Publishing your first book is a fantastic and ridiculous experience. It requires more than just a good idea for a story. Much more. If you have written something that you think is worth publishing, you have to decide: self publish or not. I chose to self publish. So, all of the decisions were mine. Also fantastic and ridiculous. Something that started on a whim (a blog for another day) is now requiring some serious thought and research. Where do I publish? How long should my “story” be? Should I put all of my stories together and make a book? Should I structure it as a series instead? How much should I charge for it? Where and how to publish? How many times should I edit/update? Who should read it? Should someone read it? What should I name the characters? Should I use a pseudonym? What will my pseudonym be? Who do I tell? What if they want to read it? Is it good enough to publish? Will anyone like it? Read it? Buy it? And on and on until I am a freaked out mess. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, I have a tendency to obsess and over think some things. Not all things, just some things.)
While trying to nail down the answers to these questions (and many more) I also had to figure out a name and think about the cover. Fortunately for me, I had a graphic artist friend (see her info) willing to do the artwork for free. So, I phoned her with my name dilemma. I told her the name I had picked out, “Dreams and Fantasies” which she thought was too literal. Dang. She suggested “Deep Surrender” or “Dark Ecstasy”, which I loved but a quick search told me they were already books. Then we started getting silly: “Lick Me” (already taken numerous times); “Fuck Me Cross-Eyed” which lead to “Fuck Each Other Stupid” (a line from one of my books, actually); “Hard Surrender”; “Dark Hardness”; and “Hard Darkness”, to name a few. It was funny and we were laughing, but I still hadn’t picked out a name.
I started to research how important a good title was. Maybe I could just pick anything. Concensus was that the title was VERY IMPORTANT! Great! More anxiety. Somehow in all that searching, I found a link to Lulu.com . An online publisher that had a “title grader” on it. Fabulous. I just answered a few questions, typed in the name and Lulu provided me with a percentage score on whether or not the book would be a best seller. I entered every name we had come up with and received the scores of 16%, 27%, and 32%. Bummer. I wanted to sell my books, turn lots of people on, and quit my day job. Even 32% wasn’t good enough for those lofty goals. And, then I typed in “Dark Compliance”…..score of 69%! I think we have a winner here. Name search over. Anxiety and obsessing over (for now). I will let you know how it works out.