Self-Publishing

Thanks so much to Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan. They have no idea how much hope they gave me. I knew there was a reason I wanted to watch their feature and pressed record before I left the house that day.

So, I totally gave up on chasing the traditional publishers, evidently Two scoops, wasn't quite ready and I can see that now. I think it's slightly similar to when you rock up home with your newborn baby. You've got the cot, the pram, the nappies and you think you're prepared. In my experience that was only a small part of the newborn journey.

I thought I had done the hard work with writing Two scoops. I'd spent years writing it and in front of me I had a 74,000-ish word manuscript but that too was actually, just the beginning. 

So, I set about looking for help self-publishing Two scoops, not Three. Which has been the best decision for Two scoops and I was really lucky because on my first search I found Danielle👆of Wrate's Editing Services - Freelance Editor for self-publishers.

She had 5***** reviews and I contacted her with the first two chapters of Two scoops. She got back to me within a few days which is much nicer than waiting and waiting for an agent to not reply about your submission. She had edited the first chapter for me and it was fabulous. She hadn't changed much but tweaked a few words and her experience shone through because it read so smoothly. I have found that I tend to write pretty chunkily but she just smoothed out the knots for me and I knew she was the one.

She offered various self-publishing packages and after the best part of a decade writing my book, my husband and I agreed that we'd find the money for the best package. I had nothing to lose.

In October 2019 I submitted my full manuscript to Danielle. She returned Two scoops, not Three with a full Structural Edit in December and this is where I had a lot to learn but I loved it. I enjoy learning and pushing myself so this process was perfect for me.

The Structural edit was three A4 pages long but thankfully there were no issues with the plot and characters which I was very happy about. As I'd been deep in the book for a long time I couldn't see the wood for the trees. Through Danielle's fresh eyes she could see the bad habit I had for repetition. There were grammatical errors and some things that just didn't make sense. It was bonkers because I just hadn't seen these simple errors but was so happy to have Danielle's help and knowledge. She taught me how to build the story that I already had, how to tease and entice the reader without changing Two scoops. It really was an amazing process.

It didn't take me too long to do the work because like I say I love to learn and enjoyed making the changes and being able to improve Two scoops. I submitted the book back with changes in January 2020 and thought that was it.

No, not yet😆I'd completed the Structural edit but now comes the Copy edits. Weekly or fortnightly, depending on how much work I had to do I received either one or two chapters with smaller changes to be made. These ones are just to tidy up things and there were some chapters with more work than others. Through-out lockdown I was still doing the Copy Edit's which kept me busy in the evenings because I had our 4 year old daughter at home in the daytime.

I found the first few weeks of lockdown pretty shit so having Two scoops, to work on in the evening certainly was a blessing and distraction which I really appreciated and needed. It was also the hope that I needed because out of all the bad news something good was coming out of lockdown.

Once we had completed the final copy edit we had been working alongside a graphic designer who helped create with Danielle the perfect front cover. Things got really busy for Danielle at this point and I am so grateful for her professionalism and care.

She sent me a full copy of Two scoops, not Three to read and I had not read it as a whole ever.

This was awesome because I got to see what the reader would see and picked out things which I didn't like. Obviously, only small things like when she was wearing shoes or where he was stood. Danielle edited the changes then sent me a final read through. This time there were just a couple of things that needed to be changed, I'd ignored them before thinking I'd over-thought it but they still stuck out so I knew I needed to clear them up.

When I submitted the full thing for the third time to Danielle on the 25th April 2020 I was happy with it to go to print and be formatted onto Kindle once it'd been seen for the last time by the proof-reader.

Oh, and Danielle had also written the blurb which went back and forth a few times before I was happy with it and then that went to the proof-reader too.

I forgot to mention that whilst all this is going on I had to write a quick Author bio, the acknowledgments for the book And find a good piccie too. We're in lockdown, my 4 year old daughter and I had cut my hair so as you can imagine it wasn't straight and my highlights were growing out too.

Thank goodness I found a nice picture from a holiday in November 2019 but there were reflections on my glasses and I'm not photo-shop cool enough to remove them. Thankfully, we found someone who did know what to do and if you see the photo in the book you'd never know that there were reflections on my lenses.

On Monday 8th June 2020 it went live on Amazon and Kindle and I received my first copies of Two scoops, not Three. After the book launch party that evening I set about writing personal messages into my preordered books, dropped in some twinkly confetti too, wrapped and packaged them, ready for posting in the morning.