My sweet Regency / historical romance, "Laurie's Painter," by Alice M. Roelke, is now live on Amazon. It costs $2.99. If anyone is interested in a review copy, I'll send you one right away. Just let me know what format & where to send it. :)
All right, with that out of the way, I'd like to talk about my decision to self-publish this story.
Part of it was very easy. My publisher, MuseItUp Publishing, passed on this story. So I set it aside and gave up on it. But time passed, and I found I still liked and believed in this story. So I worked on it further, and I think it's much better than it was. I think it might possibly find a few readers, and the process of working on it and publishing it is helping me to get my courage up and keep growing as a writer.
It took a few tough decisions, including chopping off the beginning that I was very fond of, but just wasn't working for the story. It involved reworking dialogue and wording and adding more scenes where necessary. It was a high wire act of balancing creative decisions with editing decisions, and sometimes it was very stressful. But it was also a great deal of fun.
My cover art decisions were also a balancing act. I made my own cover using a stock photo. It doesn't scream Regency (the dress is wrong for the era; I couldn't find one that was correct), but I think it does scream 'historical,' which is almost as good. I could've chosen a more generic cover, such as an arrangement of flowers, but I liked this much better and decided to take the chance it would connect with readers. It is a gamble, but a fun one. It'll be interesting to see if I was right--or not.
I don't know if this romance with succeed for anyone else, but it's already a success for me, because, instead of giving up on it like I generally have in the past if anyone else didn't like something I wrote (and even my mom didn't connect with this one at first!!), I eventually picked it up again, admitted to myself I still believed in it, and then did what I could to improve it and put it out there. And for me, not giving up and getting a story out there? That is a HUGE success! :)
Basically, I loved taking a chance with my story, and it makes me very happy to see it on Amazon now. :)
http://www.amazon.com/Lauries-Painter-Regency-romance-ebook/dp/B00CYQBTM6
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