The One Thing I Wish I'd Known Before Publishing My First Book
Time is an indispensable resource
Publishing your first novel can be an emotional roller coaster. You’re exhilarated by the culmination of years of heartwrenching work. You’re terrified that the product of all those years of heartwrenching work won’t be well received (or even worse, it’ll be drowned out in the sheer volume of books published every year). You’re overwhelmed by the insane logistical chaos of getting everything ready for the big day.
Before I started preparing to launch my book, I thought I’d done my homework. I’d read the guides, listened to the podcasts, watched the TikToks, you name it. But what those resources didn’t prepare me for was just how much longer everything would take than I had anticipated.
It’s a helluva lot harder to plan a publishing timeline than you’d think.
Shit takes longer than you expect
From editing to cover design to printing, everything about the publishing process is a lot slower than you might imagine.
My editor ended up doing a deep dive into my text and going through three rounds of copy edits with me to ensure we got the highest quality possible. I’m glad she was willing to give the manuscript such a thorough workover, but it took much longer than I had planned for.
My cover design also took several weeks. While my designer delivered the initial concepts within a few business days, I didn’t account for just how long the back and forth would take during the editing phase.
Like most autistics, I’m extremely detail-oriented. I also have hyperphantasia, which means that when I put in the cover order, I had a really specific image in my head of what I wanted the design to look like. And I was motivated to make absolutely sure we got everything to my specifications.
My designer delivered in spades:
I am thrilled with the result, but the process of me critiquing and them editing over and over until it looked how I wanted wasn’t exactly instantaneous. Coming up with a unique and enticing design from scratch takes a while.
So does getting printed copies and putting together a launch event.
It’s not like I didn’t do any research before I began working on publishing my novel, but not many of the books or articles I read made it crystal clear just how long it can take to plan a launch and get ahold of quality print books.
A lot of experienced indie publishers make it seem like you can just drag and drop a file into a print-on-demand service’s order page and have a book in your hand within a couple of days. Now, this might actually be true for them because they’ve got the process down pat. But if you’re new to the whole thing, it can take a lot more time.
I had unexpected technical issues with my files. Amazon didn’t like my gutters, and it took me an entire day of rearranging things in Acrobat to fix them. IngramSpark wanted to perform their own fixes on my interior, which took over a week. At least the prints came out looking great once we got the issues worked out.
The only print service (I won’t mention their name) that turned my files around quickly sent a proof that looked like crap. Not something I want to sell at my launch parties and signing events.
It took so long to get the technical issues worked out that I ended up having to push back my launch party. Was that the end of the world? No. But it wasn’t ideal either.
Lesson learned: If you want to publish a real book that you really wrote (not AI slop with a slapped-together cover), it takes a lot of time to create a quality product. Start putting things together several months to a year before your launch date, especially if you want to time your preorder page going live with your launch event – which I was unfortunately not able to do this time around.
Least I know for next time.
The learning curve can drive procrastination
As an autistic authorpreneur, getting a handle on the technical and business side of the publishing game proved incredibly difficult for me.
Writing fiction is my main SpIn, so pumping out manuscripts never feels like a job or an obligation or even work at all. Publishing those manuscripts, on the other hand, that feels like such a miserable drag it’s tempting to just leave them in the digital drawer forever.
There’s getting ISBNs, setting up preorder and author and title pages, registering for copyrights, formatting interiors, figuring out all the tax and incorporation stuff, and the endless social media and marketing slog just to drum up a little attention.
So much administrative drudgery is enough to suck the joy out of the creative process, but if you’re going to be an authorpenuer, you have to suck it up (or farm out as much of it as possible to agentic AI).
If I hadn’t been married to an allistic, I’m not sure I could’ve pushed through all this. Thankfully, my spouse helped me stay motivated and organized.
Yet I still found myself procrastinating. Watching TikToks about setting up Amazon preorder pages and YouTubes about using interior formatting software is dull enough to make one contemplate suicide.
Between the boredom of having to absorb so much uninteresting information and the anxiety of constantly feeling like I was on the cusp of fucking everything up, I found myself engaging in a very stereotypical AuDHD behavior: using one responsibility to avoid another.
I’d plant my garden instead of researching copyright registration. I’d do laundry or cook my husband elaborate meals instead of working on my preorder page. I’d bake cookies instead of writing my author bio or cover blurb.
The thing that sucks about being an autistic adult is that sometimes you know you’re doing this stuff while you’re doing it, and you just keep doing it.
I did anticipate that I might wind up dealing with some boredom or anxiety-induced procrastination, but I didn’t realize how intense it would get once I got into the administrative phase of publishing this book.
I didn’t procrastinate while writing it or editing it or working with the cover designer. I did procrastinate before finding those editors and cover designers, and I definitely procrastinated when it came time to start building my book’s sales and distribution infrastructure.
It ended up costing me. I must admit it’s part of the reason I had to delay my launch.
Bottom line: start earlier . . . way earlier
In the end, I got the damned ISBNs. I set up the damned preorder page. I figured out the damned aggregator accounts and will have those up and running soon after my ebook launches on Amazon.
I’m proud of myself for getting it together, especially when I was fighting AuDHD PDA and procrastination the whole damn time. But I wish I’d gotten on the whole admin part way earlier. If I could go back and do it again, I would start putting together my publishing infrastructure while I was waiting for my editor to finish her final pass, not after my cover designer was sending me end-stage image drafts.
I didn’t realize how much energy and time it would take just to push through all the administrative bullshit. I didn’t consider that I might have to have some sort of contingency plan in place in case I ended up having technical or logistical problems (which I did).
So if you’re still a ways away from publishing your first book, just know the process won’t move as fast as a lot of the book coaches and authorfluencers on the internet say it will. They’re experienced and already have their infrastructure set up. You’re not and you don’t.
So build in a time buffer to prepare for the inevitable hiccups you’ll experience. And don’t beat yourself up too much if you end up planting tomatoes instead of formatting pages or uploading files. Sometimes you just need a break. Make room in your timeline for those, too.