In today's day and age it is easier than it has ever been to self-publish rather than going the traditional publishing house route. However, this is a double edged sword. There are endless blogposts and information on the internet on how to self-publish. This isn't necessarily a "how to" blog post, this is more a what we did and how we skyrocketed our first book to publication in just one year.
If you've read our other blog posts you know that we began this journey in December of 2023 and A Symphony of Flames and Liberty was published on December 16, 2024 just a year later. Here is the self-publishing timeline of what we did and when.
December 2023
Cailin and Anna began drafting the book in the beginning of the month. Our grandmother passed away on December 6, 2023 and we fell into a writing slump for a week or so until Anna flew home for Christmas on December 20, 2023.
During the drive home to Western Massachusetts, Cailin and Anna were discussing how we needed to get back into writing the book and the endless ideas that we had for turning the book into a series. Our youngest sister, Kelly, was in the back seat and became increasingly interested in what we were discussing. We asked Kelly if she wanted to write the book with us to which she responded along the lines of "No, I don't write romance." We begged Kelly to just read the first six chapters that we had written and see if it would change her mind. "It's so much more than romance!!" Cailin insisted. Kelly read the first six chapters and immediately changed her mind.
Thus began the real journey. During Christmas break we outlined the entire book together, divided up the chapters and set the broad goal that the book would be published in 2024. We knew that if we did not give ourselves a deadline the book would never get done.
January 2024
In January, we started our social media accounts and began trying to grow a social media presence. We created an Instagram and TikTok and teased the plot, created relatable writer videos and eventually began introducing the characters of the book. Growth was slow, but steady.
March 2024
We finished our first draft of the book and began the tedious editing process and began looking for beta readers to begin reading in May.
April 2024
Continued growing our socials, editing, and looking for beta readers.
On April 19th we announced the title of the book (for symbolic reasons - hint! hint!)
May 2024
We launched our first round of beta readers at the end of May. The betas had one month to complete the beta read. We provided them with some resources for their read but largely left them to their own discretion on how they would complete the read and give feedback.
Admittedly, this was an abysmal disaster and of 8 beta readers only 1 completed the read. We made MASSIVE changes to the beta read process before the next round.
We also began looking for our July beta readers.
June 2024
We printed the first author copies of the book, wrapped up our May beta read and began implementing edits, prepped for our July beta read and opened a July beta read waitlist due to the high interest.
We also launched a temporary website that allowed people to get to know the series, us, and the book in a more cohesive environment than through social media.
We began working on book two in the Secrets of Society series.
July 2024
We released the release date on July 1st and launched our second round of beta readers. This time we did a staggered beta reader program that Anna designed based on what worked well and what did not work well in June. This went much better and we had most of our beta readers complete on time, providing very good feedback.
We began working on our new website, founded our company, opened bank accounts, established the business and began prepping and designing the preorder.
At the end of July we teased that we would be doing a tiered preorder.
August 2024
We ordered our business cards, finished designing our preorder, took our author photos and completed our July beta read round.
We began implementing feedback and going through another round of editing.
Kelly finished and finalized all internal artwork (the flowers) and designed and finished the cover for the book. We then released the cover for the book.
Anna submitted the information for the book to Goodreads to be added as a book.
September 2024
We continued implementing beta reader feedback and editing through the book again. We met with and hired an editor and began the process of working through the next round of edits with the editor.
We launched our tiered preorder and began marketing the tiers.
October 2024
We continued working with the editor. We opened our ARC reader applications and filtered through to find the best ARC readers. Created our ARC reader Facebook group page and began working to set up the ARC read.
November 2024
Our ARC read began. We finalized all merch and placed the orders for all of our preorder merch and the copies of the book.
We FINALLY heard back from Goodreads who is very behind and had to provide extra information for the book to be added. At this point the book still has not been added to Goodreads, but we are hoping that it will be added any day now.
December 2024
We mailed all of our preorders with priority shipping before the book was released.
Our book launched and we connected our distributor to our website to fulfill our orders automatically for us.
We added some merch to the website that can be ordered individually if you did not get it during the preorder. The Bonus Chapters were also added to the website.
We opened our Facebook group for anyone to join as a Secrets of Society fan page rather than just the ARC read page. We added our book to the Great British Bookshop and their distribution network.
We added our book to StoryGraph, based on a recommendation from one of our ARC readers, which is another platform like Goodreads.
We dove head first into completing the outline and beginning to draft book two for the Secrets of Society.
Anna and Kelly storyboarded for another project (more information coming soon on this!).
Cailin began working on something as well that we hope to share with you all in February!
