Writing my book part three: The final draft and beyond
It's been a while on this series, but now that I have renewed the journey towards a new book, it felt like the time to finish it.
So, what are the steps that go into making a book draft into a full-on published book? Turns out, a lot. In the time between the last blog in this series and now, I have talked to a lot of other writers, very talented writers and the one thing that all of us could relate on was the publishing process. Everyone has their own style, but the process of actual distribution is very similar amongst them and a good talking point but I digress. I will now get into the final steps I had to take with regards to the publishing and distribution of my first book.
Final draft
But, in short, a lot of the work involved the correction of grammatical errors and spelling errors by copywriters (and with how I write, I leave a few of those behind), finishing up all of the reviews from the technical reviewers, and approving the general layout for the book. After achieving all of this, the only thing left was to wait a few weeks for the release. However, the journey with this book didn’t end there.
Post-publishing
When a book is published, its just that moment, one second it is unpublished and the next it is published. I loved the feeling of having a published book, but now I lived in a world where the book had already been published. So, I had to get to work, promoting the book and asking some of my contacts to review it. That work continues to this day, but the biggest thing it did for me was that it gave me insight into the process of how to take a product that you can call your own and distribute it to people who want it.
After the book was published, I got a lot of messages from people telling me that they had really liked the book and that they were using it for some of their work-related tasks. That gave me a sense of accomplishment that was very unique in terms of feeling (I cannot describe it, I just know I hadn’t felt it before). But it also made me very grateful for the network of people involved in the publication of the book and the network that I had who were willing to review it.
The overall reception for the book itself has been great. It has been so good, that I have now started writing another one! It will take us a while, this one will be a longer publication, but I am excited. And that is why I am leaving you with this one concluding thought: Write. Seriously, writing helps with a lot of things, not just professionally, but personally, emotionally, its a great outlet and a great way to keep yourself focused. I recommend it.