Have you ever Googled “How to be a self-published author”? If you have, you’ve probably seen several blogs and websites that advertise a step-by-step process to be self-published. One of the most important steps, in both self-publishing and traditional publishing, is editing. Author’s going the self-publishing route typically find a freelance editor to perform these necessary editorial tasks.
At Ooligan Press, we use KDP to upload our upcoming titles and our ebooks. It is a fast and easy way to publish a title that seemingly doesn’t have much screening process. After creating a couple of KDP pages for our upcoming titles, I thought to myself, “That’s it? I just have to click a box that says ‘this was not written by a computer’ and I’ll be able to sell it?”
It’s Saturday night in Portland. I’m sitting at a small table decorated with garlands of marigolds and small tea cups. Sweet incense mixes with the last breath of a candle. A wash of red light covers the room. Around a rectangular table, eight other people I have never met sit listening as once-local author Nick Jaina alternates between reading from his book Spektrum and winding melodies through the room with his guitar and voice.