From Traditional Publishing to e-Publishing. Author Ann Carbine Best tells us why and how she went indie...

Hello there!

Those of you who have been following me a long time might remember my Publication Party. As an aspiring author I wanted to hear the stories of bloggers who had broken through and found a publisher. Along with my Byronic Hero series, (where we wallowed in Heathcliff, Darcy and Rochester) this was the most popular series I've ever run on my blog (which turns 4 this April!)

Ann Best was one of the authors who'd just been accepted for publication with her memoir, In the Mirror. She told us of her journey to publication and shared her life with us. Ann has always inspired me and I count her as a sister across the oceans, one who I'd love to visit one day. We've remained in close touch and today I bring you Ann again, for an update on her journey and an insight into her most recent projects.

Over to you, Ann!

A small press, WiDo Publishing, accepted my memoir In the Mirror, back in December of 2010. It was a long and interesting process that took place at a time when the publishing industry began going through massive changes. It was a major change in my life in other ways, too. Because I was housebound with my disabled daughter, my only means of marketing was through the Internet, so I had to learn how to blog.

My seventy-year-old brain was stretched to the limit! So much so that I didn’t think I could ever self-publish. However, at my age, I didn’t want to wait years to publish something else; and I knew that a novella would be a tough sell, especially one that didn’t fall in one of the “popular” genres.

But I had a novella in my files, Svetlana Garetova’s story.

I met Svetlana in 1997 when she was a fill-in aide for my disabled daughter. On day one, I told her I was interested in miracles and angel stories for a book I was writing. After showering my daughter, she started telling me how she came to America. Instantly I recognised a dramatically compelling story. I held up my hand -. “Stop! I’ve got to record this,” I got out my tape recorder.

 I spent several days transcribing what she told me into story form. But I never did the miracles and angels book, and so her story sat in my file for years. Then last fall when I got it out, I thought, This is fascinating.

I’m getting older by the minute, and don’t have the years to spare to query publishers, let alone the patience. I’ve always enjoyed a challenge, so I decided to self-publish it, partly to see if I could. I couldn’t do a cover on my own. I absolutely can NOT figure out PhotoShop. So a friend came to my rescue. She offered to do it for free, but I paid her anyway.

This was all I had to pay. From a lifetime of reading and writing, and with my editing and proofreading skills, I knew I could produce an error-free manuscript. I just needed some readers who would tell me if something didn’t make sense.

After they gave me their feedback, I went through the manuscript again and again to make sure everything did make sense, and then I had to figure out how to format it for uploading. It took time, but Mark Coker’s Smashwords guide is designed for dummies like me. Up it went on Smashwords.

However, getting it uploaded to Amazon was another problem. I finally used one of the programs suggested in Amazon’s style guide, Mobi Pocket Creator.

Through a lot of trial and error, it worked! Phew! Mission Impossible became Mission Accomplished!

I think Svetlana would be pleased with the way it turned out.

Brief Synopsis:


When Svetlana Garetova flies with her four-year-old son from Moscow in Russia to Salt Lake City in America for a visit with Jimmy Rafael, she becomes very ill. He nurses her to back to health, but when she recovers, she realizes with horror that she has missed the deadline in Moscow to pay protection money for her businesses. Her distraught mother tells her that she would be safer in America, and when Jimmy says he will marry her, she accepts his proposal even though she barely knows him and has some misgivings. On their wedding night, she discovers who he really is, and that she and her son are almost prisoners in his house. She must find a way to escape, and people to help them.

You can download a sample from the beginning of the book on Amazon. (Link: http://www.amazon.com/Ann-Carbine-Best/e/B0053YU4B8/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1   This also links to In the Mirror)

You can also read a sample of it on my blog post, a scene that’s from the middle of the book, the most dramatic scene in the story. (link to the post: http://annbestblog.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/roland-yeomans-novel-let-the-wind-blow-through-you-free-for-kindle/#comments)

 Wasn't it wonderful hearing from Ann today? I wish her every success in her new self-publishing career. I still hope she will write another memoir for us...

• Would you share your self-publishing story with me?
• Do you think you'll stick to the traditional route?
• Do you read many self-pubbed books?