself to blame.

I could have been working on the cover for months now, and I’m not exactly a novice with Photoshop.

Today, I should have the paperback ready to go. I’ll also try to get the hardcover finished, but that depends on whether I need to buy an ISBN or not. When I published A Freelancer’s Tale, Amazon only provided one free ISBN.

I’d prefer to own my ISBN anyway, but I don’t necessarily have the $104 to buy one compatible with KDP. On the upside, I’ll only have to buy it once for the hardcover to Kingmaker. Then, I can use it on any platform I wish.

I’ll buy the printed author copies as soon as I can so I can distribute autographed books. Unfortunately, I don’t know when that will be.

Need $50 for Reedsy Discovery

One thing I really wanted to try out was Reedsy’s Discovery service. It’s a review platform that helps get your book in front of more people.

It only costs $50 to submit your book, and it comes with a professional review as well as a landing page with the link to your book. Plus, readers can get a taste themselves and decide if they want to buy the book.

Unfortunately, I tapped myself out quite a bit thanks to buying the props for the cover art. So, I won’t be able to try Reedsy Discovery until this weekend.

The highlight, though, is that it’ll give me a chance to really review Discovery and whether it’s worth the $50 or not. That means I’ll have content to update on WriterSanctuary.

That’s how I roll…I view most of what I do as potential for content. Although I am a self-published author, I still try to help others find their own writing paths by sharing my experiences.

No Launch Party?

I was really hoping to do something fun for the launch of my book. But thanks to tapping out the bank account and the sheer amount of pain I’m in right now, I don’t see it happening for a while.

Depending on how things progress for me, I would like to see what it would take to do a launch party for every book in the series at Mile High Comics. I think that would be a lot of fun, actually.

Before I can start planning any of that, how about we wait until I can actually walk again, eh?

In a lot of ways, I kind of feel lame. Kingmaker is an ultra-important book for me and I really didn’t do anything other than livestream the photos we took of Lookout Mountain.

I’m sure my regular viewers understand, though. Between a lack of funds and being hurt, there’s only so much I can do at the moment.

Perhaps I’ll put together something fun on YouTube in the near future.

Working on the Second Book

I haven’t been able to put a lot of time into Fury lately. Between having to deal with a few other things and getting Kingmaker ready for Amazon, my time has been stretched pretty thin.

Still, I plan on getting back to work on Fury to have the first draft ready for beta readers in the next month or so.

It’s the second book in the Witcham series, and I don’t want to take two years before getting it published.

Almost two years ago to the day, I finished the first draft of Kingmaker. I don’t want to keep people hanging like that again.

Although I’ll still need to schedule blocks of time to market Kingmaker, I can at least start getting more time writing Fury throughout the week.

Kingmaker Was a Lot of Fun to Write

I had a lot of fun writing Kingmaker, and it’s still a story that I find myself getting sucked into even when I’m just trying to proofread a few pages here and there. I just hope people enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Regardless of its success, though, I’ll finish the entire series before moving on. It’s a story I want to tell and it will take several books to really do it justice.