Draft2Digital try-out

When I saw Norm’s door post today, I was relieved to see a lot of beautiful street art. I took this picture because I want to share it with you, but I’m not even sure it has a door… Luckily, #ThursdayDoors is a flexible place.

Corona times have been a rollercoaster these last months. Lockdown, no work, homeschooling, too much work… Strange and exhausting times even without getting the virus.

I’m slowly finding my way back to some creativity. My mother and I can finally continue the work on the English edition of Meer dan wat het oog ziet. We hope to have it ready for preorder soon.

As an experiment, I’m also making a book to publish through Draft2Digital. My procrastination workbook brought me experience with Amazon and the Google Play Store. For the Dutch edition of the oncoming poetry/photography book I also tried out Blurb, Kobo, and Publish Drive, which got me into the Apple Store and Scribd. This may sound impressive, but don’t forget that being in a store doesn’t automatically means you sell your book. It’s just one in millions, and it needs to find its audience somehow.

Thus far Drive2Digital was missing. All my choices have had to do with which types of file I already had available and which ones I could convert into easily. A long and boring story, but something to watch out for if you ever want to self-publish. In a next post I’ll share some first impressions of the different platforms and distributors. I’ve listened to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of stuff online to figure everything out, but in the end, I like to try everything out to figure out what I like best.

The new book will be called From my skin. At the moment I’m figuring out the lay-out challenges, since a number of the poems that will be in there has an unconventional layout. The poem in the picture beneath is called Ire, and will feature in the book if everything works out well.

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