Image by Nataliia Natykach / Licensed from Depositphotos (in my searches for covers, I stumbled across this wonderful picture and had to use it!)

In our busy world, sometimes it’s important to stop and reassess our processes, like epublishing. Things can work—or seem to work—and may actually be dysfunctional.

You see, I’m a one-writer shop. I do it all:

  • Hunt down images for covers. I try to find one image that will be it without a lot of customization. Sometimes it’s try one image, pass on it, try another. Then download the license agreement(s).
  • Build the cover. Previously I used Adobe Photoshop Elements. But after my computer failed, I couldn’t reinstall the existing program because it was too old. And even something that should have been simple—fonts—turned into a challenge. Fonts are also intellectual property and might need to be purchased as well, along with downloading the license agreement.
  • Editing pass of the manuscript. AI is really handy here. ProWritingAid finds typos, but is aggravating for all the false audits.
  • Build the ebook. This included the front matter, the back matter, the story itself. Decide on books I want to put in the “Also by” section, what goes in the biography, which might change, depending on the genre.
  • Build a keyword list. This was always a bottleneck for me. I tried to navigate Publisher Rocket, but finding the keywords was time-consuming and littered with romance keywords. I’m not a romance writer, so mining through the ones that didn’t apply added more work.
  • Build a blurb. Again, another bottleneck.
  • Upload the ebook, blurb, and keywords. I did it on Draft to Digital, Amazon, Smashwords, and Kobo. Not one system matched in what they wanted. I always just published straight up, but because of all these different systems, it wasn’t always on the same day. In some cases, months or years apart.
  • Publish it on my website.

My original process was cobbled together from pieces of information I got from other writers and writing conferences. Most of the writers added marketing, depending on their flavor. Social media, Amazon ads, interviews.

It all just seemed to assume that everyone was a full-time writer or had a staff.

The result was haphazard. I felt like the best way was to rush publication when I had time. Sometimes a story languished because the keywords were hard, the covers were hard (why Teddy Bear Man, the next one in the cycle, never got released), the blurbs were hard. I published some with typos in the blurbs because I rushed it, and I know I didn’t always take advantage of some opportunities because I was just trying to get it done.

AI turned out to be a handy tool for navigating how I thought about my publishing process and where I might change what I was doing. But even typing everything out, it was eye-opening how much time everything took. It’s like making a recipe; people don’t mention things that take a lot of time, like deciding on categories because none of the sites match.

There were questions, too. Ones I’d never asked.

  • Why did some indie authors put blubs inside the book? Did I need one there? No, because it would take up some of the percentage of the sample. Most annoying to me is when you try to look at the sample and you don’t get anything of the story.
  • Did your name on the cover need to be bigger than the title? Or should the title be bigger? Which did I need to do? This came from an influencer who said the covers needed to look like what you found in the bookstore from traditional publishers. Indie has turned everything sideways, so that is a “No.”
  • How do I select the titles for the Also Written By section? I asked AI to analyze what would be best, and it recommended only 3-5 to avoid reader overwhelm (and as a reader, I have felt overwhelmed by long lists of these).
  • If I release the story as a preorder, what are the benefits? What day of the week is best? Traditional publishing has a long chain of hands novels go through. They release on Tuesdays for consistency with the booksellers. AI recommended releasing Tuesday through Thursday, so I picked the first Wednesday of the month.
  • What did I need for metadata? I wasn’t even sure myself. AI took the heavy lifting and generated a format for the metadata. This was the heavy lifting I needed; I always got paralyzed by trying to decide what I needed.

The biggest of all of this is that if I set it up as a preorder, I can take my time with different steps, fit it better into my schedule without affecting writing. I can create the template for the ePub, then recheck everything in a few days to make sure I didn’t goof something up. I can spend a little time working through the cover drafts until I get what I’m looking for.

I think in the rush of getting things done, sometimes it becomes getting it off the plate. Sometimes the only way forward is to stop and look at what we’re doing.

Before leaving…

Check out my short story available for pre-order March 4, 2026.

An Abundance of Wizards, short story preorder: https://www.curios.com/projects/0x83846740fa6a152df8ff1c2f61d646ee6be06e6a or https://books2read.com/u/mKnV1v