Yes, that is meant somewhat ironically because this is a long and tedious process. First you have to have the team who are able to prepare the covers properly, do all the interior layout and then someone to prepare the manuscript for all these different places. Thank the gods I have Jeffe Kennedy and her extraordinary team to assist me and Jeffe to teach me.

The one really big wrinkle in all of this has been Bowker that sells ISBN numbers. Note that in Canada they are provided to authors for free, but here in the U.S. of A. we have to pay $10.00 a number, and you need a shit load of numbers because almost every version — print, ebook requires a different number, and many of the platforms — Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Ingram Spark, etc. want new ISBN numbers. And if you mess up (which I have an unfortunate tendency to do as I learn) you burn a number that you can no longer use. Bye bye ten dollars.

Add to this the fact that Bowker appears to be having a meltdown because when Jeffe and I were looking over My Identifiers we found that a number of them that we had designated as ebooks had somehow been changed to Print which means we have to go to all these different places and try to recover the numbers and assign them properly on a spread sheet so I can keep track.

This is very strange for me. I was always a traditionally published author, but the changes to the industry and the fact authors no longer have a backlist that will be maintained by a publisher (unless you are GRRM, or King or Rowling) means that these new platforms are a god send for authors. Our books can continue to be available in either electronic form or print on demand. Even after I’m dead my heirs and assigns will continue to get some small trickle of money from my books. It’s a strange little form of immortality.