And the toe dips in...

I feel like I'm setting out on a strange new adventure.  I've completed my first novel (a sci-fi fantasy adventure), and after sporadic attempts over many years to have it pop to the top of some established Publisher's cavernous slush pile, and recognising that the publishing environment is going through a period of dramatic change, I've decided to try the self-publishing route.

So: now what happens?

How do you actually self-publish?  There's the mechanical side of things: preparing the work for print and/or electronic publishing.  There's the route: who do you pick - Amazon (how does that even happen - how can you become accepted?), Lulu, Smashwords, CreateSpace...? There's the legal side of things: what are the terms and conditions, obligations and restrictions of each of the possible publication routes.  There's the marketing side: okay, I have a book, but how can readers discover it even exists?

So, having honed my writing skills over the years (hopefully, enough!), I now discover I'm not at the end of the learning experience: I've just opened the door to the beginning of a whole new one.  I've emerged from the Forests of Creation onto the Foreshores of the Ocean of Books, and I'm standing here feeling a little lost and bewildered. I look up and down the vast shoreline, to huts and campsites, villages and distant cities; strange machines and interesting groups of people.  And all the while the churning, roiling ocean heaves with the power and imagination of the authors launching their books, and the readers diving in and swimming in the colourful flood.

So this, then, will be my blog of discovery as I set out on my small quest for knowledge and experience, and where I'll share what I learn along the way: what is this Goodreads thing?  Pubslush?  Blogger?  CoPromote...?

I trust that time will tell.