This is a story about writing and publishing a story. The first thing you should know is that it miiiiight have been a mistake to self-publish, but then again, it might not. I will say that I regret a couple things, and in hopes that I can save other authors some heartache, I’m going to share the mistakes I’ve made (so far, because let’s be honest, I’m going to make more of them).

Thing one that I regret: I opted to run a crowdfunding campaign through Publishizer instead of through Indiegogo or Kickstarter. I went into it not realizing that Publishizer would take a way bigger cut of the money I raised than those other sites do. I also thought that they would be hooking me up with legitimate publishers. Not the case. They just pitch your idea mostly to vanity publishers, who don’t really need to be pitched. Vanity publishers just want to get paid to publish your book. So not really helpful there, and certainly not worth an extra 20% of the money I raised. There were a couple of actual publishers that approached me, and perhaps I should have considered them more, but I’d heard some horror stories of authors making no money because of poorly managed book launches. And I’d done so well with pre-orders, I decided it was worth my time and effort to promote my own work and not rely on someone else. We’ll see how that works out soon.

Thing two that I regret: the publisher I chose. After speaking to several, I went with BookFuel. Bad idea. Right from the start things started to go wrong. They wouldn’t lay out the book the way I had envisioned. Every step took infinitely longer than it should have. I’d complete a step and send it off to my account manager, then wait a few weeks. I’d finally reach out to check on the status and each and every time it would have magically “just come back” from whatever department it had been in. What a coincidence. Every. Single. Time. And the kicker was that, when I received my sample copies (which were both really low quality), they had changed the formatting from the approved manuscript and eliminated the strike-throughs I’d included. So sentences that should have read something like, “He had raised me not to cry, though I was a giant ball of weepiness considerably less skilled at suppressing my tears,” now read, “He had raised me not to cry, though I was a giant ball of weepiness considerably less skilled at suppressing my tears.” When I alerted them to it, they wanted to charge me to fix it. And the blasted thing is still available on Amazon, even though I’ve asked them to take it down.

So yeah, not happy with BookFuel. I’m still in the process of negotiating with them to terminate our agreement, and hopefully that will be resolved soon. But it’s been an expensive lesson.

All of that being said, I found another company to print my book, and so far am pretty happy with them. With Blurb, I’ve had total control over the layout, the print quality is higher, and it costs me less per book when I buy in bulk. The only down side is that the print-on-demand books (i.e., through Amazon), are more expensive than they would have been through BookFuel so I earn less money when people purchase that way.

So now, without further ado, I’m pleased to announce that the book is finally available for purchase!! There are several ways you can buy:

1. You can buy the paperback directly from me here. This is my most favoritestest way, because I make the most money on each book and you’ll save a few dollars.
2. You can buy the hardcover and paperback versions on Amazon here. If you want a hardcover, this is currently your only option. Please note that the first version with the formatting errors is likely still going to show, so to get the right one, you’ll be looking for the one that offers the hardcover for $39.95 and the softcover for $29.95.
3. You can buy the eBook here and here.

Once you’ve had a chance to read it, and if you liked it, pleeeeeease consider leaving a review on Amazon or GoodReads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34408526-fractured-memories?from_search=true)or your own blog/social media. And then tell everyone you know!