So, if you have seen my Instagram recently, you would be aware of the book I self published for my boyfriend’s Christmas present. It details all the things I love about him. This was my biggest and best present I have ever given anyone so I thought it would be fun to document the process here, maybe giving you guys some tips and tricks.
PLANNING
The planning was the easiest part, all I had to do was list the things I love about him. I then just used that as the order of each paragraph and boom, my outline was done.
WRITING
This was a little bit harder. As it was a present, I wanted this to be my best work yet so I had to work really hard on both my narration and descriptive skill. I wanted to link him to things I know we both find beautiful as well as describe different parts of him in ways I’m sure he wouldn’t have thought about before. This whole process took a month or two, with hundreds of revisions and edits (all done by me). I would advise you to 100% hire an editor if you are publishing for monetary gain because it’s very hard to find mistakes in your own work, especially if you read it over and over again!
The formatting of the document was also quite hard as I wanted each paragraph to be indented. I also wanted a contents page, numbered pages and everything to be aligned in the middle. When changing the size of the page (something I only had to do to fit the publisher’s requirements), the formatting changed with it so I would highly recommend making sure you get the page size right the first time. The contents and page numbers were easy though, Word has an abundance tools for you to use and a million online tutorials.
THE COVER
Some publishing sites provide you tools to make the cover while others leave you to it. I found a site that helped me make mine (one I have since forgotten the name of but will try to find). As their publishing requirements were too confusing for me, I just downloaded the cover I made and then used a different publishing site and then edited the sizing on adobe acrobat (using a free trial) in accordance to my chosen publishers requirements.
FINIDING A PUBLISHING SITE
I didn’t go to a ‘proper’ publisher for this as it was just a present. Instead, I looked into publishing companies which focused on gifts. I went through many, many websites all with varying degrees of help and prices. My biggest hurdle was figuring out the bleed margin and the sizing of it all (if anyone wants a tutorial on this, DM me). A company I found to be the most helpful was YouLovePrint, one I would highly recommend as they were both very helpful and affordable. When I sent over my initial word doc, my sizing was completely off so they sent me an email with an explanation on how to do everything. They broke it down really well and the whole thing became a lot less stressful afterwards.
However, new stresses arose in the form of word counts. I initially was very over the word count (by about 15 or so pages) and then, after I thought I had just gotten everything perfect, for YouLovePrint’s page requirements, I was criminally under. As I’m sure many of you do too, I hate cutting down my work and I especially hated it this time as it was all about my wonderful boyfriend! Although, just to note, I could’ve chosen a different bracket of page numbers provided by the company, but I thought 37 was a good number.
Once I finally got the pages in order, I then sent over my manuscript along with the cover and it began to be printed.
WAITING AND WAITING
It seemed like I was waiting forever for the product. In reality, I was probably only waiting for about one to two weeks. I was overjoyed when the product finally arrived at my door. Seeing the product almost made me cry, my own writing was made physical!
I was very lucky to receive two copies by YouLovePrint despite only ordering one. They came exactly as I had ordered them and in perfect condition.
PRESENT TIME!!
It was so hard to wait until Christmas to show my boyfriend the book but I thankfully held out. The surprise was wonderful and yet another time where I was fighting back tears. I am pleased to report that he loved it and it is now on display in our apartment!