Self-publishing

Having taken the decision to publish my book myself on Amazon, I never really considered what this would mean.
The Kindle edition has gone very smoothly and the fact that you are publishing to display on several types of device means that issues of formatting are easily sorted- the simpler the better. However, the paperback is a whole new world. It should be straightforward, but it's not.The formatting of the paperback file so that it prints properly is dealt with by means of a Word template. So far so OK, until the book gets to 390 pages and the file starts to choke on the sections.
The text is a piece of cake, but the headers and footers have driven me close to despair. However, I got it into the right place in Amazon, complete with cover design. What do you put on the back cover if you have no ecstatic comments from celebrities and newspapers? Write your own blurb, again---- and again----- and it still doesn't take up enough room!

the back cover

Then the pictures. We had to stage a photo shoot in the back garden to simulate me walking along the beach staring into the distance, and then resort to a heavy edit. It took just over two weeks to get it more or less right and I still forgot to compensate for the fact that the photo makes me look less than glamorous.
The Amazon system allows you to look at an electronic proof copy, so I did and discovered that three proof reads are not enough. I found a completely unbelievable number of errors in the text, mostly tenses and missing words which had got cut out in a previous edit, and a couple of formatting problems.
A week later, I am ready to go again, but Amazon will not let me load my amended file. I don't know why, and am gritting my teeth and waiting for the help desk to get back to me.
What have I learned? This is not to be done in a hurry. I am a couple of months behind where I hoped I would be and the ***** book is still driving my daily life. It's got to the stage where I am anxious about what I will do when I eventually manage to get the stupid thing on sale! I have also learned that being a publisher is something you have to take seriously, and, with a world-wide distribution, you are a publisher, like it or not.
Thank you to the four wonderful people who have bought the Kindle version! I will soon be able to market the thing and perhaps sell four paperbacks.
Job done!