That's right I have new heroes. Move over Wonder Woman. Step off to the side Thor (but not too far, you are still pretty to look at). I have new heroes who have won my heart. Are you ready for this? Drumroll please.... Welcome to the front of the line Mr. Google and Mr. YouTube. Yes, that is right these are my new heroes. Why do you ask? Pull up a chair and let me tell you.
I consider myself an intelligent person. I am college educated. I can hold good conversation with almost anyone. I can even fix stuff when needed (thanks Mom). However, after trying to work through the steps of self publishing, I was rethinking that intelligence stance. At first I was very confident, too confident. The biggest lesson I had was that you can never self edit too much. Do you think your nearly 200 page word document is ready to be sent to your test readers? Better look again. I watched several YouTube videos from authors who couldn't say enough good things about editing programs such as Grammerly and Prowriting Aid. Being the smart intelligent girl that I am, I figured that I should put my pages through and see how much I missed. Let's just say that it counts your "errors" and all of a sudden I could feel the smack of reality as to just how not ready the book was.
After editing the book to death, and realizing that I am stingy with commas, I was ready to format the book into an eReader version. So, here I was going back to YouTube again. Several videos mentioned the free software called Calibre. I have to say it is very easy to use and provides great options. However, there were things I needed to format in Word before uploading to the new software. They talked about Chapters as headers to create table of contents, headers and footers and page count. Here is where Google became my friend. I found out that I know only a fraction of what Word can do. If I didn't need it for my job, I didn't learn it. By the way, if you are listening out there Microsoft, your help section needs an overhaul. Google kicks your butt.
Now after spending days with my new heroes, I have sent my book out for first line beta reader testing. Now I just need to try and finish book #2. I will not obsess and panic about the feedback from the betas. Okay, I will try not to obsess. I heard Google has some great articles on how to create thick skin, maybe I will go bond with one if my new heroes.