Guest Post: 10 Things I Wish I Knew About Being an Author I Didn’t Know Before

by RW Peake

1. I wish I knew Word better so that when it came time to format my books for the various outlets for starters. All I can say is that it was easier for the second book than the first…..barely.

2. I wish I knew that not all .epubs are created equal. Getting my book into the Apple ibookstore has been a saga of trial, tribulation and heartache all by itself. Little did I know that when one of the engines that churn out an .epub and it passes the checks, those checks are going to be different for every vendor that uses the .epub. And apparently, at least as far as my first book is concerned, the standard to get it past Apple’s checks seems to be as closely guarded a secret as The Manhattan Project was, because as of this moment, 8 months after the release of the first book, I still don’t know for sure if it has at long last been cleared to be listed. I traveled from Smashwords, then thought that using all-Apple native tools like Pages and iTunes Producer would be the way to go. But after yet another series of dismal failures to pass the gatekeepers, I went to Lulu.com. Now, theoretically, after fits and starts, there’s a rumor on the streets that I heard that it might actually be that my first book is finally in the ibookstore. In what has to be the supreme irony, I received a notice from Apple of royalties from the U.K., Australia, and Canadian ibookstore going back to October. Just not in America. My home country. Land of the free and home of the frustrated.

3. I wish I had been better prepared for the negative aspects that have come with all the good things of experiencing some success at this. I was prepared for people not liking my work, but what I was completely unprepared for was what turned out to be the reason for it. Fairly early on after my first book was published I received what has to be considered a badge of honor for an indie author, the 1 star review. But what became clear was that the “reviewer” never read the book and, without divulging how, I discovered the originator of the review was in fact another indie author. That was just a foretaste of what I have to say has been the most unpleasant aspect of all this, the lengths that others will go to do whatever they can to disrupt your progress and success. Fortunately, at least as far as I’m concerned they have been singularly unsuccessful and for that I’m grateful to my readers.