Or, writing this was starting to look like the easy part!

I hired a copyedit and for the cover artist to also format the book, so that should mean I don’t have to think about it, right?

Nope, it means instead of getting bogged down in the details, I get to make the decisions. Which format do I want it to be formatted in? Do I want author at the top of one page and title at the top of the next when the print book is open? Or both on the same page? Or both on the bottom and the chapter number and title at the top of the page?

What font do I want the print book in? What font do I want the chapter names in, in ebook and print? Do I want drop caps at the start of the chapter? If so, what style?

What do I want for the gif for section breaks?  Oh wait, after I chose that and proofread the book, turns out every section break was actually bad formatting…

Once I got all that done and the blurb written and the cover and interior illustrations and the formatting approved…

And then fixed because That Typo that escaped everything showed up when sent to kindle and reading on my phone… and the first paragraph, while perfectly readable in print and computer screen, turns out to look like a wall o’ text on the kindle app on the phone…

And then, then the hard part should be out of the way with only the upload to go? Right? Right?

Bwahahahahahahaha!

Step one: “Honey? What’s the KDP password again? No, it didn’t transfer from the dead computer…”
Step two: Uh… I can’t find that category….
Step three: Oh, shoot, I give up on categories for a second, because in hunting for similar books, I suddenly realize I need to fix my blurb to show exactly what the readers of this genre are looking for…
Step three point five: how do I code that in html anyway? It’s been a few years!
Step four: okay, back to categories… Oh! When I pick this dropdown, don’t start looking immediately at the tickyboxes on the right, because lo, another dropdown doth appear!
*deep breath*
…
Now I “just” have to enter keywords. Which I’d better do research to make sure they haven’t changed on me since I last researched them a couple months ago, because romance is an incredibly dynamic genre…

Thankfully, KDP saves at several points. This is definitely started with a full mug of good tea, a full stomach, and plenty of patience.

Because right now I’m seriously craving comfort-eating my way through a pound of einkorn shortbread cookies, with heavily milked and sugared tea…

I will not stop to stress-bake. I will not stop to stress-bake. I will not…