Thank you to everyone who helped me to celebrate my book launch yesterday for The Buddha’s Bone. You’re all amazing and it means the world to me!
To those of you who watched my book launch video and to those who bought a copy of my book, I hope you enjoy it. If you like it, feel free to spread the word, as it helps introduce my work to other readers. Better still, why not drop me a review or even a star rating on Amazon, Goodreads etc, as it will help my book to find its audience. Here are the links to leave a review on: Amazon UK, Amazon US and Goodreads.
To those who liked my book launch posts and who shared their kind wishes, it means more than you realise. 🤗 In the meantime, my celebration continues! 😘💕
Today is the book launch for my second novel, The Buddha’s Bone. It’s available as an Ebook for £1.99/$2.99, Paperback for £8.99/$12.44 or Hardcover for £14.99/$18.99. You can buy copies from all of the major online retailers at the link above on the book title.
Due to covid restrictions, I haven’t been able to organise a live signing event at Waterstones as I did for my debut novel, Gods of Avalon Road in October 2019. Instead, you can watch me reading an excerpt below and help celebrate the release day of my literary novel.
So, what am I doing with the rest of my publication day? A celebratory lunch with family and a nice bottle of prosecco later with my fellow writer hubby, Joseph Robert. It’s a low-key launch day, but the adventure really only begins from this moment onwards. Today, I start my marketing and promotion journey. Wish me luck!
Wow, where did the time go? It’s three days to release day and then my latest book baby, The Buddha’s Bone, will spread its wings and fly out into the great, wide world.
Ha ha, indulge me a bit with the cheesiness there. In all honesty, this is a milestone for me. It isn’t my first novel, as my debut came out in 2019. it isn’t even my first book, as I’ve had poetry collections published too. But this book marks the first baby step as my own publisher. Much went into setting up my own business behind the scenes, aside from simply the writing side. The Buddha’s Bone is the finished product of a whole year of rewriting, editing, cutting scenes, learning to typeset, designing a cover, buying my own ISBNs from Nielsen and registering my books with the British Library and other legal deposit libraries in the UK – and the list goes on. Anyway, soon it’ll be over to you as a reader. I do hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!
Guess what arrived in the post yesterday? The author copies of my soon to be published novel, The Buddha’s Bone. This is the deluxe hardcover version and (even if I say so myself) they’re really gorgeous! I can’t believe my second novel is going to be released in another week.
I can’t really describe the excitement at holding your own book. It’s a feeling that will never get old. More so because I knew that with this book, I had designed everything myself, from the dust jacket to the colour of the digital cloth hardcover itself.
My little helper here couldn’t quite believe it either and asked me, “Why is your picture inside the book?” I think that was enough to convince a young enquiring mind that Mummy is an author!
Twelve days until release day for The Buddha’s Bone, so here’s another excerpt for you to peruse. With the Ebook, Paperback and Hardcover all available on pre-order, all there is left to do is countdown the days to publication. Woohoo!
The Buddha’s Bone is my second novel. I was inspired to write it after living in Japan for four years while working as an English teacher. Although the story and people are fictional, some of the places the characters visit are real. The main setting is beautiful Tottori, which is where I lived, though sees the protagonist Kimberly and her friends visit other locations on their travels in Nippon. With a time difference of eight hours between the UK and Japan and a thirteen hour direct flight, the jetlag is real too!
This weekend I’ve been taking a moment to reflect on how many drafts my forthcoming novel, The Buddha’s Bone, has been through. It will soon be published on 25th October, and I suppose I’m already feeling sentimental about the journey.
I was doing some bookshelf reorganisation while trying to find a spooky Halloween read yesterday and came across my old printed drafts wedged in there. I originally started draft 1 of The Buddha’s Bone back in 2013, but put it on the back-shelf to work on Gods of Avalon Road instead – which ended up being my debut novel, released in 2019 by Blossom Spring Publishing.
I tinkered with The Buddha’s Bone on and off around 2017, but I only properly came back to this project in 2020 and completed it over Easter break in April last year, during lockdown. After sending it to a fabulous editor friend for a final polish, off it went to publishers in November 2020. It had a full manuscript request in December 2020, then detailed editorial feedback from the same publisher to start getting it prepped for publication in January 2021. However, due to impending lockdown and poor communication on the part of the publisher, this sadly didn’t go any further. Instead I was left with a finished, professionally edited book and a frustrated feeling towards traditional publishing.
This is what finalised my decision to go into business for myself. It’s now exactly fourteen days until The Buddha’s Bone is released under my own imprint. To say I’m excited is an understatement.
If you are a writer, I’d be curious to know how many drafts your work in progress goes through before becoming a fully fledged novel, ready to fly out into the wide world. 😊
To celebrate National Poetry Day this Thursday 7th October 2021, you can listen to a reading of some poems from my recently published collection, The Redundancy of Tautology, from Cyberwit Publishing in April this year.
I thought it was a good opportunity to focus on my poetry for a moment, as since July I’ve been concentrating all my efforts on my forthcoming novel, The Buddha’s Bone.
Hope you enjoy listening. Feel free to leave a comment or follow my YouTube channel if you want to hear more samples of my writing. 😊
October has arrived, which means it’s publication month for The Buddha’s Bone. The twenty-one day countdown to my book launch on 25th October is underway. I’ve been busy this week getting everything finalised for pre-order, so all the links are now updated, which you can view by clicking on the book title above. To say I’m excited is an understatement! In the meantime, here’s another excerpt from my forthcoming novel, which I hope you enjoy.
I mentioned in my last post that I wanted to write about my experience using various self-publishing distributors as an Indie author. My intention with this post is to share my experience – and hopefully give good advice – to other authors starting out. This information is relevant to UK authors as it applies to distributors that have printers and warehouses in the UK and Europe.
Before I started out on my Indie author journey with The Buddha’s Bone a few months ago in June, I felt confused and overwhelmed by the amount of options available for self-publishing, and I wanted the most user-friendly option to begin with: my goal was getting a professionally designed book to a worldwide audience at as low a cost as possible. I had previously used Lulu publishing to print and distribute my novella Zombie Reflux and issues of the literary ezine I run, Bindweed Magazine so I was familiar with this, though found it hard to use and wanted to look at different options.
Amazon KDP – Ebook: As a starting point for both the ebook and paperback versions of my book, I chose to use KDP as it is straightforward to use. For the Ebook, you can download Kindle Creates to format your doc or doc X file; however, I chose to directly upload my doc X file and then check through it with the previewer. What’s helpful about the previewer is that you can check how it would look on a phone, tablet and Kindle reader via a drop-down menu. It was also simple to upload my book cover as a JPEG and to enter the book metadata (title, blurb, contributor details, etc). The only downside to be wary of is that you can’t use unusual fonts, as they will not show as intended; I had tried to use a simple curly graphic in Wingdings font, appearing under each chapter number and it showed up as a plain box. But a great benefit is that the Ebook version also allows you to set a date for publication; I chose to set mine for pre-order on 25th October, to give me time to start sending out ARC copies. Another plus for using Kindle for your Ebook is that it’s free and you can do multiple revisions before your publication date. If you want you can check out the Kindle version of The Buddha’s Bone to see what it’s like. Overall user level: easy.
With only four weeks until The Buddha’s Bone is released into the great wide world, it’s time to start the celebration countdown. Here’s an excerpt from the first page as a sneak preview. I’m very excited for release day. This isn’t my debut novel, but it’s my first book that will be published under my own imprint – my author name, Leilanie Stewart – as I now own ISBNs that I have bought from Nielsen, and have registered them with the British Library. Woohoo!
To say that I’ve learned a lot on my journey as an Indie author is an understatement. In three months, I’ve learned how to design my own cover on Canva. I’ve taught myself how to typeset my manuscript to make paperback print copies using the template on KDP. I’ve figured out how to format my word document into an ebook using Draft2Digital and KDP. Words from the world of publishing such as bleed and trim, as well as widows and orphans have expanded my vocabulary. I understand how to use Calibre to convert Word doc files into Mobi, ePub or PDF for use as ARC copies. I know how to enter my book’s metadata into the Nielsen Title Editor, so that it will be available to retailers and wholesalers in the UK and worldwide. I still scratch my head at the notion of wholesale discounts, but I’m willing to have a go at it in order to get my book listed as available for order by online retailers. Admittedly I know next to nothing about marketing – especially on a budget – though I’m an eager student, and I’m doing my homework on this one.
I’ll be writing a separate post about how I’ve found using the various print on demand self-publishing services and ebook distributors that I’ve tried: Lulu, KDP, Draft2Digital, Ingramspark and Barnes and Noble Press. This is mainly because I have so much to say and I don’t want to ramble off on a tangent. For now, all I’ll say is this. If you’re an Indie Author who is feeling daunted by the prospect of self-publishing, don’t be put off. As recently as June, I was feeling overwhelmed by my lack of knowledge alongside the wealth of information thrown at me as a writer going it alone. I found that by jumping right in at the deep end and using KDP to design my paperback print book and Draft2Digital to format my ebook copies, I gained a solid starting point to build my skills. My advice is to make the leap; I got there and I’m sure you will too.
