The Reluctant Detective is LIVE on Amazon!

Phew. That’s my sigh of relief. After some delays, The Reluctant Detective is now live on Amazon. You can check it out and buy it here.

Launching a book seems easy. Just take your Word document, make a quick cover, upload everything to Amazon (or your e-tailer of choice) and voila! Right?

Well, you could do it that way. Some people have. The reality is, if you want to put a good product up there, it takes more work. I hired an editor, who was terrific. Someone in my writing group referred me to a great cover artist. If you’ve forgotten what the cover looks like, here’s a reminder:

I’d like to say the launch was seamless, and that I am a writing and marketing savant. However, it wasn’t, and I’m not. Despite a spell-checker doing its job and alerting me to a typo, I totally whiffed on seeing it, and it made its way into the Amazon book description. Thankfully, someone alerted me to it quickly and I changed it, but still. We all make typos, sure, but that’s a bloody embarrassing place to have one. I also didn’t realize how much more complex print formatting was. If I had, I would have started all of that sooner. There will be a print-on-demand version. I’ll be offering it thru CreateSpace, but I don’t know exactly when. Check the book’s sales page periodically. My best guess is around the end of October, but I don’t know how quickly (or slowly) the process moves yet.

Launching The Reluctant Detective has been great, and it’s also been a learning experience. I have some lessons I’ve taken away for future book launches. For now, though, I’m stoked to have this book out. You can check it out here. It’s $2.99 to buy, or free to download and read if you’re in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program.

If you read The Reluctant Detective, I hope you enjoy it. If you enjoyed it, I ask that you do two things:

1. Leave a review. Reviews are very important to independent authors like me. They help our books get noticed, vouch for their quality to prospective readers, and keep the mighty Amazon algorithms happy.
2. Tell others about it. If you know people who enjoy mysteries and detective fiction, please let them know about my book. Even in our hyper-connected age, word of mouth is a great marketing tool.

Now that the book is out, I hope to get back to more regular blogging next week. See you then.