This whole process of Internet self-publishing is ridiculous, even if for a short story, and I think I'm just complicating it even further by confusing myself and trying to focus on different goals simultaneously while truly having no idea what I'm doing. No, I have a rough idea of what I'm doing. But I have to admit that I thought the whole "self-publishing on the Internet" ordeal would be a lot easier than it's been so far.
I guess I'm going to wait to see if Smashwords will accept me into their premium catalog and then get an ISBN through them which I can just attribute to myself as the publisher and then name them as the distributor. They also distribute to B&N and the iBookstore, so hopefully that will just work out. Perhaps I was just being impatient.
If that doesn't work out, I can just use Kindle Direct Publishing and go from there. I gave up on Lulu. I can only do so much formatting of manuscripts, really. Apparently my ePub file, which I worked diligently for at least an hour to create by using Calibre and messing around with various document types, does not work. I was so thrilled to discover, through trial and error and great irritation, that going from a .doc to a .html and then to an ePub file was the only way to retain the small amount formatting that still remained in my novel. Alas, it still didn't work.
So I'm just going to wait some more and see what happens. I thought this process would be empowering, but really I still feel like I'm at the whim of these online distributors. I'm also disadvantaging myself by not becoming more familiar with some of these digital tools. You'd think a guy that grew up around computers would know a little bit more about file conversions. Oh well.
I'll keep myself updated.
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